Last month, FBI Director Kash Patel wished his followers on X a happy Diwali. It did not go over well.
Far-right Christian nationalist and white nationalist accounts flooded his post with bigoted memes and rhetoric. “Go back home and worship your sand demons,” a far-right pastor wrote. “Get the f**k out of my country,” read another reply. Said another, “This is America. We don’t do this.” These responses, some of which were seen millions of times, were on the tamer end of the spectrum.
Similar hostility followed Diwali greetings on X from former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon, as well as posts about the holiday from the White House, the State Department, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Some Indian American conservatives seem shocked that segments of the political right are now taking aim at them.
Human nature is a copout. Humans have removed themselves so far from nature that it isn’t even relevant anymore.
Its totally natural to fear humans that look significantly different than anyone you are familiar with. That’s believable as a basic survival instinct.
But that isn’t the world people are born in. We aren’t born hundreds of miles away from people who look radically different…often times we are born with them in the same room.
The problem is cultural and, as a result, inherited. In the modern world, racism is a learned behavior.
Then it reciprocates, and then becomes a self-fulfilled prophecy.
People suck, yea, but I’m done believing racism is human nature. That’s racist conditioning. Its taking a believable factoid like “humans naturally fear people who look different” because yeah, it makes sense, from a survival standpoint, in a world where your breeding pool was separated by an impenetrable mountain for thousands of years. It doesn’t make sense now.
Just shake off that evolutionary trait, amirite?!