Anger over a war cry uttered by Loretta Sanchez could hamper the Democrat’s U.S. Senate sun. Sanchez is running to become a California Senator. A video of the candidate placing her hand to her mouth and making a “whoop whoop” war cry sound has gone viral and angered Native Americans in the process.
Loretta Sanchez made the war cry gesture while speaking to a room filled with Indian-Americans (folks with ties to the country of India, American Indians) at a convention for the California Democratic Party in Anaheim on Saturday.
Loretta Sanchez apologizes for Native American joke: http://t.co/h3bXQmUfb6 pic.twitter.com/h12Hb9hflc
— POLITICO (@politico) May 17, 2015
“I am going to his office thinking that I am going to meet with a…,” Loretta Sanchez said during the viral war cry video, as she reportedly attempted to describe a meeting with a person “whose heritage she’d gotten confused.” The California Democrat then put her hand to her mouth and made the whoop whoop war cry 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. And that was the first time that we saw the Indian-American community really come,” Loretta Sanchez added before the war cry video clip ended.
California Attorney General Kamala Harris is running against Loretta Sanchez for the Senate seat held by Barbara Boxer. Harris’ mother is reportedly from India, and her father is African-American.
“I don’t know what to say to that,” Kamala Harris said about the Loretta Sanchez war cry. “It is shocking and there is no place for that in our public discourse.”
Loretta Sanchez defended her comments when the anger over the war cry first began.
“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,” the California Democrat Senate hopeful said.
“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,” Loretta Sanchez responded when asked if she felt it was appropriate to make the Indian war cry in front of any audience.
What do you think about the Loretta Sanchez war cry?
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