KIARA ALFONSECA
Updated ·4 min read
The wife of Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance, Usha Chilukuri Vance, and the couple's children have become the targets of backlash for their Indian ancestry.
Chilukuri Vance, the daughter of Indian immigrants who grew up in San Diego, as well as RNC speaker Harmeet Dhillon — who is Sikh and Indian – are facing anti-Asian hate from far-right figures online.
Posts appear to have spiked this week following Vance's nomination criticizing Vance for marrying someone who is non-white, expressing concerns about an influx of Indian immigrants as a result and the so-called Great Replacement conspiracy have garnered hundreds of thousands of views according to individual post engagement figures.
Stop AAPI Hate, an advocacy group that tracks anti-Asian hate incidents, condemned the attacks, arguing that the onslaught of hate has reinforced “heightened levels of fear and anxiety Asian Americans and immigrants are currently experiencing across the country leading up to this year’s presidential election.”
The group added: “In the midst of an inflamed political climate, we continue to see the targeting of South Asians across parties, including ongoing questioning of VP Kamala Harris’ electability.”
Stop AAPI Hate has recorded thousands of potential hate-motivated incidents since 2020, when anti-Asian sentiment increased around the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
All this vile racism, xenophobia & bigotry against South Asians, Sikhs & immigrants amid the #RNC illustrates the severity of intolerance threatening the safety of so many communities today. We need to hold leaders & others w/ platforms accountable for harmful political rhetoric.
— Stop AAPI Hate (@StopAAPIHate) July 18, 2024
The backlash comes as former President Donald Trump appeared to call for more national unity after the assassination attempt he experienced at a Pennsylvania rally last weekend.
“The discord and division in our society must be healed. We must heal it quickly. As Americans, we are bound together by a single fate and a shared destiny. We rise together. Or we fall apart,” Trump said during his remarks Thursday on the last day of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
It’s a stark contrast from Trump’s typical tone that has been criticized as “inflammatory” and “divisive,” often when he is referring to race and immigration.
But the former president quickly fell back into his old talking points. "The greatest invasion in history is taking place right here in our country,” Trump said, referring to undocumented migrants coming across the U.S. border.
However, encounters at the southern border have continued to drop for the fourth month straight, newly released numbers from the CBP shows.
He continued, "They are coming in from every corner of the Earth, not just from South America, but from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East — they’re coming from everywhere, and this administration does nothing to stop them," Trump added.
However, CBP says recent measures, including President Biden’s June 4 executive order restricting access to asylum in between ports of entry, have contributed to a more than 50% drop in encounters at the border over the past six weeks.
JD Vance previously criticized Trump and his base for the rhetoric on race, a backdrop to the current onslaught of criticism facing Vance’s wife and children.
Vance told POLITICO in 2016 that “the Trump people are certainly more racist than the average white professional.” He also warned that Trump’s rhetoric would cause white people to “become more racist over time.”
MORE: How AAPI social media influencers are working to mobilize voters in 2024
In an interview with PBS Newshour in 2016, Vance also stated “there is definitely an element of Donald Trump's support that has its basis in racism or xenophobia.”
JD Vance, who previously called himself a “Never Trump guy,” has cited Trump’s “many successes in office” for changing his opinion of the former president and will now join Trump on the Republican ticket for the presidential election in November.
Vance eventually aligned with the former president around 2021, praising his time in office and apologizing for his attacks on him.
"Look, I was wrong about Donald Trump. I didn't think he was going to be a good president, Bret," Vance told Fox News anchor Bret Baier last month. "He was a great president, and it's one of the reasons why I'm working so hard to make sure he gets a second term."
JD Vance's wife faces racist online backlash from far-right social media posts originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
