Why Did Bobby Jindal Utter The Words ‘You Mean I’m Not White’?

By Staff Reporter | Feb 09, 2015 09:03 PM EST

TEXT SIZE    

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal's "You Mean I'm Not White" statement has been making headlines after he uttered those words in response to the portrait, which was extensively circulated and went viral online.

Bobby Jindal's "You Mean I'm Not White" response came after a portrait dispute flared up last week when a liberal blogger in Louisiana widely shared a portrait, which was on loan from a constituent. CBS News revealed Jindal's chief-of-staff accused the blogger of "race-baiting."

The controversial photo, which is a white-washed portrait of himself, is currently hanged in the capitol building in Baton Rouge. It went viral on Twitter last week after it depicted Jindal, who is an Indian-American and Republican politician with pale skin.

"You mean I'm not white?" Bobby Jindal said at a breakfast session organized by the Christian Science Monitor in Washington, D.C. According to ABC News, the famous line came from the 1989 film, "See No Evil, Hear No Evil," where blind man Richard Pryor said those words to Gene Wilder.

Jindal, who's believed to be a presidential candidate, said the tweet just highlighted a liberal obsession, USA Today reported.

"I think this whole thing is silly. I think the left is obsessed with race," the Louisiana governor stated. "I think the dumbest thing we can do is to try to divide people by the color of their skin. The left is devoid of ideas and this is unfortunately what they're resorted to - name-calling.... This is nonsense. We're all Americans."

After Bobby Jindal, whose parents are from India, said the "You Mean I'm Not White" line, he also gave reporters blanket permission to describe his ethnicity whenever they see it fit, Yahoo! News reported.

"You're more than welcome to put in every article about me that I'm not white," he said. "It really doesn't bother me."

Bobby Jindal's "You Mean I'm Not White" response came after he braved criticisms in recent weeks for racist statements. CNN revealed the statements he made was allegedly Islamophobic and discriminatory after he slammed radical Islam, Muslim immigrants and the so-called "no-go" zones in Europe.

pre post  |  next post
More Sections