Governor LePage of Maine recently made some unfortunate comments about immigrants. To me this reeked of ignorance. I was not offended simply because of my Indian heritage; the governor was merely stating a fact. Of course there are many Indians who are hard to understand just like there are many New Englanders, including the governor himself, who if they moved to old England, would probably have to enroll in English classes, with an emphasis on diction. (Also let’s not forget that it is doubly difficult to understand the governor because of his constant petulance of speaking with his foot in his mouth). What bothered me instead was his comment about Indians being â€œlovely people”. Indians are NOT all â€œlovely people” just like all men from Maine are NOT yahoos. There is good and bad in every place and in every race and to say that an entire ethnicity is bad (or for that matter good) is, simply put, shallow. What the uninformed governor probably does not get is that by making such a cliché comment about Indian accents, he essentially engaged in stereotyping; there is nothing more dangerous than this for it was labeling such as this that resulted in the annihilation of 6 million Jews not so long ago.

The governor’s comments also appear to be xenophobic. How often has he come across an Indian worker at a restaurant who needs an â€œinterpreter”? Quite frankly even I would have an issue with an employee, Indian or not, who cannot be understood but I wouldn’t be angry with him for not being able to communicate fluently. I would be annoyed with those who hired him because obviously, I am missing something that his employers see. What makes him more qualified for this particular position than other Mainers — I wonder? Is it that these businesses are not willing to pay their workers well? Is it that hard-working immigrants are the only ones willing to do the work without mooching off of the taxpayers? (And by the way, if someone has a problem understanding an Indian at an Indian restaurant, perhaps he should stay away from ethnic gastronomical delights and eat at a more refined restaurant where it is easier to understand the accent — say for example the governor’s mother tongue — French).

Unfortunately, the governor’s insensitive remarks spiral back to the color of one’s skin. This is the same man who refused to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr.’s Day and defiantly mocked the NAACP by asking the civil rights group to â€œkiss my butt”.

This is the same guy who made racist comments about those supposedly responsible for bringing in heroin to Maine: “These are guys with the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty — these types of guys — they come from Connecticut and New York, they come up here, they sell their heroin, they go back home... Incidentally, half the time they impregnate a young white girl before they leave, which is a real sad thing because then we have another issue we have to deal with down the road.”

This is also the same person who concluded that, asylum-seekers are the â€œbiggest problem in our state” because “what happens is that you get Hepatitis C, Tuberculosis, AIDS, HIV, the ziki fly, all these other foreign type of diseases that find a way to our land.” By “ziki fly” I think he was referring to the Aedes mosquito, whose bite is known to cause the Zika virus. I must say that I would like my governor to be a little more educated and a bit more literate than that, accent or not. And let me add one more choice word to the list provided — codswallop.

The governor also appears to suffer from selective memory loss. How easily he forgot that he is one of 18 kids of an impoverished immigrant family who moved to America looking for a better life. Was it the color of the fair skin that made it acceptable for his parents to migrate to this country? After all, his father worked as a daily laborer all his life and his parents did not speak any English. Also, how does the governor not remember that he himself was rejected as a young man by a local college because of his poor SAT scores since English was not his first language? May I also politely remind the governor that the majority of Indians move to America not just to make a better life for themselves but to enrich the life of others by way of their invaluable contributions in the field of engineering, technology, medicine and the arts. Most are also highly educated, smart and can communicate in English better than many native speakers.

Uncovering the governor’s background also revealed rampant duplicity and hypocrisy. Where does he (and others like him) get the audacity to make a statement demeaning something so trivial as someone’s accent? Drawing attention to something so insignificant is tasteless, petty, unnecessary and sends the chilling message to those who lack judgment, that it is okay to indulge in condescending rhetoric which in turn leads to bigger (and sicker) expressions of hate.

After carefully reviewing the governor’s executive (functioning) decisions, this is what I, a proud immigrant, have to say:

Governor LePage — I love the state you represent. Exactly a year ago when I camped in Maine with my dear family and some loving friends, I was so smitten by its pristine beauty that I vowed to return every year. My experience was spectacular — thanks to many people I met — some of them immigrants. I felt like I had found heaven (and peace) on earth. Don’t tarnish the natural beauty of your state by injecting hostility, fostering animosity and interpolating thoughtless, vile ideas. Accents are easier to get rid of than indignity. There is no glory in a false sense of superiority, governor.