The Emergence of a New Racism

By Dr. Molefi Kete Asante

At the first Republican debate we saw a truly rightwing phenomenon with Indian American candidate Vivek Ramaswamy playing the role of the aggrieved white man. To be sure, Ramaswamy is of Indian origin but these days there is a veritable stream of Indians, Africans and Latinos willing to defend the white hierarchical order.

The advances made by the American society during the past one hundred years because of African American fearless struggle is being corrupted by several false notions of society.

Racism has been embedded in a segment of the white population since the beginning of the country in Philadelphia, in fact, since the beginning of the nation we have experienced the idea of whiteness as the coin of Americanness.

Now, with the appearance of the wealthy businessman Vivek Ramaswamy of a Hindu Brahmin background we have seen at the national level, for the first time the powerful uniting of the restrictive, exclusionary, racial paradigm of the Indian varna system being identified with the white national evangelical idea of white superiority.

At the Republican primary debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Ramaswamy exhibited the same dangerous ideas that we have seen in the Hindu color caste system where ranking of individuals has produced permanent underclasses. Among the Hindu, especially the Brahmin, Ramaswamy’s varna, the people consider Brahmin higher than the other castes by birthright. In fact, the Sudras, usually darker are at the bottom and below the bottom is a group called Dalits often referred to as Untouchables.

It is only the annihilation of such ranking that is the best way to approach a society of equals, based on open opportunities for access to possibilities. Black Americans will not rest until all evidence of racial ranking based on complexion, race or creed have been erased. The day will not belong to the Ramaswamys of the Americas, but to those multicultural individuals who believe firmly in the equal rights and opportunities for all citizens.

Ramaswamy obviously is operating based on his religious philosophy when he attacks Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley and Professor Ibram Kendi. His idea is that those African people who want to destroy the racial ladder are themselves racist. It is such baloney that the audience should have booed him down but many of the Republicans gloat over a brown-skinned Brahmin, with hierarchical and patriarchal beliefs, giving them what they want to hear.

The crime is that so much blood, sweat and tears were shed to bring into existence a new society where the color of a person’s skin, or a person’s creed or gender did not matter to their opportunities only to be dragged back by the Trumpism of a devious cult leader and his followers to prey upon the latent feelings or desires on the part of some whites who feel that they are entitled to be seen as superior to others.

As Hindu philosophy has enshrined the ranking of people, with the darkest being at the bottom, so, too, white racial supremacy as a doctrine has used a similar strategy in creating rankings of people based on physical characteristics. Both are false doctrines that have no place in a multicultural, multiethnic, pluralistic society. America is not a white nation. America is not a nation of castes, neither Hindu nor white; it is a dynamic multicultural project.

The land was indigenous and multiethnic before it was Spanish, English or Dutch. The native Americans represented many ethnic groups and already had pacts among groups of native cultures. In the eastern part of the country, we know that there was the Iroquois Confederation long before there was the Confederation of the Colonies.

Setting up a European political entity on top of the land of the indigenous folk did not change the historical reality.

Thomas Macaulay had said it in the 19th century that England’s intention toward the Indians of India was to “to create a class in this country which is Indian in blood and color, but who is like English in interests, thoughts, morals and scholarship.” Obviously with Ramaswamy we are seeing the results that the British predicted in the Minute on Education.

Using the Brahmins’ deeply seated discrimination written into their religious practices the British were easily able to use their prejudices to advance domination. In my judgment, Ramaswamy has been able to maximize his antiblack arguments in the Republican Party something he would not have been able to get away with running as a Democrat.

The next act is that the Hindu religion will bring to America the varna system among Indian citizens where the Brahmins discriminate against other Indians because they see them as being of a lower caste.

It is in our interest as African Americans to defeat all efforts to set back the clock to some dystopian idea of color or racial domination; we must redouble our efforts to fight all forms of hatred and oppression.

Molefi Kete Asante, President, Molefi Kete Asante Institute, Philadelphia, and the author of over 100 books and co-author, Being Human Being: Transforming the Race Discourse.