This story first appeared in Power Shift, The Yappie's weekly newsletter on national AAPI power, politics, and influence. Subscribe for free here.
Bo French, GOP nominee for the Texas Railroad Commission, faced backlash last week after claiming that a photo of mostly South Asian students celebrating a UT Austin football victory shows “how many Americans have been displaced by foreigners.”
To some surprise, several prominent Republicans hit back.
- “He’s going to drag the whole ticket down because of his racist comments,” outgoing Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who said he will not vote for French, told the Washington Examiner.
- Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) also called it an “idiotic tweet,” NBC News reports.
The backdrop: Anti-South Asian sentiment is on the rise across the U.S., according to Stop AAPI Hate.
- It has been particularly potent in Texas, where some residents have decried the so-called “Indian takeover” amid increased buy-in to the Great Replacement Theory.
- Asian Americans are the fastest-growing racial group in the state, where the number of Indian Americans has nearly doubled between 2010 and 2021, per the Census Bureau.
Our take: While party infighting implies that some GOP leaders are taking a stand against racism, the reality is that Indian Americans are a significant voting bloc in Texas—one they need to court as Election Day nears.
- French’s social media post puts a sledgehammer in these efforts, once again positioning South Asians as the perpetual foreigner even when taking part in the uniquely American tradition of college football.
- It’s clear that for him and his supporters, the affirmative action debate was never about meritocracy.
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