What is dumbest about CNN’s Ana Navarro telling Kirstjen Nielsen to go eat at a Norwegian restaurant?

What is dumbest about CNN’s Ana Navarro telling Kirstjen Nielsen to go eat at a Norwegian restaurant?
Ana Navarro (Image: YouTube screen grab)

As though it wasn’t silly enough that Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was driven out of a D.C.-area Mexican restaurant by hecklers on Tuesday, CNN’s resident bigot Ana Navarro chimed in with a tweet asking rhetorically whether there aren’t any Norwegian restaurants in Washington, D.C.?

Because as everyone knows, in America you keep to your own kind. If you’re black, you live in a black neighborhood and go to a black school. Maybe Navarro is confused because that’s the way it was in America at one time. That was before the Supreme Court stepped in and ruled school segregation unconstitutional and before the civil rights movement ended widespread discrimination.

Of course that was all before Ana Navarro was born, besides which she wasn’t born in the U.S. but in Nicaragua.

Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?

So apart from the obvious racist angle, what else is dumb about Navarro’s comment to Nielsen? It’s the presumption that Nielsen is Norwegian. Actually, she is of Danish descent. Jakob Kidde Sauntved, formerly of the University of Copenhagen, writes at Quora:

Her great-grandparents on her father’s side, Christen and Marie Nielsen, were born in Denmark and came to the United States when they were teenagers.Her mother’s family is primarily Italian. Nielsen is the most common Danish surname (though until a generation ago only the third most common) and she has a typical Danish first name, but with a weird j inserted which makes it look quasi-Dutch, which is confusing. Nielsen is used in Norway as well, but is not particularly common there (Nilsen would be the standard form) and quite often by families of Danish descent.

Maybe to Navarro, all white people look the same.

LU Staff

LU Staff

Promoting and defending liberty, as defined by the nation’s founders, requires both facts and philosophical thought, transcending all elements of our culture, from partisan politics to social issues, the workings of government, and entertainment and off-duty interests. Liberty Unyielding is committed to bringing together voices that will fuel the flame of liberty, with a dialogue that is lively and informative.

Comments

For your convenience, you may leave commments below using Disqus. If Disqus is not appearing for you, please disable AdBlock to leave a comment.