Mixed-Race, How Does It Work? Mark Kirk Edition

When I saw the headline—Senator Mark Kirk Mocks Disabled Veteran Tammy Duckworth for Mixed-Race Heritage—I was immediately drawn in. What did he do?! What did he say?! Just for reference, you don’t mess with Tammy Duckworth. You just don’t. She’s a double amputee with two decades of military service who defeated an incumbent Republican Congressman in 2012 and currently has her sights set on Mark Kirk’s senate seat. She’s pretty much as badass as badass gets. She’s also mixed-race. Her father is a white American marine whose ancestors fought in the American Revolution. Her mother is a Thai immigrant of Chinese dissent.

During last night’s debate, this exchange took place:

Duckworth: “My family has served this nation in uniform going back to the Revolution. I am a daughter of the American Revolution. I’ve bled for this nation. But I still want to be there in the Senate when the drums of war sound because I want to be there to say, This is what it costs. This is what you’re asking us to do. And if that’s the case, I’ll go. Families like mine are the ones that lead first. But let’s make sure the American people understand what we’re engaging in. And let’s hold our allies accountable because we can’t do it all.”

Moderator: “Senator Kirk, thirty seconds to rebut.”

Kirk: “I had forgotten that your parents came all the way from Thailand to serve George Washington.”

[silence]

Moderator: “Move on to the next question . . . “

Kirk didn’t actually say anything to rebut Duckworth’s argument. Instead he made that one statement, followed by utter silence. Duckworth refused to even dignify this comment with a response, leaving it to the moderator to break the silence to move on to the next question. It is one of the most awkward things I’ve seen in a long time, and I watched the presidential debates.

You can view the exchange between Duckworth and Kirk yourself here:

I’m still trying to figure out what Kirk was actually thinking when he made this comment. Did he not know that Duckworth’s father was a white American citizen? Or did he know—surely he knew—and decide to mock her anyway? I have cousins who are mixed-race. Like Duckworth, they are the children of an immigrant of color and of a white American with ancestors who fought in the American Revolution. I had not considered until this moment that they will have people question their belonging even though their ancestors came to the United States on the Mayflower.

I am not mixed-race, so I’m not going to try to speak to the mixed-race experience except to say that Mark Kirk just opened my eyes to challenges mixed-race individuals face that I hadn’t even thought about. Kirk probably also just cemented his defeat at the ballot box in a week and a half. And Tammy Duckworth is a mensch.

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