I tried to look for blinking gestures in Morse code and other nonverbal cues signifying distress when Usha Chilukuri Vance took the stage at the Republican National Convention last week.
As she introduced her husband and gave a shout out to her Indian immigrant parents, she faced a mostly white crowd gripping signs that demanded “Mass Deportations Now.”
It is not that I think the accomplished Yale educated lawyer turned up in Milwaukee against her will to lovingly gaze at her “meat and potatoes kind of guy,” Ohio Sentaor JD Vance, and gush about his willingness to adapt to her vegetarian diet.
Chilukuri Vance knows what she signed up for. She has been along for the ride as Vance, once a staunch “never-Trump guy,” went from disparaging the 45th president as “America’s Hitler” to exalting him as the country’s “last best hope to restore what, if lost, may never be found again.”
But I have been wondering if Chilukuri Vance, a former registered Democrat, underwent the five stages of grief before embracing her doting wife schtick in MAGA land, which is crawling with bigots triggered by her Brown skin.
Vance, Donald Trump’s newly anointed running mate, can’t possibly be a “defender of white identity,” with a wife of South Asian descent and biracial children, Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist who was raised in La Grange Park, lamented on his podcast.
“He’s not one of us,” far-right wing commentator Stew Peters posted on X about the “Hillbilly Elegy” author.
Some Trump supporters have distanced themselves from such vile rhetoric, but let’s be real. They, like many Americans, prefer their elected leaders and their spouses to come in the old Crayola “flesh” crayon color.
Just last May, conservative pundit Ann Coulter told her fanboy Vivek Ramaswamy that even though he was the GOP primary candidate she agreed with the most, she still would have not voted for him for president because “you’re Indian.”
Ramaswamy is what many call a chamcha — literally a “spoon” in Hindi/Urdu but also a term used to describe a pathetic hanger-on
So in true chamcha fashion, instead of standing up for himself, Ramaswamy praised Coulter for having “guts to speak her mind.”
I gather many in Trump’s base count on people like Chilukuri Vance, Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley to back the party’s exclusionary policies while staying in their lane, languishing in their desi sunken place.
Many Trumpsters are clearly worried that Chilukuri Vance’s Indian heritage and her Hindu faith has turned her husband into a “woke” zombie ready to devour his white Christian brethren. But they can relax.
Interracial relationships don’t necessarily make people less racist, according to a recent study by sociology professors at Rice and Texas A&M universities.
Jenifer L. Bratter, a co-author of the 2023 academic paper, didn’t touch on the Vances’ union specifically but said the research “shows broadly that interracial relationships do not end discriminatory tendencies, even among individuals who are in these romantic partnerships.”
People can still date or marry someone while clinging to stereotypes and their “desires to enter interracial relationships sometimes can be motivated by assumptions about groups – including preferences that are driven by a group’s exoticism, for example,” said Bratter, who teaches at Rice.
Vance, in his speech last Wednesday, did praise his Indian immigrant in-laws as “incredible” people who have “genuinely enriched this country.” But he did so minutes after slamming “millions of illegal aliens” for taking jobs and affordable housing away from American citizens.
Vance is obviously comfortable maligning other people of color and marginalized communities when duty calls. Whatever goodwill and tolerance Vance possesses, he is ready to scrub them away like his 2016 Tweet that read, “Trump makes people I care about afraid. Immigrants, Muslims, etc. Because of this I find him reprehensible. God wants better of us.”
God must have had a change of heart.
I wouldn’t want to trade places with Chilukuri Vance and be married to MAGA. But on a lighter note, I do envy her just a little, because my husband, who also happens to white but is far from right-wing, hasn’t yet learned how to whip up an Indian meal like Vance has.
To be fair, even if Mick wouldn’t know what to do with the garam masala in our pantry, he did implement a no-outdoor shoes policy inside the house well before we met and enjoys mangoes, daal and shehnai wedding music more than I do.
And as the vegetarian in our relationship who occasionally force-feeds me kale and broccoli, he does deal with my carnivorous side.
I am a lot more open to leafy greens than I was before, but I’m not switching up a steak dinner.
Rummana Hussain is a columnist and member of the Sun-Times Editorial Board.
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