Hi Rulers! Congrats on making it to Friday — I don’t know about you all, but this week felt like it lasted three years. May we all find some rest this weekend as we process what we’ve lived through the past week. Until then, let’s get into it. When Usha Vance walked onto the stage at the Republican National Convention last week, she was met by a cheering and supportive audience. That same crowd was punctuated by placards that read: “Mass deportation NOW!” Social media users were quick to note the dissonance in that moment, as Ms. Vance — the wife of Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick, Ohio Sen. JD Vance — is the daughter of Indian immigrants. While the signs that night were ostensibly not directed at her, a deluge of racist vituperation quickly poured out against her online in the days that followed. “We are seeing a dangerous pattern of political leaders, conservative commentators, and far-right extremists blatantly targeting South Asians,” says Stop AAPI Hate, a coalition organizing to counter injustice against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Several prominent conservatives, including Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist with whom Trump has been known to dine, referenced the “great replacement theory” that white people are being “systematically replaced” by people of color, predominantly through immigration. “Who is this guy, really? Do we really expect that the guy who has an Indian wife and named their kid Vivek is going to support white identity?” Fuentes asked, questioning Sen. Vance’s allegiance to the anti-immigrant project given his wife’s identity and heritage. The Trump-Vance campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. While the white supremacists fumed, others celebrated Usha Vance’s presence on the RNC stage, lauding her impressive resume — which includes degrees from both the University of Cambridge and Yale Law School as well as experience clerking for Chief Justice John Roberts and then-D.C. Circuit Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh. Online audiences expressed excitement to see a brown woman take center stage in a predominantly white space, saying she is her husband’s “secret superpower,” and touting her as an example of the successful immigrant — a picture of the “American dream.” But some experts caution that this narrative can be dangerous to those who don’t fit into the image of the “right” kind of minority. There are levels to representation, they say, and, without active engagement to uplift other minority groups, Ms. Vance’s mere presence on the RNC stage as a woman of color may not extend meaningfully beyond just that. “Empty symbolism,” Hajar Yazdiha, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Southern California, says of the “Usha Vance moment,” adding that this kind of “symbolic representation” has historically been weaponized against efforts to realize concrete and meaningful change for marginalized communities. Anti-caste writer Yashica Dutt tells me the only significant change is that now, “in the sea of white faces that we often see, there is a brown face.” Indeed, both Yazdiha and Dutt argue that although Usha Vance’s prominent position on the metaphorical and literal GOP stage may appear fundamentally at odds with the ethnonationalism reflected in the “mass deportation” signs and “great replacement” theorists, there may be a bigger political strategy behind highlighting Ms. Vance’s race. Welcoming, and even platforming her and other token minority figures allows identity to be deployed as a political tool. “The symbolism of Usha Vance as a model minority, as evidence of the American dream, is a classic political strategy,” Yazdiha tells me, referring to the myth that certain minority groups, stereotypically Asian Americans, are preferable to others. She adds that a similar strategy played out in Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy’s respective campaigns. In fact, Yazdiha says, “juxtaposed against Usha Vance on stage, a ‘mass deportation’ sign can be read as an expression of politically sound border policy rather than racism.” According to Dutt, the model minority myth can be deeply harmful in its impact on groups it excludes — in particular Black, Latino and Indigenous communities, as well as other Indian Americans who are not of a dominant caste and therefore not included in the model minority group. “It just feeds into that myth that dominant caste people are superior, whether it is in India or the Indian subcontinent or here in the United States,” Dutt says. Mobilizing the model minority myth may also serve another strategic aim, Dutt and Yazdiha say. Amid the buzz around representation, highlighting Ms. Vance’s background — as her husband has done repeatedly — could expand the appeal of the Trump-Vance ticket to a broader voter pool. “It could be one of the big reasons that [Trump’s VP pick] tipped in the favor of JD Vance was the fact that his wife is not only an immigrant, but the right kind of immigrant,” Dutt says. But, she adds, what Trump didn’t count on was Vice President Kamala Harris’ apparent rise to the top of the Democratic ticket. The near-certainty that Harris — who is also the daughter of a South Asian immigrant — will be the Democratic Party’s nominee for president “changes the equation drastically,” shifting the weight of what South Asian “representation” could look like in Democrats’ favor. “If for anyone that angle of identity is working, it’s for Kamala Harris,” Dutt tells me, citing the immediate outpouring of support for Harris’ campaign from South Asian women in the days since President Joe Biden ended his campaign and endorsed hers. But regardless of who the politics of identity may be working for at any given moment, Dutt says that it is incumbent upon voters to “examine politicians that we are putting so much of our faith in, if we can ask them to truly represent the community and not just the model minority.” In the meantime, women of color occupying these platforms are directly in the line of fire from those who seek to attack them for their identities. “As bigoted attacks against Usha Vance and Vice President Harris grow — including efforts to pit them against each other — it’s clear that the political leaders and others fueling this hate are completely disregarding the safety and wellbeing of Asian American and immigrant communities,” warns Stop AAPI Hate.
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