A three-year-old clip of Ohio gubernatorial nominee Vivek Ramaswamy has resurfaced and reminded us exactly how an Indian man of Hindu faith managed to become a political darling to a party that thrives on white Christian nationalism: by engaging in anti-Black racism.
In the clip from his 2023 appearance on some right-winger’s podcast, Ramaswamy declared, “A Black baby is probably safer…in the inner city of Chicago, than in the womb of his own Black mother,” invoking mysoginoir against Black women who don’t wish to be pregnant, and, as a bonus, the racist white myth that Chicago is some kind of perpetual war zone when, in reality, it’s not even among the top 25 most violent cities in the nation per capita.
Ever since Ramaswamy emerged as a Republican presidential candidate in 2023, it has become more and more evident that he believes being racist toward Black people will make white people less racist toward him. It’s as if he believes calling Juneteenth a “useless” holiday because a holiday for Martin Luther King Jr. already exists, it will stop racists like Ann Coulter from telling him to his face that he’d never have their votes because “you’re an Indian.”
Or maybe he thinks declaring that the “anti-racism” movement only caused more racism, will stop the fine folks at Turning Point USA from grilling him with question about how he could possibly hope to lead Ohio as “an Indian, a Hindu, coming from a different culture, different religion than those who founded this country, those who grew this country, built this country, made this country the beautiful thing that it is today,”
Hell, Ramaswamy has even promoted the white nationalist Great Replacement Theory, as if he isn’t one of the brown people white people are afraid of being replaced by. There’s just got to be an easier, less humiliating way to play the model minority role.
Anyway, Ramaswamy continued by reviving a long-standing anti-abortion myth regarding the foundation of Planned Parenthood and how it was purposely weaponized against the Black community.
“And I think that that’s actually a problem, and it’s directly the product of what Margaret Sanger envisioned years ago when setting Planned Parenthood into motion,” he said.
Unfortunately, far too many Black people have bought into this falsehood, which has been spread largely by white conservatives who are temporarily pretending to care about Black life, as well as Black conservatives who are more than happy to help them perpetuate it.
It’s still unfounded nonsense, though.
“She was handing out birth control pamphlets to women, because she was tired of women dying in childbirth, and when she started doing that work in Lower Manhattan, there were Black leaders in Harlem who were like, ‘Well, wait a minute, Black women up here also need access to care, including contraception,’” Alencia Johnson, a Democratic strategist who worked at Planned Parenthood, told theGrio of Sanger. “The Harlem clinic that the Right likes to weaponize against Planned Parenthood was actually started in partnership with the National Urban League. So, the formation of Planned Parenthood has actually been in partnership with a lot of Black leaders.”
Izzi Levy, a spokesperson for the Democratic Governors’ Association, also spoke with theGrio about Ramaswamy’s remarks, saying, “Vivek Ramaswamy’s disgusting comments are just one more reason he doesn’t belong anywhere near Ohio’s governor’s office. Ohioans deserve a governor who will be laser-focused on making their lives better, not one who pushes racist smears to justify extreme and unpopular attacks on their rights.”
Black people online haven’t been any kinder to the brown man who was clearly fishing for Caucasian brownie points.
Unfortunately, though, it appears his abilities as a Klan-whisperer do seem to be working on racists who also only care about Black people when it’s politically convenient, and not so much that they won’t still flex their anti-Black muscles while expressing their agreement with Ramaswamy, while whitesplaining to Black people why we should agree as well.
At the end of the day, no one is putting guns to Black women’s heads and making them terminate unwanted pregnancies. Black women have their own agency and the capacity to make their own decisions independently of white supremacist influence, and if that’s so difficult for conservatives to understand, maybe it’s because they’re racists who don’t view Black women as capable of thinking for themselves and doing what’s best for their own lives.
Mind you, these same conservatives ushered in a second Trump administration, which cut Black maternal health research from the federal budget, and tried to cut funding for Black infant health research before it was sued and ordered to restore it.
“Ohio’s rates of maternal mortality and infant mortality are extremely high. The Republican Party likes to talk about being the party of family values; they like to say we have to support mothers, and they are actually anti-mother and anti-family,” Democratic strategist Reecie Colbert told theGrio.
“It’s always non-Black women talking about what’s good for Black mothers, but yet won’t support policies like family medical leave, paid leave, universal child care, clean air, clean water, all these things for Black mothers to actually have Black children who can thrive in this country,” she added. “To be honest, I think the unsafe place for a Black child is actually after they are born.”
Exactly.
SEE ALSO:
Vivek Ramaswamy’s N-Word Lie Exposed
Pro-Immigrant Elon Musk, Vivek Rip US-Born Engineers
Ramaswamy Pushes Racist Theory At Debate
