A United States-based Indian-origin CEO, Ravin Gandhi, faced racial abuse this weekend, with messages asking him to “go back to India” and take Nikki Haley along with him. Gandhi was targeted after he wrote an opinion piece saying he would not support President Donald Trump’s economic agenda after he appeared to defend white supremacists following the Charlottesville violence.
The violence erupted in Virginia when hundreds of white supremacists clashed with counter-demonstrators at a rally on August 12, leading to one person’s death and injuries to 19 people when a car drove into a crowd of protesters.
Gandhi wrote in his opinion piece for CNBC: “I recently told the New York Times I was ‘rooting’ for certain aspects of Trump’s economic agenda. After Charlottesville and its aftermath, I will not defend Trump even if the Dow hits 50,000, unemployment goes to 1 per cent, and GDP grows by 7 per cent. Some issues transcend economics, and I will not in good conscience support a president who seems to hate Americans who don’t look like him.”
The Reaction
The reaction to US-born Gandhi’s opinion piece was swift. The 44-year-old founder and CEO of GMM Nonstick Coatings, a global supplier of coatings for cookware and bakeware, was bombarded with hate messages and racial abuse. One of the voicemails he got said, “Get your (expletive) garbage and go back to India also take that other half-(expletive) Bangladesh (expletive) with you, Nikki Haley.”
The minute-and-a-half voice mail he got went on to say: “She’s (Ms Haley) the one that started all this when she took down the Confederate flag. So don’t tell us that you gave him a chance. We don’t give a (expletive) who you gave a chance, OK? We’re going to start taking down Buddhist statues and see how you and Nikki Haley like that.”
Why He Went Public
Gandhi posted the voicemail on YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook and also shared the nasty emails he got.
☮
️ pic.twitter.com/6SYtoHJfeP— Ravin Gandhi (@RavinGandhi1) August 18, 2017
Sigh pic.twitter.com/byZAClBnaN
— Ravin Gandhi (@RavinGandhi1) August 18, 2017
Photo Credit:Twitter
Gandhi decided to go public with the racial abuse he received after he saw the reaction his clients gave after he played the voicemail for them during lunch, according to The Chicago Tribune.
“It was obvious that people thought my professional position somewhat protected me. I wanted to show people that racism is blind to socio-economics. It just is,” Gandhi told the publication.
He added: “Even though my race is a complete non-issue in my day-to-day life, the sad reality is there’s a group of racists in the USA that views me as a second-class citizen. I wanted my peers in the business community, the civic community, my friend community to see that this can happen to me. Because there’s this delusion that racism is dead because Obama was elected.”
His Heroes
Gandhi wrote the opinion piece because when Trump equated hate groups with those protesting it, he found his “moral leadership on this issue is reprehensible”.
While his sharing a “bigoted” voicemail may not make a big difference, he admits, he mphasises that he will speak out against such abuse as long as he has a platform to do so. “My heroes are Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, people who stood up against insane odds. And let’s be honest – I live in doorman-protected building in the Gold Coast. For me to say that I’m suffering in any real sense is insane. But many people in this city who don’t have resources really are suffering,” he said.
Before the Chicago Tribune interviewed him, he had tweeted a portion of Martin Luther King’s 1963 Letter from Birmingham Jail, a defence of non-violent resistance. “If you read what he says, you still see it happening now: People are settling for negative peace, which is the absence of tension, rather than positive peace, which is the presence of justice,” Gandhi said.