Mritika Senthil | Cultural identities are not conditional

Content warning: This article contains mentions of racial discrimination against South Asians and racial slurs that can be disturbing and/or triggering for some readers. 

As heightened insecurity plagues our path to this year’s presidential election, two unfortunate realities are clear: Mafias are once again active in the mainstream, and some Americans fear losing their national identity.

At least, this was one netizen’s verdict after a post on X, formerly Twitter, attempted to shed light on a network of wealthy South Asians operating in the backend of former President and 1968 Wharton graduate Donald Trump and running mate J.D. Vance’s campaign. “Vivek Ramaswamy” — a former candidate for the Republican nomination — “says JD Vance’s wife Usha is a family friend,” the post reads. Additionally, “Vance has a son named Vivek.” 

And so, the “Pajeet mafia” has risen the ranks of the deep state and allegedly exerts control over domestic institutions.

For those not privy to the hellscapes that are internet forums, the name “Pajeet” — which later evolved into “Pajeet Kumar” and the short form “Jeet” — initially appeared on a 4chan board as a variant of the anti-Turkish “Mehmet, My Son” meme. This stereotypical, albeit nonexistent, name was used in a cartoon that had jokingly insinuated cases of open defecation in India, before it yielded to usage as a wide-ranging slur against South Asians. According to Jaskaran Sandhu, the co-founder of media platform Baaz based in Edmonton, Alberta, “the main purveyors of ‘Pajeet’ remain right-wing actors in the West,” who seek to “disseminate hate and racism.”

Yet, these slurs are not the only means to convey the racist narrative of South Asian crime syndicates. For instance, on his podcast, far-right political commentator Nick Fuentes directly questioned aloud: “Who is [Vance] really? Do we really expect that the guy who has an Indian wife and named their kid Vivek is going to support white identity?” But of course, Fuentes is a caricature of the American right wing. He speaks of a “total Aryan victory” against Jews with ease — so much so that I sometimes wonder if he’s constructed a provocative persona for attention.

Less overt but still existent is the comparable rhetoric within left-wing discourse. After Vance’s recent fame in the public domain, an online commenter concluded that Usha Vance belongs to a “laughable” cadre of “‘pick me’ Asian Republicans.” Another netizen urges caution against Indian-origin Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ “brahmin barbarism [sic],” which he characterizes as more “systemic” in the prison-industrial complex than “white brutality.” After all, Trump infamously asked during an interview at the National Association of Black Journalists Convention, “[Harris] happened to turn Black. … Is she Indian or is she Black?” How could South Asian Americans endorse conservative policies when the current face of the GOP so openly dismisses the multicultural identities of those in his electorate? According to the more cynical of progressives, these politicians must have been bought out by donors  if not acting on their own interests. As one commentator puts it, “Kamala [Harris] is one of the most pro-Israel members of the US government in history … she’s got the AIPAC receipts to prove it.”

I’ve lobbied on behalf of political action committees and won’t deny the influence of such organizations on legislation. However, speculations based on ethnic stereotypes unjustly question the ability of politicians to represent their diverse constituents. The American experience is multifaceted, and singling out the individual experiences of the South Asian diaspora does little to actually change the nature of the political culture in the United States. In fact, doing so is hypocritical.

As a testament to my point, consider the more literal mafias in American society. 

In 1970, while Richard Nixon served as president of the United States and the Vietnam War continued to polarize university campuses, Italian Americans had gathered south of the Upper West Side to protest the use of the word “mafia” as a slur. Described by a reporter from The New York Times as “more American than the Americans,” these activists had garnered an unexpected “proclivity for group defensiveness, joining blacks, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Arabs, Mexicans, Indians, welfare recipients, the aged,” and so forth. In retrospect, this Times account is glaringly at odds with our country’s founding ethos. How could second and third-generation Americans remain un-American in a population consisting almost entirely of immigrants and their descendants?

As expected, almost five decades after the protests at Columbus Circle, the Cosa Nostra (Sicilian Mafia) trope is an oddly haimish, Yiddish for cozy, feature of The Sopranos, Frank Sinatra, and the questionable mob-wife fashion trends on TikTok. 

The midcentury mafia became a staple of the United States. Now, racist tropes are being weaponized against South Asian politicians in an ineffective way.

When Americans are united by their principles rather than a shared history or ethnicity, their collective culture is a dynamic composite of immigration waves. Therefore, politicians certainly do deserve scrutiny — but not at the expense of claims to their ethnic heritages and American nationality. Cultural identities are not conditional, and by assuming so in the name of improving American politics, commentators ironically delegitimize themselves and our standard of equal opportunity.

MRITIKA SENTHIL is a sophomore from Columbia, S.C. Her email is mritikas@upenn.edu.