The Complicity of Usha Vance

Usha Vance joins a growing chorus of South Asian Republicans willing to serve as enforcers of white supremacy and use their brown skin to launder MAGA’s racism just to achieve power.

What kind of moral gymnastics must a person of color perform to rationalize supporting a Trump-Vance ticket that actively spreads fear and lies against immigrant communities? How do they feel being used as public shields and POC tokens whose brown skin is cynically used to launder the GOP’s racism?

Whenever I see Usha Vance, Nikki Haley, or Vivek Ramaswamy, these questions for some odd reason always pop up in my mind. 

I imagine the internal Gordian knots must be so advanced and excruciating that even a gifted Cirque du Soleil performer with a spine made of jelly would be unable to contort themselves back into shape. What’s left is a grotesque, monstrous gruel of what was once a dignified human - debased and humiliated - who now voluntarily slithers around the floor in expensive, designer clothes. They become a cautionary tale for elders to point at and warn children: “This is what they make you give for whiteness. Is it worth it?”  

Speaking of complicity, Usha Bala Chilukuru is a Yale-educated lawyer and the daughter of Telugu-speaking Indian immigrants. She is also a practicing Hindu who happens to be married to J.D. Vance, a white man and elitist supported by billionaire white nationalist Peter Thiel. Usha Vance clerked for both Brett Kavanaugh and John Roberts, two of the six right-wing Supreme Court Justices who were part of the majority that ruled against Affirmative Action which has resulted in declining numbers of Asian American enrollment at elite universities. At least Usha was able to get in the door before supporting the very same people who helped close it shut for people who look like her. But, I digress. Back to the Vance couple. They were married in an interfaith ceremony, and now they have biracial children who might “turn Indian” one day according to Trump’s logic if they ever consider running for office. 

Their innocent children’s skin color and diverse heritage greatly bothers Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist leader and anti-semite who denies the Holocaust. “Who is this guy, really?" Fuentes asks. “Do we really expect that the guy who has an Indian wife and named their kid Vivek is going to support white identity?” With these words, he encourages a community of bigots who, like him, believe in the neo-Nazi “replacement theory” which warns that Vance’s biracial family are an active threat erasing and weakening white people and “Western civilization.”

To be fair, Vance called Fuentes “a total loser” and said racists like him “don’t have any room in the MAGA movement.” However, they sure do have room at Mar-a-Lago. That’s where Trump dined with Nick Fuentes and Kanye West in 2022. To this day, Trump has not disavowed Fuentes despite knowing his history of anti-semitic and racist comments. Vance has yet to criticize Trump for hosting Fuentes, but why call out white nationalists whose entire ideology threatens your biracial family’s security when you’re desperately trying to gain entry to the Oval Office? Hey, every politician has to make sacrifices, right? 

Viveks in the GOP are struggling right now. I’m of course talking about Vivek Ramaswamy, a son of Indian Hindu immigrants, who went all-in with MAGA talking points during his failed bid to become the GOP Presidential nominee. Even after Ann Coulter openly told him she wouldn’t vote for him because he was “Indian” and said the “core national identity” in the U.S. is a “WASP,” Ramaswamy still became another willing Reek for Trump and continues to support the MAGA movement. Much like Nikki Haley, another daughter of Indian immigrants, he has a “complexion problem” for the GOP. None of their self-humiliation, masochism, and service for the MAGA movement is enough for them to get a prestigious invite on Trump’s private plane as he flew to his disastrous debate with Kamala Harris. 

That seat was occupied by Laura Loomer, a professional bigot and conspiracy theorist, who complained on social media that the White House “will smell like curry and White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center” if Harris wins in 2024. In response, Vance said, “I make a mean chicken curry, but I don't think that it’s insulting for anybody to talk about their dietary preferences or what they want to do in the White House”

Well, what does Usha Vance think about these racist comments and Trump’s association with bigots? Apparently, she’s perfectly fine with it. Not a peep. Instead, she is standing by her man’s side even as he doubles down on the neo-Nazi promoted conspiracy of Haitians eating pets. Earlier today, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump-Vance campaign was told before the debate that the story was a hoax but Trump nonetheless persisted in sharing it. At a MAGA rally on Tuesday, J.D. Vance boasted, “I’m still gonna call them an illegal alien,” even when he knew Haitian migrants in Ohio were there legally with many of them given Temporary Protected Status in 1990 thanks to a George Bush-implemented policy. 

For the past 9 years I’ve heard too many people give another immigrant, Melania Trump, the benefit of the doubt and whitewash her complicity in Trump’s bigotry. “Oh, she’s just going along with it because she has to” or some other nonsense. This is the same woman who voluntarily promoted the racist Obama “birther conspiracy” and deliberately wore the “I don’t really care. Do you?” jacket while visiting detained immigrant kids as a jab towards “left wing media.”

Similarly, Usha Vance is all-in. She hasn’t said anything because she agrees with Vance’s cynical and hateful strategy of stoking fear and bigotry against innocent communities of color. This is the Faustian bargain the MAGA POC tokens make in exchange for access to power and whiteness. She will gladly be an enforcer of their hateful policies and protect them from accusations of racism. After all, how can a man married to an Indian Hindu woman, with biracial kids, who makes a “mean curry” actually be racist? 

Well, we just need to look at J.D. Vance and Usha Vance willing to forfeit their own dignity and children’s future security for the promise of power.

Some people of color with similar ambitions might view this couple as a realization of the American Dream, but I see them as the enduring American nightmare.

Look at what they make you give. Is it worth it?