‘She’s Not White, But…’: Breaking Down JD Vance’s Defense Of His Wife’s Indian Heritage
Republican vice presidential nominee U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) and his wife Usha Vance take the stage to introduce Donald Trump during a rally at Herb Brooks National Hockey Center on July 27, 2024, in St Cloud, Minnesota. | Source: Stephen Maturen / Getty
Donald Trump‘s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), appears to be having a tough time navigating the racial bigotry that his party espouses just about every time its members open their mouths to speak about Black and brown people, especially immigrants. (Actually, they work against Black Americans just as they do migrants, but it’s an election year and they want our votes, so they’ll put away their bull horns and pick up their dog whistles until after November, then it’s MAGA Klan business as usual.)
Earlier this month, we reported that MAGA Republicans were up in arms over the news that Vance is married to an Indian woman whose family surname he adopted and that he and his wife, Usha Vance, gave all three of their children traditional Indian names.
MORE: Op-Ed: Who Is JD Vance? Silicon Valley Millionaire MAGA Extremist
Now, the VP pick who has actually gone through multiple name changes and once compared Trump to Adolf Hitler is defending his wife from the racists who have attacked her. Well, he’s kind of defending her. Actually, during a recent interview with former Fox News blonde archetype and Caucasian aficionado of casual racism, Megyn Kelly, Vance appeared to defend his wife’s non-whiteness more so than condemn the racism she has received.
“Obviously she’s not a white person…but I love Usha, she’s such a good mom.”
Honestly this is such a weird way to respond to white supremacist attacks on your Indian American wife. Pathetic. pic.twitter.com/aC5BIOzm1D
— Kaivan Shroff (@KaivanShroff) July 27, 2024
“Obviously, she’s not a white person, and we’ve been accused—attacked—by some white supremacists over that,” Vance told Kelly. “But I just—I love Usha. She’s such a good mom, she’s such a brilliant lawyer and I’m so proud of her.”
Now, perhaps Vance didn’t mean to come off like he was essentially saying, “My wife may not be white but, c’mon, guys, she makes babies and has a good job, so I still love her,” but that’s how a lot of people received it, likely, because without an explicit denouncement of the racist accusations—sorry, I mean attacks, it just seems like he did the bare minimum to kind of, sort of, but not really address the inherent racism in his party.
the “accu— attacked” is uhhhhh something
— Kat Abu (@abughazalehkat) July 27, 2024
wow, such a feckless way to defend your family. Giving Ted Cruz vibes.
— The Sins of Greg (@TheSinsOfGreg) July 27, 2024
Utterly unsurprising that the only positive thing he has to say against white supremacisr attacks are “I mean, she’s not white, BUT she isn’t childless, so she still has value.”
— Squirrel Master (@kristiecsu) July 27, 2024
This is as good a time as any to point out that, in 2017, Vance declared that Trump won in 2016 due largely to “well-educated” conservatives and “the alt-right” launching a “hyper-racialized” campaign on behalf of their orangey-white nationalist MAGA messiah and that he “definitely” believes “that this was a racialized discourse unlike any that we’ve had in a long time,” using racism directed at his family as an example.
In a newly uncovered video from 2017, JD Vance says, "Some people who voted for Trump were racists, and they voted for him for racist reasons." He goes on to say that the alt-right and Steve Bannon—but not Trump—helped make the 2016 election "hyper-racialized." pic.twitter.com/pPlJ7uNW5h
— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) July 29, 2024
Here we are seven years later and Vance is Trump’s no. 1 Trump-humper, and he appears to be timid about calling out MAGA racism. Maybe he is simply adjusting to his new audience. After all, he was being interviewed by Megyn Kelly, who has vehemently defended blackface, stated emphatically that Jesus and Santa Clause should only be depicted as white, cosigned a social media post referring to Michelle Obama as “Obama’s Baby Mama,” and joined the Republican chorus line in their racist and sexist attacks on Kamala Harris.
It must be difficult having an Indian spouse and Indian children while being a part of the immigrant-hating, great replacement theorizing, white nationalist MAGA world.
Welp, good luck with all that, Vance. You’re going to need it.
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