Vivek Ramaswamy holds a town hall meeting at the Bushnell Event Center on September 19, 2024, in Springfield, Ohio. | Source: Michael Swensen / Getty
Here’s a two-part question: Does former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy even have a spine and does he understand how video footage works?
I ask because, recently, Ramaswamy made an appearance on CNN and lied right to anchor Kasie Hunt’s face about an exchange he had with a Black man in Springfield, Ohio, who told him very clearly and unmistakably that he had been called the N-word “twice this week,” which he attributed to Donald Trump and JD Vance’s thoroughly debunked racist nonsense regarding Haitian immigrants abducting and eating the pets of Springfield residents.
“I want to ask you about that moment in Springfield, Ohio. From someone who has lived there their whole life and who says they’ve not experienced this kind of racially motivated animosity from the members of their community before this past week,” Hunt began. “Is President Trump’s rhetoric contributing to what happened to that man, and do you think it’s right?”
“So, look, the reason I went to Springfield is I wanted to have open dialog with the citizens of that community close to where I grew up as well. That was important to me,” Ramaswamy responded. “And I want to be precise about what that man said, because I think it was actually really important and insightful. He didn’t say it was in the last week. You heard in that clip, he said it was in the last year.”
Here’s what the Springfield resident in question, Brock Enji, actually said:
“Since this story leaked. And this is something everyone needs to hear. The hateful language in this community has spiked. It’s really, really bad!
I’m half Black, I’m half Hungarian — half-Black, half white, whatever you want to say.
I’ve become a target. Hey, I can probably count on my hand both hands. How many times a racial slur has been said my whole life. I’ve been called the N-word twice this week by just people who group me–. It happens!
Even though my skin may be lighter, I think people just group us together. There’s horror stories of people who are darker skinned that have been chased down by people who are white saying, ‘get out of this country.’
Friends of mine, friends of friends and say, ‘Get out of here. You’re Haitian. We don’t want you here,’ even with a six month old baby at a grocery store.
So regardless, I find it shameful and I find it inappropriate whether I’m Haitian or American. What would you say to my fellow people here in the community in regards to this rhetoric? I don’t think it could be tolerated.”
And here’s how Ramaswamy responded:
“I’m in the camp of long-standing, believing that the United States of America is not a racist country– the least racist country known to mankind. I have never experienced that type of invidious racism growing up.
But I also want to speak a hard truth here, because there’s something going on in the country right now. When I say right now, I’m talking like the last 9 to 12 months in this country.
There is a weird uptick in racial tension in this country that did not exist. In the 30 years that I grew up. Right here in southwest Ohio. And I’ll tell you what’s going on, because this gets to this gets to the essence of what’s going on this country and bothers me.
Take the immigration issue. You take 20,000 people who are unprepared to integrate into a community, dump them into a city of 50,000.
You’re going to get a reactionary response. Then you demonize the people who have the reactionary response who say, you’re blaming me? They’re going to have ill will, in this case towards the Haitian community.”
So, Ramaswamy responded to Enji’s testimony by repeating the long-standing conservative lie that America is not and has never been a racist country, even going as far as to say one of the last nations to end slavery — which then followed the end of slavery with another century of legally-sanctioned second-class citizenship for non-white people — is the “least racist country known to mankind.” Ramaswamy then proceeded to imply that white people’s racism isn’t actually their fault because it’s just a response to the “immigration issue” and “20,000 people who are unprepared to integrate into a community.” (The number of Haitian immigrants who have migrated to Springfield is actually estimated to be from 10,000 to 12,000, but whatever.)
After Ramaswamy was done being egregiously dismissive of Enji’s experience, he segued into some right-wing nonsense about how DEI was the actual cause of racial animus in the U.S., which, of course, had nothing to do with the subject at hand outside of the fact that the room he was speaking to was mostly full of white people who probably loved to hear it.
In his CNN video, after telling an observable lie about when Enji said he experienced racism, Ramaswamy defaulted to a classic Caucasian deflection from the discussion of racism: Racism would go away if we just stopped talking about it.
“And I’ll tell you what I told (Enji) to his face, which I believe is true, is a big part of the uptick we are seeing in anti-Black racism and anti-minority racism,” Ramaswamy said. “And we are seeing that uptick in the country–and it worries me–is a response to the anti-racist policies that have increased race consciousness in this country over the last several years.”
So, just to recap, white people’s racism isn’t their fault because non-white migrants shouldn’t be in their neighborhoods in the first place, and racism was completely dying down in America until people started being “anti-racist,” causing racism to surge.
None of Ramaswamy’s wannabe-white nonsense should be surprising. This, after all, is the same guy who called Juneteenth a “useless” and “redundant” holiday because Martin Luther King Day already exists and, apparently, America, the “least racist country known to mankind,” isn’t big enough for two Black holidays that have nothing to do with each other. (The same year, on Juneteenth, Ramaswamy recorded a video of him celebrating the holiday. Again, where is his spine?)
Hell, Ramaswamy doesn’t even acknowledge racism when it’s staring him right in the face, like when Ann Coulter told him to his face that she would never have voted for the former GOP candidate because “you’re Indian.” He’s also a great replacement theorist who doesn’t seem to realize that a brown person of Indian descent like himself is exactly who white conservatives are afraid of being replaced by.
Maybe a person of color who has more interest in preserving white nationalism than he does his own integrity is not the person to serve as an expert on racism, its causes, its history or the reason it continues to persist in America.
SEE ALSO:
Vivek Ramaswamy Dog-Whistles About The Racist ‘Great Replacement Theory’ During GOP Primary Debate
Congressional Black Caucus Checks Vivek Ramaswamy Over ‘KKK’ Comment To Ayanna Pressley
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