Are Indian Americans turning Red? A case in point- Suparna Dutta
- In Current Affairs
- 03:05 PM, Jan 22, 2022
- Aparna Jandhyala
Few months back GOP got a surprise victory in Virginia when Glenn Youngkin defeated Terry McAuliffe by 1.7 percentage points [1].
Post poll analysis shows that at least part of the victory is attributed to parents especially moms showing up and voting for Youngkin. Virginia is the same state that Biden won over Trump by 10 percentage points in 2020[2].
So why are parents turning to GOP in battleground states? Though extensive research needs to be done to find out the reason, one thing seems clear: many whites are fed up with scapegoating of white kids for the sins and omissions of their ancestors. In a surprising twist, many immigrants are fed up with what they see as betrayal of American dream: meritocracy being destroyed in the name of racial justice. Thus, two disparate groups of people are coalescing to give GOP a decisive win. Note that despite his loss, Trump also tried to create a coalition of middle class workers cutting across race lines in 2020 elections [3].
When Youngkin was sworn in as 74th Governor of Virginia, a saree clad Suparna Dutta was seen giving a short but impassioned speech at the inaugural ceremony [4]. Suparna Dutta is an accidental activist who took up “arms” to protest Critical Race Theory (CRT) being taught at her son’s famous Thomas Jefferson High School. She wrote to her son’s school in a now famous letter [5]:
“My chosen home, America, has been the beacon of freedom and hope in the world. “Anti-racist” ideology pits people against each other, divides them into oppressors and oppressed warring factions based on immutable factors. Everything gained since the civil rights movement is being lost now, with this cancerous Marxist ideology being inculcated in the youth. It encourages hatred and discrimination. A core tenet of CRT claims “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination.”
“I hope you don’t indulge in the bigotry of low expectations against some groups, like Ms. Bonitatibus does. She said in an email last year that there are “so few black and brown children” at TJ. She also said at a TJPTSA meeting that when she pokes her head into classrooms at TJ, she’s saddened that the demographics do not reflect the geographic area. Imagine how that makes the parents feel?! Treat children as humans, NOT identities or objects to be experimented with.”
Determined to keep merit as the criterion for admission alive, Ms. Dutta along with some other parents organized Coalition for TJ Parents. After Youngkin won the Republican nomination for Governor and expressed his support for merit-based admission, Dutta led Educators for Youngkin Coalition effort [6]:
“She worked tirelessly, organizing webinars and door-knocking for Youngkin, going from being an anonymous mother to introducing him this past week to a crowd of about 500 cheering supporters in his last campaign stop in Fairfax County.
Dutta is the living embodiment of the best of a mama bear and the American Dream, expressing it, protecting it, and allowing her teen son a late night so he could be a part of history, before scooping him up and taking him safely home, to awaken to the new day that she and the mama and papa bear movement had forged for the Commonwealth of Virginia.”
As he had promised, Youngkin banned teaching of CRT in schools on his first day of office [7].
It is interesting to note that James Lindsay who has written a lot on CRT [8] recently appeared on the Joe Rogan podcast and claimed that CRT robs children of their innocence, is rooted in Marxism, aims to separate younger generation from the old and seeks to destabilize the child’s identity [9]. Whether these claims are true or not, it does seem that the political tide that has been veering Left for a long time is slowly turning Right at least in USA.
More importantly, whether people of America can come together to forge better future for their offspring remains to be seen. One can only hope for the best.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/election/2021/results/virginia/governor
[2] https://www.cnn.com/election/2020/results/state/virginia
[4] https://twitter.com/AsraNomani/status/1482428478100320258?s=20
[5] https://fairfaxgop.org/immigrant-mom-to-school-officials-treat-children-as-humans-not-identities/
[9] https://twitter.com/MythinformedMKE/status/1484624026610049024?s=20
Image source: Reuters
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