Views expressed in opinion columns are the author’s own.
Since announcing his candidacy in February, Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has peddled dangerous, far-right myths about immigration, race and the effects they confer on us.
At Wednesday’s Republican debate, Ramaswamy called to end birthright citizenship as we know it.
In an interview, he said building a wall on our southern border wasn’t “enough,” and, in fact, that the situation required brute military force.
At a campaign stop, he equated the existence of white supremacy to unicorns. Later, he promoted a “colorblind meritocracy.”
For a Republican presidential hopeful, these ideas aren’t exactly new. Former President Donald Trump pushed similar ideas about illegal immigration, just like politicians today and in 2016.
But Ramaswamy’s rhetoric and identity as the South Asian American with one of the most influential voices in politics presents a unique, dangerous problem when it comes to dispelling myths about meritocracy or the model minority.
A core component of his messaging is Ramaswamy’s rags-to-riches tale. In this inspiring story, his engineer father and psychiatrist mother immigrated to the United States from India, setting him up to attend elite institutions and make a fortune from his pharmaceutical company.
Ramaswamy is able to frame himself as one of the “good immigrants” because his parents entered legally and became financially successful, while those who enter illegally are the “bad immigrants.” He is able to promote one sliver of the immigrant experience as the blanket, broad truth. This kind of false construction operates in the same vein as the model minority myth, which says all Asian Americans are hard-working, successful and legal, while other racial minorities are not.
These ideas are falsehoods, though.
The framing of the model minority only came about in the 1960s, when it was created as a mechanism to benefit the U.S. during…
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