Why the right turned on Indians

At a campaign event in Ohio over the weekend, Vivegramaswamy, the Republican candidate for governor tried to pick up a child who was standing next to him on stage, and he fumbled him, he almost dropped the kid. For me, watching it home, this was hilarious, for a politician, a passing embarrassment easy enough to explain. I think anyone who's a parent has had that experience, I mean, the kid, not to fat shame the kid, but he was a little chunky. Underward, Ramaswamy posted a cute picture of himself holding one of his own kids, and the response online was swift and deranged. Posture's question, Ramaswamy's manhood, his Americanness, they said ugly things about his Indian heritage. People who had negative stereotypes about Indians in their mind said, "Hey, look, the guy can't even pick up a kid. Look how much of a weakling he can't even act like a normal American family man." On today's explain from Vox, there's a growing strain of anti-Indian racism coming from the online right, and now it's moving offline. Sport for Take Explain comes from better help. If you thought about trying therapy with better help, insurance options may now be available nationwide, with an average copay for eligible members of $23 per session. If you've been waiting to start therapy, better help works with more than 125 health plan networks, and eligible members have an average copay of just $23 per session with insurance. To have insurance or don't live in the United States, you can still get 10% off your first month, visit betterhelp.com/explain to explore payment options, that's betterhtlp.com/explain. Support for this show comes from Harvey AI. The future of law is agentic, not just tools that assist, but AI agents that navigate complex matters. That's why Harvey created agents that can do the work from end to end. They build a plan, pull from secure data sources, run sub-agents in parallel, and draft the work product ready for your review. So you delegate the work and on the judgment. Trusted by more than 60% of the AMLA 100 and leading Fortune 500 legal teams, Harvey is the AI operating system designed specifically for legal work. Harvey AI tailored for law. Learn more at Harvey.ai You have got a piece coming out on Vox.com about increasing racism toward Indian Americans and Indian immigrants in the US. The piece starts with Bo French, a gentleman who's running for Texas Railroad Commissioner. I have been the tip of the spear in fighting woke DEI and the radical communist ideology that has infiltrated our universities. And a tweet that he did a few weeks ago. Why did you start there? Tell me about that. Yeah. Look, anyone who follows college football can tell you that that was supposed to be an amazing Saturday for the Texas Longhorns, who are the team from UT Austin, which is kind of the flagship school in Texas, flagship public university. They had a come from behind victory against Ohio State. In the eye of formation, he's got it. Dogs. Puts down Texas. They're a fan base not only in Texas, but around the country was cheering. They were exuberant, right? And so the Longhorns social media account actually posted a few different reaction images from folks in the stadium. Everyone, of course, was just cheering their team on. They were just so happy to see the Longhorns have that come from behind victory. They posted a video of a section of the crowd that included a lot of Asian Americans, particularly South Asians, right? People from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, right? Now Bo French, who I think in many ways is a very obscure politician, right? He's running for railroad commissioner in Texas. That's a position that's generally down, ballad, down ticket, although it's fairly powerful. It regulates the energy sector, oil, and gas. In Texas, you know, Bo French posted a response to that video, basically exclaiming that this was a nightmare, you know, a calamity for the University of Texas, that it has so many Indian students now, right? I heard UT graduation this year looked like this. I didn't believe it. But the problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined. Now French has been someone who over the years has targeted all kinds of minority groups, right? He's very anti-Muslim, for instance. He's always talking about immigration. In fact, if you go through social media, he barely talks about the actual position he's running for. But this tweet actually went viral. And what you found was that it was actually quite polarizing in right wing social media space, right? He did get some backlash from some Republicans who found inappropriate, but actually a lot of right wing influencers took his side and started talking about how there's too many Indian Americans at the universities in Texas and just too many Indian Americans in total. I see no problem with this tweet because Indians do not found Texas. Texas culture has a right to exist as well. Why shouldn't you bring up these issues that are affecting Texans? Why shouldn't the people of Texas have the ability to put this on the ballot and have their voices heard over who is coming into their university system? For a lot of people, this was the first time that a lot of this rising prejudice actually came into view. As you point out, there is a certain type of Republican that was quite upset by what both French did. And I'm thinking of Karl Rove, who came out and said after the tweet, I'm going to vote Democrat. My party has been infiltrated by people like both French. But Karl Rove is not the online right, right? So who are the bold face names in the online right who are sort of spreading this anti-Indian messaging and hatred? Rove was a Bush Republican, right? And under George W. Bush, the right certainly had their animus about illegal immigration on authorized and documented immigration. But they generally speaking, believe that if you did things the right way, you should be allowed to take a shot at the American dream. That's something that Ronald Reagan believed in and something that George H.W. Bush believed in. But it's starting to change now, right? And so a lot of what we're seeing is people on sort of the younger online right. I'm talking about turning point, USA. So this is one of the ways that the culture is changing up here. You have multiple Hindu temples all over the DFW area. The late Charlie Kirk, you know, blaze TV. If you thought Somalian daycare fraud was a problem, it turns out that's just the tip of the iceberg. The influencers like Jack Mesoviac, some of the more extreme influencers like Jake Lang. The Hindus and the Muslims are teaming up to take over Texas. Certainly Nick Fuentes, who is a kind of extreme podcaster who has long given vice president J.D. Vance grief for marrying the daughter of Indian American immigrants, right? J.D. Vance is fat and ugly and has an Indian wife who is the daughter of immigrants and his kids are all brown. These people have become very influential, highly influential on the right. This younger, more online group of people are generally developing more power in the Republican Party and I think they're actually causing a little bit of intimidation among the older set of Republicans or the establishment of Republicans. I'll give you an example. Governor Greg Abbott, when he responded to Beau Frunch, he kind of split the difference. He said, on the one hand, he argued that, look, everyone who's a long horn, who's a student of the university is part of Texas, they're part of our fabric. But on the other hand, he did talk about how he was cracking down on, for instance, on the H1B program, which is a visa program that many Indian immigrants use, right? Almost like he felt like he had to tip his hat somewhat to those group of online folks, he couldn't outright condemn it and he certainly couldn't unendorse or turn against him, which is what figures like Karl Rove or Senator John Kornin, who was defeated in his primary, but who still Texas Republican Senator for next few months did. Speaking of not outright condemning it, what do you make of J.D. Vance? Look, it's really interesting. If you go back to J.D. Vance's memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, he actually writes about how when he met his wife, Usha Vance, who's Indian American, and he met her family, it was really the first time in his life. He kind of had family who cared for each other, who were very close and tight-knit. He almost favorably compared Indian American culture to the lower middle-class culture or middle-class culture that he came from, right? The first time I visited her family for Thanksgiving, I was amazed at the lack of drama. Usha's mother didn't complain about her father behind his back. There were no suggestions that good family friends were liars or backstabbers. It's fascinating to see an evolution in Vance's thinking because I don't know that Vance would ever do that today, right? Like, I don't know that Vance, courting this sort of mega-base, this online right base, would ever today argue that there are aspects of Indian American culture that are in some ways preferable to the mainstream cultures in the United States, or that are cultures that we can learn from, right? Because that's one of the most, I would say that's the glue that holds the mega-coalition together, which is skepticism and sometimes even hostility towards foreigners, right? And I think it's very ironic that President Trump is married to an immigrant, Vice President J.D. Vance is married to the daughter of Indian immigrants. There is a very right-wing, a nativist politician called Brandon Gill, who's a congressman from Texas. He's actually married to an Indian American woman, right? And yet he is one of the most vituperative and kind of vicious voices, I would say, in terms of talking about the perils of mass immigration, how our culture is being replaced. It's almost like, you know, immigrants have so successfully integrated into the United States for the most part, that it's almost hard to find someone who's a guest immigrants who can't totally separate themselves from that, right? In their personal lives. their revealed preferences come to light and they learned that hey not not everyone who immigrates here is it's also bad but politically speaking I think it's very hard for them to argue that given what's been created in the Trump era. That's writer Z. Jalani when we come back what set all of this off? Support for TX when comes from quote if you call a business and nobody picks up what do you do? You probably move on to the next business who will. Your customers do the exact same thing. That's why today's episode is brought to you by quote spelled q u o the business phone system built so you never miss a call all your calls text and voicemails live in one place. So anyone on your team can pick up a conversation see the full history and respond fast. More than 90,000 businesses rely on quote to stay reachable and look professional every day. 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There is a type that says this is the Tucker Carlson POV which is like immigrants or dirty. They come here. They're uneducated. They leech off the government. They're taking our resources. The stereotype of Indian immigrants to America and Indian Americans is people who go to college, people who often have advanced degrees, people who often live in nice neighborhoods, make good money, our sort of family values people. Why do you think these values that seem as if they sort of mesh with what republicans want are so triggering to people these days? Is it just, yes, but they're brown? Well, look, I think that is a component of it. I spoke to one Indian-American advocate who told me that Indians and South Asians more broadly are visible minorities. If you think about other minorities who are highly successful, that's not always the case, for instance. I think that Jewish Americans have been known since the late 20th century as being a successful minority group, but they're not necessarily highly visible. You can't always identify someone. If both French saw a bunch of white people in the stadium with the long warrants, I'm not sure he would be picking out who's Protestant, who's Catholic, who's Jewish, but with Indian Americans, they are highly visible. That being said, I think you have to think about where Indian Americans are in society and the kind of feelings that can create among everyone else. If you look, for instance, at Silicon Valley, the major tech companies, Microsoft Google, the head of the Xbox Division, is an Indian-American woman now. When you have a group of people who I think are, in many ways, a very micro minority. We're talking about one to two percent of the United States, visibly rising into so many positions that I think a lot of people have typically associated with white folks, right? White people generally run the Fortune 500. White folks run the universities. White folks are the most successful doctors and engineers, and that was true for the 20th century, right? But certainly, when you start seeing a much larger influx of Asian immigrants, starting with liberalization of immigration laws in the '60s, but also when there was a rapid growth in the technology sector in the early 2000s, I think when you start to see that, you may understand a little bit more where the resentment comes from because it's more, I would say, analogically similar to anti-Semitism than it is to maybe the racism that Mexican Americans face, or the racism that black Americans face, right? It's not that Indian Americans are necessarily being stereotyped as anti-social, criminal, coming here illegally, so on and so forth. It's more that they're being seen as a status threat to a lot of particularly middle-class Americans, right? People who want their kids to rise to the top of their school, who want their kids to have the corner office, right? They want their kids to be able to get the most prestigious positions. I think in the minds of a lot of these people, not only now does their kid have to compete with all the other normal white kids in their community, they have to compete against the entire world, right? And I think that's part of what's driving the, it's just a much larger anti-globalization backlash on the right, not only when it comes to things like immigration, but also trade and tariffs and restrictions like that. When you talk to Indian Americans for this piece, what did you hear from them that surprised you? Probably the most surprising thing was how much pragmatism they responded to all this with, right? I don't imagine, nine times I tell them when you have stories about racism, the victims of racism are outrage and understandably and just a file be outrage, right? Nobody wants to be mistreated, nobody wants to be denigrated. They certainly don't want to see restrictions on right to immigration, on other things to limit their numbers, which is the end point of a lot of this. But at the same time, I think a lot of the people I spoke to, they were very up front, they're like, hey, look, we have found a lot of success in America. We got the golden ticket, right? To be able to come here for our kids to study here, to be able to really seek these opportunities. But we understand what's happening in the economy. We understand there's a lot of people who are struggling and then they see us rising to the top of all these organizations. They see us with our kind of well-inskons place in the economy. And, you know, I think it's important for us not to flaunt, flaunt our success that much. I by heart, you know, at least a couple people said something to that respect. We have achieved, but don't flaunt. That flaunting, that putting out, that's where it creates envy and that's created hatred. They almost kind of empathize with the people who were hating on them, right? And it just struck me as such a classic immigrant pragmatism that you see from the first or second wave of immigrants, right? People who realize that they are newcomers to a society or that or maybe their parents were newcomers to a society, right? And that there is a certain level of grappling they have to do with like, "Hey, how can we continue to have success? How can we continue to grind?" And, you know, resist this racism, but also like not rubbing in people's faces that we're doing well, because the more they do that, you know, the tougher it can be in it. And actually a number brought up Vivek Ramaswamy in the sense that, you know, Vivek happened to go on social media and just talk about and describe what he felt like were deficiencies in American culture when it comes to studying, when it comes to working hard. The culture that still celebrates the prom queen over the math Olympiad champ or the jocke over the valedictorian will not produce the best engineers and This caused a massive outrage on the right and he was out of the administration very very quickly This may have been related. It's not a hundred percent clear, but I think that You know in bringing that up they were saying that that wasn't particularly helpful because like Whatever positive aspects there may be to Indian immigrant culture We shouldn't talk about them in ways that denigrate other people, right? Because That that's obviously going to rub people the wrong way One of the things that we have covered on the show before a dynamic that we've seen is something that starts online Moves offline and ends up influencing policy influencing the way people in the real world. Thank. Do you think or worry that we might see that in this case that both French's random weird racist tweet Six months or a year or 18 months from now become something that we're seeing in immigration policy or elsewhere. Look, I think to some extent. We're already starting to see it Hundreds of Texas educators could be forced out of public school classrooms under a new proposal from governor Greg at it. Exactly zero Texas public school employees should be here on H1B visas H1B visa is a visa that people from all over the world use it but a majority of people who apply and go through it are Indian immigrants some of them become Indian Americans and I think it's kind of hard for me to see a world where that would have happened without this rising antagonism towards Indians right because yes There are economic arguments to be made about H1B visas. There are you know late some people in labor I think I have concerns about H1B visas making sure they're not being used to undercut wages so on and so forth But it's very hard for me to see that actually being a Major concern for their Republicans without the racial cultural angle, right? And then I think that the administration has not been particularly friendly to labor Overall, but I think once you combine those labor concerns with this fear of replacement is fear of Ethnic competition. You will start you do start seeing more I think policies that actually come forth to restrict those visas, which is a de facto way of restricting Indian economic competition and Indian immigration, the president's signing a proclamation that now requires this $100,000 annual fee for this H1B visa for highly skilled foreign workers now Stop the nonsense of letting people just come into this country on these visas that were given away for free And the more this goes on I think the H1B visa will become a very very popular proxy You'll see more and more people campaigning against it saying hey, this is a wave for Americans to be replaced by Indians Is the intents of these work visas bringing Indians to America to support our labor force or to replace it altogether? The ongoing issues with the H1B visas and the Indians and North Texas has not gone away How come Indian Americans can move into my home in Texas and completely take it over and be proud that they're Indian? You're making the point that some of the surge in anti-Indian racism on the right is about status anxiety I was listening to this podcast that Chris Rufo and Jonathan Keeper minted these are two Influential right wing activists. We've had Chris Rufo on the show They called it the Indian question a lot of people's eyebrows shot up and they seem to be making the argument That it is about status anxiety. They also were making less coherent arguments the successful assimilation is precisely Chris that you wouldn't notice it We wouldn't have anything to talk about The the mere fact of us being able to notice that no, this is not an assimilated group This is just a bunch of Indians at the game is itself sort of Definitionally the case that they're not yet assimilated. There was another argument about It's un-American to study for the spelling bee, which is what South Asian kids do Did you ever study for the spelling bee never of course not? That's actually the unspoken rule. But white kids are more American because they play football Then they go to a party and get drunk and then they get 1500 on the SAT That's the American hero. Okay. That's like the American superstar. So I'm not saying any of this makes sense I'm saying it was fascinating. I'm assuming you watch that exchange. What did you make of that? Yeah, I mean, I think there's a certain level of Copic mechanism being deployed there right in the sense that they are trying to Explain the success of Indian Americans as a deficiency, right? Like, huh? Okay, maybe they're getting to the top schools Because but that's because they're shut in all day studying, but actually like It's not really true that Indian Americans are necessarily Cloistered into unhealthy habits. I mean, they're actually finding success across society So for instance like I've tutored kids for five six years like I just really enjoy like working with kids And something you'll find with a lot of the Indian American kids They are actually getting increasingly well-rounded right and like part of that is because you have to have success to get college admissions and so on and so forth You know, they almost always play sports They're involved in extracurriculars. You're seeing a lot more Indian Americans go into the arts into Cultural fuels into Hollywood and I think that's actually a very normal like Path for immigrants. I think the first or second wave of immigrants has to be very pragmatic They have to keep their heads down. They have to you know grind study and Their parents encourage them to do the same thing right like Indian American parents are always like you got to be a doctor You got to be an engineer like don't don't be foolish and try to be a journalist or or or go to Hollywood But as they establish themselves as they build nest eggs They have a little more breathing room right and so they can do different things I mean, I know that Christopher Rufo for instance is an Italian American and I believe I read one time that he even speaks Italian at home Because he really values that culture so much and when he wants to raise his kids and that The first wave of Italian immigrants were no different than that You know, they cloistered into a few sectors where they felt they could fight they could find success That was necessary for their for their Integration in the economy and to get their footing But now, you know, we don't think of Italian Americans a stereotype into just a few parts of the country or a few parts of society We barely notice unless maybe you notice from someone's name that there even are Italian Americans So actually what they're describing about Indian Americans is very normal It's actually very normal for first waves of immigrants To cluster in a few areas. I'm going to spread themselves out as they they're able to get a little bit of breathing room and round to stand on That is writer Z Jelani you can find him on vox.com. Thanks today also to writer Mark Dent He wrote a great piece for Texas monthly about anti-Indian sentiment in the city of Frisco, Texas Miles Bryan produced today's show and Jolly Myers edited Gabriel Dunnettop is our fact checker David Tattishore and Bridger Dunn again engineered and I'm Noel King. 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