Vivek Ramaswamy's War On Heritage Americans
GOP Civil War highlights America's Identity Crisis
In response to the rise of the Groypers, Vivek Ramaswamy, wrote an NYT op-ed on American identity. Vivek defines being an American as those who “believe in the rule of law, in freedom of conscience and freedom of expression, in colorblind meritocracy, in the U.S. Constitution, in the American dream, and if you are a citizen who swears exclusive allegiance to our nation.” Vivek pushed back against Heritage Americans in that “No matter your ancestry, if you wait your turn and obtain citizenship, you are every bit as American as a Mayflower descendant, as long as you subscribe to the creed of the American founding and the culture that was born of it. This is what makes American exceptionalism possible.” He also says that the rising identitarian strain on the Right is no different than woke identity politics, much like the woke right meme. Even if we agree upon equal legal rights for all citizens, the idea that Heritage Americans have some special social or cultural status really irks Vivek and his ilk.
Vivek is engaging in black and white thinking of either you are fully American or you are not American at all. In contrast, I promote a hierarchical pluralism in which there is a spectrum or hierarchy of being American which is ironically more Hindu while Vivek is adopting Abrahamic moral absolutism. Just because I reject America as a proposition nation does not mean I consider America to be a White ethnostate either. Rather, Whites need to be the core and Heritage Americans have a special status. A Heritage American of colonial ancestry is more American than an Irish or German American whose family immigrated in the mid 19th Century, who is more American than an Italian, Polish, or Jewish Ellis Islander, who is more American than a Chicano whose family came under the Bracero program in the 1950s, who in turn is more American than Vivek. I personally have some heritage American, including revolutionary war ancestry, but also latter Ellis Islander ancestry. Black Americans are very different from White Americans yet there is an understanding that Black American culture is uniquely American. The counterpart of Heritage Americans, are Foundational Black Americans, who came about as a response to Nigerian immigrants grifting off of Black American victimhood.
American identity has always had this dualism, where yes it is credal, but also had an undertone of what an American looks like and is like culturally. America’s civic nationalism operated under an implicit assumption that America was majority White. Thus, conservatives who claim America is purely a credal nation are essentially liberals. America’s demographics are changing rapidly with gen Z and especially gen alpha being heavily non-White, which is creating an identity crisis for America. There is an argument that we need a new version of civic nationalism that is adapted to this demographic future but Vivek is not honest enough to say that because it would piss off right leaning Whites. Proposing a Singapore style management of a racially diverse society doesn’t quite inspire a sense of American exceptionalism.
While the Founding Fathers created a nation based on principles, they considered those principles uniquely Anglo and excluded groups which they did not view as compatible. Benjamin Franklin did not even consider Germans to be compatible with America. Ellis Islander civic nationalism is more about worship of institutions rather than the frontier spirit, thus Ellis Islanders despite being White had very different values from Anglos. Not to mention that the post World War II paradigm is quite different than the founders’ vision.
I don’t think being more American necessarily implies inherent moral value. For instance, a recent immigrant could be an exceptionally decent person but that does not make them more American than a heritage American who is a degenerate, like an Antifa with Mayflower ancestry. I dislike Elizabeth Warren politically but she is still far more American than Vivek. I’ve even heard a take that immigrants are more American than people who have been here longer because immigrants go through this process to strive to become Americans which is utterly insane.
I am hearing takes like Vivek’s more from Indians rather than Hispanics, Arabs, or even East Asians. This is because there is rising resentment against Indians who are rising to elite positions, thus they feel a need to justify their elite status under America’s civil religion, like Jews did in the post war era. India is such a cutthroat society that Indians do well in American capitalism, often outcompeting White Americans. Thus, you hear from Indians online that they are more American than White people who support socialism because they can’t compete. This take is ironic because Hindus have a hereditary caste system, which maybe makes sense in India, but there is hypocrisy in accusing Heritage Americans of desiring to create a hereditary caste system for America. I respect the position of someone like Indian Bronson, which is basically that he is an ally to Heritage Americans but acknowledges that he is a different tribe and doesn’t try to pretend that he is as American as a Mayflower descendent.
Ben Shapiro has been going after young White male victimhood, and telling them to basically pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Shapiro’s remarks are inline with Vivek calling Americans lazy and thus need to adopt a culture more like Indian strivers, which are different from American values which he claims to represent. There was a recent article in Compact Magazine, The Lost Generation, that revealed how much millennial White males were systemically discriminated against in Hollywood and corporate America. Young men on the Right are not going to sit back and pretend that Trump has defeated woke, so we can just go back to business as usual, and the only solution for them is to work harder. This is part of a broader civil war on the Right and an attempted power grab by the GOP establishment, in response to the radical shift among young right leaning men in a more ethnocentric nationalistic direction but also more skeptical of free market capitalism.
People with a long family history in America have these stories and shared experiences in America that recent immigrants just don’t have. The idea that your ancestry doesn’t matter is utterly nihilistic and tabula rasa blank slatism. This also applies to telling immigrants they have to assimilate and basically severe ties from their ancestors. This idea that you have no birthright to what your ancestors created leads to either leftist egalitarianism, that we are all the same, or us just being an economic zone where we are slaves to corporations. Patriotism should be more for the land and your ancestors than for existing American institutions.
Vivek’s stance is gross and in some ways worst than the woke left because it cheapens being an American to just like purchasing a brand or getting hired to a job. Since Trump won Ohio by 11 points, if Vivek looses the governorship to the Democrats, it would be a blow to that ideology and the hyper-capitalist strain in the GOP. Ohio is one of the most Heritage American and least immigrant heavy states without the optimism of the Sunbelt. Immigrants and the children of immigrants should not be dictating how America defines itself.
Brilliant take on the hierarchical pluralism concept. The binary vs spectrum framing really cuts through alot of the BS in this debate. I've seen this same dynamic play out in immigrant communities where second-gen folks dunno if they're supposed to honor thier heritage or fully assimilate. The idea that Vivek is adopting Abrahamic moral absolutism while claiming to rep Hindu values is lowkey the most ironic part of his whole argument.
To put it bluntly, the American identity is a white identity (i.e. it's a racial identity). This is taboo to discuss, so the term "Heritage American" has been used as a euphemism. "White Americans" generally refers to the pre-1965 settlers/immigrants, with the founding Anglo-Saxon stock being the nucleus around which some assimilation has been possible for other white pre-1965 immigrants. The mostly colored post-1965 immigrants are outside this boundary.