This story would have been front page news across America today had a Republican running for Senate in California made these potentially career ending remarks. But then again, there’s that whole double standard thing…

Loretta and her sister Linda, who made history in 2008 when they became the first sisters in Congress, penned a joint memoir “Dream in Color.” In the book, they bemoan their status as women who are apparently seen as sex objects.

A U.S. Senate candidate from California is under fire after being caught on camera imitating a racial stereotype of Native Americans.

U.S. Rep. Loretta Sanchez patted her mouth and made a whooping gesture while talking to a room full of people with ties to India — Indian-Americans, not American Indians — at the California Democratic Party’s convention in Anaheim on Saturday, reports The Sacramento Bee.

“I am going to his office thinking that I am going to meet with a …,” Sanchez said in the video, describing a meeting with a person whose heritage she’d gotten confused. Then she placed her hand over her mouth and made an echo sound.

“Right? Because he said Indian-American. And I go in there and it was great. It was just great because he said, ‘I want to get my community involved.’ Involved,” she continued.

“And that was the first time that we saw the Indian-American community really come,” the Democrat from Santa Ana added before the clip cut out.

Sanchez’s rival in the Democratic race to replace U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer called the incident “shocking.”

“I don’t know what to say to that,” said Attorney General Kamala Harris, whose mother is from India and father is African-American, reports The Sacramento Bee.

“It is shocking and there is no place for that in our public discourse,” she added.

Sanchez, who’d been meeting with delegates to start the shaping of her campaign, defended her actions.

“What I said was that I got a call from somebody from over the phone and he said, ‘I want to talk to you about having help from the Indian community,’ and I thought he meant the American Indian community, in the sense of the Native American Indian community,” she said.

When asked whether it was an appropriate gesture to make to any people, the 55-year-old replied: “I think that Native Americans have an incredibly great history, and a great presence in our country, and many of them are supporting our election.”

Via: NY Daily News