Vivek Ramaswamy Wants to Talk About Hollywood Diversity, but Can’t Get Past His Own Rhetoric

Keli Goff
·9 min read
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Donald Trump’s legal woes, combined with the passionate devotion of his loyalists, have made him one of the biggest wild cards in the history of presidential politics. But this Republican primary cycle has also been shaken up by one of Trump’s self-proclaimed biggest fans, Vivek Ramaswamy. The right-wing entrepreneur, who has said he’s prepared to spend more than $100 million of his own money on his bid and has made ending affirmative action and limiting U.S. military support for Ukraine centerpieces of his campaign, has emerged as enough of a contender that he was on the receiving end of the majority of attacks in the first GOP presidential debate (the one Trump skipped).

If elected, Ramaswamy, a graduate of Harvard and Yale, would become the youngest president in history and the first Indian American to hold the office. Known for attempting to show off his rap skills on the campaign trail (until being asked to stop by rapper Eminem’s label) he talked to The Hollywood Reporter about race and Hollywood, the movie he and his wife Dr. Apoorva Tewari disagree on, and his now-paused plans to finance a remake of American History X, the 1998 film starring Edward Norton and Edward Furlong as brothers in a family torn apart by racial violence.

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What’s your favorite movie of all time?

I like Gladiator and The Dark Knight, and I like Interstellar, also by Christopher Nolan.

What’s a movie your wife loves that you hate?

That Reese Witherspoon movie, Legally Blonde. She thinks it’s very funny.

And you don’t?

No. It’s not that good.

GOP strategist Karl Rove once credited The Cosby Show with paving the way for America’s first Black president. Do you believe that diverse representations onscreen are impactful?

One of the shows that I like that sort of fits in that vein is The Jeffersons, which I watched as a kid. The Jeffersons and South Park are two of my favorite shows. Those that take an honest look at culturally sensitive subjects are important to spawn honest conversations and to do it without constraint.

Do you think that you have been personally impacted by diverse depictions onscreen?

You mean being represented by a [particular] minority group? Not really. Part of what we need is to create enough honesty in storytelling that allows people of diverse backgrounds in every sense. Diverse is not just your genetics. There are a lot of kinds of diversity, like being able to see common threads and stories relating to values in the people who are depicted onscreen. And I think that sometimes we can fall into the trap of thinking that just because someone looks like you that that’s going to build a connection with the audience — and maybe in some superficial level that can be true, at times. But I think it is far deeper if you are able to go beyond just the surface and have a work of art, a film, movie or show that really touches the commonality of values that the audience shares. I think that’s not done enough right now.

Gran Torino [the Clint Eastwood film about a white working-class Korean War vet’s friendship with a Hmong American teen] was really good in that respect because I think people connected with the main characters in that movie … It’s a connection that every American felt with those two characters. I think we’re overdue for a modern American History X. I’m not saying it’s a remake of the old movie, but told in our moment, the story that the makers of American History X told … the story of the bond between two brothers, is something that’s timeless and familiar, regardless of whether they are Black or white or whatever … Actually, before I was running for president, I was thinking about taking on something like that.

About producing a new version of American History X?

I don’t have the skillset to be actively involved as a director or producer, but to be involved as an executive producer or investor, I was quite interested in that.

Donald Trump recently discussed you as a possible VP pick but referred to some of your rhetoric as controversial. Meanwhile, his own rhetoric — including around COVID — has been credited with increasing hate crimes against the Asian community. Do you think that you and Trump have a responsibility to ensure the rhetoric you are using doesn’t inspire people to engage in racially motivated violence?

I’m not going to speak for anyone but myself. Yes, is the answer to that question, of course, as a leader. But I think part of what’s resulting in a regrettable wave of racism in all directions, and racial tension in all directions, is the absence of honesty. I think if you tell people they can’t scream, can’t speak even … that they have to bottle up their emotions and there are certain things they can’t say, that manifests itself in all kinds of ugly ways and unpredictable ways down the road. To the contrary, I think we need to have some open, honest, raw conversations related to identity.

How does your recent remark that Massachusetts Democratic Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley is a “modern grand wizard of the modern KKK” at a campaign appearance in Iowa figure into that?

I compared her message to it, which is an important difference [the reference is to a 2019 statement by Pressley that Democrats don’t “need any more brown faces that don’t want to be a brown voice”].

Do you think using the rhetoric you used, comparing someone nonviolent who may have said things that are controversial, to an organization whose worldview led to thousands of rapes and murders, was over the line and makes it hard for people to hear your message that we should be having a civil and honest conversation?

I don’t think it was over the line and I hope that it doesn’t make it harder for people to hear my message, though it’s my job to make sure that it doesn’t. My issue with her comment was not that it was controversial. My issue with her comment was is that it was downright racist and ugly and exhibits some of the same kinds of ugliness that the Klan’s worldview held. And one thing I will say that is responsive to the heart of your question: If the Klan were a modern force in American life, I absolutely wouldn’t have made that analogy. Because then we’d have a bigger problem in this country right now. But my point was to use the memory of how toxic that was … I mean the Ku Klux Klan is irrelevant in the United States today, but there was a time when that wasn’t true.

But I want people to remember, as bad as that was, it was normalized at its time. It was part of the culture. Now today, the likes of Ayanna Pressley are the ones who are equally influential on the culture and in corporate America and diversity and our intellectual culture. So we need to wake up and say, just like it was wrong to passively accept a culture that was dominated by a different form of racism a century ago, we have to wake up to where that racism presents itself in the modern era, which is to say that if you have a certain skin color you need to shut up, sit down and do what you’re told.

Given that we are conducting this interview after a recent a shooting targeting Black Americans in Jacksonville, should you be using different language to get your point across?

No. I hear your point and I respect it. But I reject your premise. Because our shared goal is that we do not want more racially divisive violence or behavior in this country. And yet I am worried that unless we’re able to honestly have an open, real, raw dialogue and debate about what I think is actually driving some of that racial grievance in this country — which is a new version of causing people to see each other on the basis of their genetic attributes — we are in store for far worse to come. Maybe as uncomfortable as my comment made some people this week, it will spawn some of the conversations we are not having.

Sen. Tim Scott has talked openly and passionately about the many times he has been racially profiled by police throughout his life, even by the Capitol Police. Do you think he is telling the truth about those experiences?

Sure. I don’t doubt that he is.

If that’s the case, how do we go about fixing problems like racial profiling within certain institutions like law enforcement, if the position of some conservatives like yourself is that the problems are not systemic or institutional?

Racism is individual animus. When we talk about systemic racism, it almost dilutes what the real thing actually looks like. I don’t think that racism today is a top 50 problem in the United States, but that’s different than saying it doesn’t exist. But I don’t think it’s a top 50 problem …

For all people, including Black people?

For all people. What I worry about is that in the name of racism, it provides an excuse from solving the problems that hold back many Americans, including Black Americans.

So how would you address the problem of racial profiling within the Capitol Police, without addressing systemic or institutional racism?

I think the reality is the last burning embers of racism are burning themselves out in this country. We should let that play itself out. But by adopting more race-conscious policies, we are accidentally and inadvertently — and some people with the best of intentions, I acknowledge that — are throwing kerosene on those final burning embers. And it pains me as I watch that happen in this country. It’s a muscle that will slowly atrophy itself to irrelevance if we let it. We’re almost at the Promised Land and yet I think right when you get close to the Promised Land, when you start obsessing over racism more when it’s actually at its low point, we risk inflaming the problem. It’s like an immune system that becomes overactive right when the virus has been cleared, you end up killing the host itself, and I think that’s genuinely what could happen in this country.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Keli Goff is a longtime political reporter, Emmy-nominated producer of the documentary Reversing Roe, and a writer on Mayor of Kingstown, And Just Like That and Black Lightning.

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