Jim Hartman: The Indian-American dream thrives

The introduction of GOP vice presidential nominee U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance at the Republican National Convention on July 17 was made by his wife, Usha Vance.

Many viewers were surprised to learn that “Hillbilly Elegy” author Vance, reared in hardscrabble Appalachia, is married to the daughter of Indian immigrants.

Vance met his wife, Usha, while they were classmates at Yale Law School. Another Indian-American, former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, was in their Yale Law class.

Usha Vance, 38, has family roots in the south Indian state of Andra Pradesh, with her parents moving to the U.S. in the late 1970s. She was born and grew up in San Diego where her parents now teach engineering and molecular biology.

Usha studied at Yale and Cambridge and was a law clerk to U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts, later becoming an attorney with the prestigious Munger, Tolles & Olson law firm.

The woman who could become second lady exemplifies the rise of an important immigrant group that succeeds in America without quotas or affirmative action.

Indian-Americans have achieved great things in this country over just a couple of generations in wide-ranging fields. They have succeeded entirely on their own initiative.

No ethnic or racial preferences have been extended to them from schools, colleges or government. Prior to the recent Supreme Court decision on affirmative action, it was a disadvantage to be an Indian student applying to an Ivy League school.

Contrary to claims of “systemic racism” and pervasive “white privilege,” America has been a place where Indian-Americans have thrived.

Indians constitute just under 1.5% of the of the country’s population, yet two Indian-Americans (Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley) competed for the GOP presidential nomination this year.

As UN ambassador, Haley was the first Indian-American to serve in a presidential cabinet.

Haley’s parents emigrated from Amritsar, Punjab, India settling in Bamberg, South Carolina in 1969. Her late father, Agit, was a professor of biology and her mother, Raj, earned a master’s degree in education.

Not to be forgotten, Vice President Kamala Harris was born to an Indian mother who raised her as a single mom after her parents separated when she was 5.

Harris’ mother, Shyamala Gopalan, emigrated from Chennai, India earning a Ph.D. in nutrition and endocrinology at UC Berkeley in 1964. Gopalan did pioneering breast cancer research and was a Berkeley radical activist during the late 1960s.

In the business world, Indian-American CEOs run Google (Satya Nadella) and Microsoft (Sundar Pichai) as well as Novartis, Starbucks, FedEx, Adobe and IBM.

Indian deans lead top-tier U.S. business schools, including Chicago, Georgetown, Harvard, Northwestern and New York University.

Some random statistics: Indian-Americans have the highest median household income in the U.S. by ethnic group, nearly twice that of white households and three times that of Black households.

Two-thirds have college degrees with 40% having postgraduate degrees. They have the lowest divorce rate of any ethnic group in the country and own 60% of all hotels.

One in every 20 doctors in the U.S. is Indian, as is 1 in every 10 students entering medical school.

Indians don’t specialize in grievance. There’s no Indian lobby for greater “representation” in economic or political fields. They place a high value on quality education. You won’t have Indian parents at American public schools clamoring for special dispensation for their children.

Instead, there is a quiet determination among Indian-Americans to take full advantage of being in a land that gives them a range of opportunities unavailable in their country of ancestral origin.

It’s currently unfashionable to reference the American Dream. But one immigrant group, Indian-Americans, are steadfast in acting on that Dream.

They are unapologetic in their drive to thrive and disprove through their achievements that America is a place stifling to individuals based on race.

 E-mail Jim Hartman at lawdocman1@aol.com.