There’s been an extraordinary discourse dominating X over the last few days, regarding the need to look further afield for talent.
As expected the likes of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy were quite forthright on their views of letting in foreign nationals, who are much better educated and cheaper than their white American counterparts.
What these men did not envisage, however, was the degree to which MAGA Republicans would hit back and this was evidenced by the tsunami of racial abuse directed at Vivek and the racial group to which he belongs — Indians.
And what’s more, leading MAGAs have also been quite vocal in support of their constituency, with Steve Bannon, Laura Loomer and Matt Gaetz, all piling on the wealthiest man in the world and blatantly calling for a reduction in the number of Indians granted H1-B visas to the United States.
Richard Hanania and Twitter
It isn’t breaking news that vast numbers of South Asian immigrants are huge supporters of the Grand Old Party with Vivek Ramaswamy and Nimrata Randhawa being their most prominent faces.
But even these guys have been astounded at the level of vitriolic abuse directed at them since the storm began, a few days ago with Asian Americans openly questioning their allegiance to the GOP.
African-Americans, who know America better than everyone else, are not the least bit surprised by the behaviour of the racists in the Republican party.
For all of their academic excellence and obsession with being the model minority, Asian-Americans have failed to grasp that the United States, at its irreducible core, is a profoundly racist nation, which was founded on the genocide of the natives and the subjugation and terrorism of its Black citizens.
And this author would be remiss to state that if it weren’t for amendments to citizenship rights, Indians would not have been able to migrate to America in large numbers, post 1965.
America has remained wedded to this world view right through the civil war, reconstruction, Jim Crow segregation, civil rights era, right till it elected its first Black President in 2008 and 2012.
And it is always pertinent to point out that the MAGA crowd would not have existed, if Obama never became President.
So where does this leave us?
Safe in the knowledge that Indian Republicans are about to learn the harsh lessons of aligning with MAGA and the GOP. It was never about conservatism or being the model minority; MAGA was always about the preservation of the status-quo, which is white folks at the top and everyone else at the bottom.
The Vivek Ramaswarmys, Nikki Haleys and Kash Patels of this world, with all of their individual successes, will never change this state of affairs.
Lots of Black commentators have watched the unfolding of events with a degree of vindication, knowing that it was going to get to this point where Indians would be attacked with the same ferocity as Black and Latinos. We can only hope that Indian Americans will learn the harsh lessons and realize that the enemy is white supremacy and it will never be appeased by model behaviour or embrace of conservatism.
This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of Adebayo Adeniran's work on Medium.