Progressives’ Selective Indignation Over Anti-Indian Racism

Recently, Democratic Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi reflected on belonging in America. “Being American has never simply been about ancestry,” he said. “It’s always been about fidelity to our values: freedom, equality, opportunity for everyone.” Rattling off the successes of South Asian Americans, Krishnamoorthi painted a rosy portrait of their place in American life before affirming that they belong. “But what happens when that belonging is challenged?” he asked. “In recent years, we’ve seen rising anti-immigrant and xenophobic rhetoric directed at South Asian communities.” He pointed to hostility toward Indian Americans in Frisco, Texas, and to a Florida elected official’s call to deport Indian Americans, including Krishnamoorthi himself. “To those who would seek to deport me or you or any of our families,” he warned, “I have a message for them: we’re not going anywhere. . . . We will fight for our rights and those of our brothers and sisters.”

I’m Indian American, I’m the son of Indian immigrants, and I believe in individual rights and equality for all Americans. Naturally, I strongly oppose anti-Indian racism and appreciate condemnations of it, including Krishnamoorthi’s. But Krishnamoorthi’s description of the challenge to Indian American belonging is striking. He portrays it as a recent aberration—an eruption on the far Right—obscuring the decades of discrimination that Asian Americans, particularly South Asian Americans, have endured under policies pursued in the name of racial diversity, most notably affirmative action in college admissions. Those policies have been the subject of intense debate in recent years. Given Krishnamoorthi’s professed commitment to freedom, equality, and opportunity, his apparent concern about anti-Indian prejudice, and his promise to defend the rights of Indian Americans, one might have expected him to take a leading role in that debate. Instead, to my knowledge, he has made no public statement about affirmative action. When he has addressed diversity policies more generally, he has praised them by appealing to a sanitized conception of diversity that bears little resemblance to its practice.

Krishnamoorthi’s approach exemplifies a broader pattern on the Left. When it comes to anti-Indian racism, progressives practice selective indignation, fixating on isolated cases of bigotry that provide grist for narratives about right-wing extremism while overlooking more entrenched forms of discrimination that implicate their own ideology.

For example, on a recent episode of his podcast, featuring Manhattan Institute’s Christopher Rufo, Ezra Klein lamented the rise of anti-Indian vitriol on social media. But he had nothing to say about how progressive racial ideology, discussed extensively during the episode, has long licensed discrimination against Indian Americans. Similarly, last December, Lydia Polgreen described “an astonishing wave of anti-Indian animus.” As the American dream “feels increasingly out of reach for many young Americans,” she said, “stoking resentment of perceived outsiders who are achieving it makes for good, if cynical, politics.” Yet she expressed no concern that policies such as affirmative action have already institutionalized resentment toward high-achieving outsiders, especially Indian Americans. In both cases, progressives treat anti-Indian racism as a new phenomenon, blinding themselves to its longstanding presence in the practices that they have defended.

Progressives may object that whatever discrimination Indian Americans have faced from the Left pales beside the hostility they now experience from the Right. According to this view, the discrimination Indian Americans have suffered in college admissions is trivial in the face of threats to their presence. But that argument fails for two reasons.

First, the discrimination extends beyond college admissions. The same ideology that enabled discrimination against Indian Americans in higher education has since spread to K-12 education and the workplace. Subjected to discrimination at one stage after another, Indian Americans are made to feel unwanted and learn that they must be exceptional to justify their presence. Seen this way, left-wing discrimination against Indian Americans is not a mere issue of fairness but itself an expression of hostility toward them.

Second, anti-Indian racism on the Right has mainly been voiced by marginal actors who lack institutional power, whereas on the Left it has been operationalized by some of the nation’s most powerful institutions.

This point shouldn’t be misconstrued as an apologia for anti-Indian prejudice on the Right. The surge in such prejudice is real and must be denounced, lest it metastasize from the political fringe to the political mainstream. But it has been denounced. After the Florida elected official called for deporting Indian Americans, local Republicans swiftly repudiated his remarks and expressed solidarity with Indian Americans. When Krishnamoorthi says, “we’re not going anywhere,” he speaks with the defiance of someone resisting an imminent threat, but no political party or official with authority over immigration policy advocates deporting Indian Americans. To be sure, Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, citing personal experience, has warned allies that anti-Indian animus on the Right is more prevalent than they realize and admonished them to do more to confront it—a message I fully support. But he then added that such extremism doesn’t “represent the views of most real-world Republican voters,” unequivocally condemned it himself, and proceeded to win his party’s gubernatorial primary decisively.

By contrast, universities have, for decades, discriminated against Asian Americans, including Indian Americans, through a regime of racial preferences widely supported by Democrats. And when litigation brought to light evidence of this discrimination, Democrats, as center-left commentator Matthew Yglesias has observed, remained conspicuously silent.

Concern about institutional discrimination shouldn’t be used to minimize the danger posed by vulgar bigotry on the political fringe. But nor should fringe prejudice be magnified to divert attention from institutional discrimination. That is precisely what progressives have done in the case of anti-Indian racism.