Column: South Asians, Jindal is one of us

GOP presidential candidate Piyush “Bobby” Jindal and I are branches of the same tree. We are both sons of Indian immigrant parents who came to America in search of better opportunities for their children, and we both lived in white, rural areas of the South.

We even share the same name: Piyush is my dad’s name and my middle name.

Around the same age as when Piyush changed his name to Bobby, my dad had a conversation with me about my name. I had picked up a nickname in school, and when my dad heard the news, he was outraged. His face had tensed up, and creases had spread across his forehead.

“Your name is your identity,” I recall him sternly repeating for hours. Never have I felt more ashamed for anglicizing my identity.

It’s easy for us as South Asian people of color to dismiss the white-washed laughingstock that is Piyush Jindal. The anglicization of his name is just the start. When Piyush hung a portrait of white Bobby in his office, we laughed. When he announced his candidacy under the slogan “Tanned. Rested. Ready,” we laughed. Without a doubt, #BobbyJindalSoWhite.

Yet, in whitewashing Jindal, we fail to acknowledge the veiled currency of white supremacy and model-minority politics Jindal not only benefits from, but actively champions.

In his “The End of Race” column, Bobby Ji (term of endearment) spoke about his parents’ immigration to America.

“My parents wanted only to be judged based on the content of their character, not the color of their skin,” he wrote.

For Jindal, America is a colorblind land of opportunity.

This narrative is naive and false. Jindal’s success, as well as mine and yours, is built upon the deliberate selection of Asian people of color as model minorities. His parents benefited from racialized immigration policies that gave preference to affluent Asian immigrants over African and Latino/a immigrants. He himself benefited from preferential access to institutions such as affluent magnet schools.

The model-minority myth should not be characterized as the assimilation of Asian-Americans into whiteness, according to South Asian activist Harsha Walia. Instead, it involves the stratification of people of color based on perceived cultural differences in work ethic and intelligence — differences constructed by America to perpetuate anti-Black racism.

The treatment of Asian-Americans as a monolith of “successful” businesspeople, professionals and politicians in turn contrast with the “deficiencies” of Black Americans. These tropes are not only wrong, but also perpetuate racial domination wherein Blackness is made synonymous with criminality and pathology.

It’s important for us as South Asians to recognize that Bobby Ji is one of us. Ridiculing Jindal for his whiteness is comical, but we must be critical of how our racialization is linked to how Blackness is constructed. Dismantling anti-Blackness is thus fundamental to ending the model-minority myth.