Anti-Indian Racism

There is a lot of prejudice out there these days - plenty to go around. Anti-Black racism, Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny…really, unless you’re a straight, white, cisgender man, whatever category you fall into can face discrimination based on what you look like, who you worship, or who you love. I could write an essay on any one of these topics, but given who I am and who I am descended from, I should talk about anti-Indian racism.

I am not the first to write about this topic, of course. The Juggernaut has done multiple articles, of course, and there are plenty of independent journalists who have discussed it recently. In 2024-2025 it feels even more relevant as we see Indians continuing to make political headlines as Usha Vance’s husband was elected to the second-highest political office and Vivek Ramaswamy constantly tried to crawl further up Donald Trump’s rectum. A sarcastic congratulations to both of them on climbing up the ladder, by supporting people and politics that are prejudiced against anyone of the same color or look.

Indians being racist is nothing new. My grandmother told my youngest sister to avoid Black men in her marital prospects (my sister was a teenager at the time)…that was just part of growing up. Indians in Republican politics is also not a new phenomenon. It used to feel more benign. I mocked Bobby Jindal and his desperately-trying-to-be-white persona (he even changed his name from to Bobby because he knew Louisiana Republicans would never elect a Governor named Piyush Jindal…but that did not stop him from running as a Republican), especially when his white-washed gubernatorial portrait came out.

Nikki Haley (who’s been called that since childhood, so not the same as the Piyush-Bobby situation) has long been one of the smarter Republican politicians but also deliberately plays up how she passes as white and hides her background, promoted gun violence and vigilantism and flip-flopped between calling out Donald Trump’s lack of fitness for office and then throwing her support behind him in hopes he would give her…anything? Sigh

It got worse this past year with Vance and Ramaswamy. Vivek was, frankly, embarrassing during the Election cycle as he simped for a felon who barely gave him the time of day. Usha Vance got some benefit of the doubt as people tried to paint her as a woman who got hoodwinked by a husband who, like Haley, initially and validly criticized Donald Trump and then changed his tune in order to run for higher office. Except that Vance is a former trial lawyer who is likely well aware of what her husband was doing.

Three of these individuals - Haley, Ramaswamy, and Vance - have experienced significant racism during Election Season and since, as white Republicans lamented the dilution of the race (Jindal hasn't been relevant since he suspended his Presidential campaign and finished his gubernatorial term in 2016). Haley, in keeping with party lines, denied to Joy Ann Reid that America is a racist country even as this was happening. Ramaswamy’s wife Apoorva was told by a voter that Republican skeptics “mentioned his dark skin and they think he’s Muslim” (they’re Hindu). Ramaswamy would later go on to criticize American education and defend H-1B visas and was immediately crucified as anti-American, subject to multiple racial insults. The only reason it stopped was because Elon Musk did a Nazi salute and Ramaswamy resigned from co-running DOGE.

Meanwhile, when Usha Vance’s husband was elected, Google searches spiked (according to Times of India) as Republicans frantically wondered what religion she practiced, and upon finding out she is Hindu…

Yeah...definitely well-received, there.

This month we saw Congress confirm Kashyap Patel, a known gun extremist with an enemies list who does not think that background checks are constitutional and also sells vaccine reversal pills (which are not a thing), as director of the FBI and he was also appointed to head up the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF).

All of these individuals are poor representation of the South Asian Diaspora. Yet that does not excuse the rash of anti-Indian racism.

The most egregious example recently came when Laura Loomer decided to Tweet. If you don’t know who Laura Loomer is…you’re probably lucky. She initially tried to run for Congress in Florida, in two different districts in consecutive elections, and lost. She quickly found her feet by joining Project Veritas and InfoWars and similar far-right outlets. She was hired to Trump’s 2024 campaign to help with debate prep, attended the 9/11 memorial even though she’s called the terrorist attack an inside job. She also claims school shootings have been staged and promotes Islamophobia with every opportunity she gets. In 2023 when there was an explosion on the Rainbow Bridge in my city - Buffalo - she Tweeted about an Islamic terrorist attack aimed for the NYC Macy’s Day Parade…which made zero sense because the car that exploded was going to Canada, not the other way…and it was also ruled a car accident.

On September 11, 2024, she tweeted “if Kamala Harris wins, the White House will smell like curry”, following that up with call center, and “Indians are difficult to understand” jokes. She went on in the Tweets to refer to immigrants as “third world filth” and to Harris and Biden as a “cacklin’ communist witch and her colleague with Alzheimer’s.” Islamophobia, racism, and ageism all in one. But don’t take my word for it - when Marjorie Taylor Green calls you out for being too racist, you’ve gone too far.

I mean...yeesh.

The latest example of high-profile anti-Indian racism comes, unsurprisingly, from the crew of Elon Musk. A 25-year-old software engineer in the antonymous Department of Government Efficiency named Marko Elez put anti-Indian racism back in the spotlight. When he was named to the department, the Wall Street Journal made an inquiry to the White House about his racist social media presence and advocacy for eugenics. And yes, I DID hate reading about this. In July 2024 he had Tweeted, “Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool.” Then in September, “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity.” In response to the growing Indian population in Silicon valley, he Tweeted “Normalize Indian hate.” Then in December, as Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy were getting their faces eaten by leopards as they defended H1B visas for workers from other other countries coming to America and racist Republican voters screamed racist things at them online, Elez Tweeted “99% of Indian H1Bs will be replaced by slightly smarter LLMs, they’re going back don’t worry guys.”

When the WSJ made their inquiry and all of these came to light, Elez resigned. That should have been the end of his career. But of course, cancel culture doesn’t actually exist, so in January Elon Musk Tweeted, asking if Elez should be rehired.

JD Vance, in a predictable bit of racism towards his own wife and children, tweeted, “I obviously disagree with some of Elez’s posts, but I don’t think stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life. We shouldn’t reward journalists who try to destroy people. Ever. So I say bring him back.” Yes, let’s blame the journalists who inquired why a horrifically racist person (and not someone who was racist decades ago… this was within the same year!

Kahlil Greene wrote an article in which he pointed out multiple examples of anti-Indian racism online, where users mocked whether they’d rather be Indian or:

• Face man-eating monsters of Attack on Titan

• Sexually assault their teacher

• Sacrifice a family member

  
  

Now, there’s a subset of people who will look at these examples and be horrified, but can maintain some distance from it, mentally and emotionally. “Well, those are extremists.” Unfortunately these examples from prominent people normalize it, and then you get what happened January 23, 2023. Officer Kevin Dave of the Seattle Police Department, driving his police SUV at 74 miles an hour (in a 25mph zone), struck and killed Jaahnavi Kandula, a 23-year-old grad student, throwing her 138 feet with the impact. Another officer whose body cam was on, Daniel Auderer, dismissed the incident as he called their officers’ guild president, downplaying how fast the first officer was going and laughing about how far the girl was thrown in the collision. He went so far as to say “she had limited value.” They killed a young woman and laughed at it because they saw her as inferior. Whether or not they admit it, her race undoubtedly factored into their dismissal of her worth. Auderer is now on desk duty instead of…you know, fired.

Overt racism can be dismissed as a thing of the past or “a few bad apples” - but they are just higher-profile examples of a current and ongoing phenomenon - subtle racism and prejudice that lead to direct harm and dehumanization.