Last week, there was an apoplectic internet meltdown over racial tensions and the pearl-clutchers seemed to be completely oblivious it had even been simmering away right beneath their noses, for years. This time, it’s about Indians. The Texas Longhorns twitter account posted a video of UT pushing over the line for a game-winning touchdown, and the camera whip pans to an ocean of what appear to be Indian students going bananas. Bo French, a Texas Railroad Commissioner candidate, lamented the scene, writing “I heard UT graduation this year looked like this. I didn’t believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.” The post went viral as a touchpoint in the very online war between Indians and “heritage Americans”, who increasingly see mass Indian immigration as a visible deterioration of their homeland.
For some reason, Indians always seem to take the most radical brunt of the online vitriol. They’re often the subject of the harshest internet memes (and they are brutal). In the harsh battlefield of the internet, Indians are seen as the primary source of online scammers and foreign bot activity. Of course, there’s some truth to that, and when a sizable enough number of scammers have fit the profile, it is inevitably going to be pinned broadly on that group. Of course, like with any other stereotype, it’s unfair to the lovely majority, but when Americans see enough Jashanpreet Singhs obliterating families in their minivans because they were given fraudulent CDLs from Gavin Newsom, there’s understandably gonna be some blowback against illegal immigrants scamming the system. But beyond the scammers, it’s also true that Indians are just becoming increasingly ascendant in American culture and governance.
