Opinion | Vivek Ramaswamy Is the Latest in a Line of Politically Problematic Tech Bros
Ramaswamy has checked a lot of Republicans’ present ideological bins, saying he desires to “shut down” the F.B.I., declaring “I’ll finish affirmative motion in America” and calling for elevating the voting age to 25 until youthful voters enroll within the army, work as first responders or go citizenship exams. So it’s not stunning that he’s rapidly grow to be a darling of the precise. What initially shocked me, although, was an essay this week in Politico Journal by the previous Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang — a lawyer turned tech entrepreneur turned politician — advising Ramaswamy on the way to win the Republican nomination.
However after I considered it for a second, I noticed it’s not that stunning, in any case.
I began out admiring Yang. Once we met on the set of “Actual Time With Invoice Maher” in 2019, I used to be impressed. He had a refreshing means of explaining his coverage proposals, notably the financial ones, with readability and appeal. I referred to as him a “futurist amongst conventionalists and Bolsheviks.”
A number of months after dropping out of the race, he voiced certified assist for reparations, telling Time: “This nation was constructed on the backs of slaves, and we owe them a large debt. And I’m for H.R.-40, the invoice that explores what reparations would appear like,” a press release that steered that he understood the centrality of race and racism in American historical past, no matter the place anybody may come down on the problem of reparations.
However the extra he revealed himself, notably round racial points, the extra I used to be postpone: His campaign-trail jokes that leaned into the Asian American mannequin minority stereotype — “the alternative of Donald Trump is an Asian man who likes math,” “I’m Asian, so I do know a number of medical doctors” — precipitated a number of Asian People, and me, to bristle.
Within the early days of the pandemic, in a ham-handed try to deal with rising anti-Asian hate, Yang wrote, “We Asian People must embrace and present our Americanness in methods we by no means have earlier than” — as if the issue have been Asian People failing to show their Americanness and never vile anti-Asian sentiment.
