According to the Associated Press, Bobby Jindal, “is to take office as the nation’s first elected Indian-American governor and the first nonwhite governor of Louisiana since Reconstruction.” Indian-American I’ll grant him, but “non-white”? Only someone who doesn’t understand Louisiana could say that.
Race is a social construction, and the social construction of race in Louisiana is very different than the social construction of race in New York or California or even Texas. Unlike those states, Louisiana has exactly two races: black and white. That’s it. If you’re not black, you’re white. If you’re Hispanic, you’re white. If you’re Chinese, you’re white. If you’re Indian, Amerian or Asian, you’re white. If you’re Vietnamese–OK, there’s a little recognition of Vietnamese as a separate race, but only for the first generation who speak with an accent. Second generation kids who grow up speaking perfect Yat are white. Archie Bunker could not have existed in Louisiana: there just aren’t enough different people to be prejudiced against.
In Louisiana skin colors other than black and white are minor biographical details with less significance than the grammar school one attended. (That’s a story for another day, but the grammar school you attended matters quite a lot in Louisiana.) This is how the same damn suburb where I grew up could elect a grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan to the state legislature at the same time they’re reelecting a Chinese American to be sheriff. They simply don’t see any contradiction. As long as Harry Lee talked like a good old boy, hunted like a good old boy, and could be counted on to send out the deputies to make sure no black folks fleeing Orleans Parish crossed the bridges into Jefferson during a hurricane, the fact that his skin was yellow really didn’t matter to anybody. The exact same thing explains why Bobby Jindal can win a state-wide election: his skin may be brown but that doesn’t make him non-white in Louisiana.
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