What it means when the right calls Indian Americans a ‘question’

Illustration by Leah Abucayan/CNN/Getty

Recently, Christopher Rufo, the right-wing activist best known for leading the charge against “critical race theory,” took up a different matter of identity.

On a podcast Rufo hosts with Jonathan Keeperman, an even further-to-the-right figure known online as Lomez, the two spent upwards of an hour discussing what they chose to call “The Indian Question.”

That meant talking about whether, in their estimation, people who traced their roots to the Indian subcontinent could ever assimilate into American society, whether their culture was at odds with American culture and what should be done about their growing numbers and prominence in the US.

The catalyst for the “question,” Rufo said in the introduction, was a post by Texas politician Bo French that had been roiling the MAGA universe over the past few weeks. French, a Republican candidate for Texas railroad commissioner with a history of extreme posting , had shared a photo on X of University of Texas at Austin students celebrating the football team’s comeback win against Ohio State. To his dismay, many of the exultant people in cowboy hats, burnt orange T-shirts and other spirit gear appeared to be of South Asian heritage.

“I heard UT graduation this year looked like this,” French wrote. “I didn’t believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.”

The post was widely and roundly condemned across the political spectrum, including by many Republicans. But as French dug in and continued to falsely portray the students as “foreigners” displacing “Texans,” Rufo and Keeperman took it as an opportunity to promote ideas about ethnicity and Americanness that have long animated factions of the political right.

What is “the Indian question” exactly? The podcast description on YouTube laid it out like this: “Is it about race, class, or something else entirely? We confront America’s most uncomfortable immigration debate.” And then, in a pinned comment from the hosts’ account: “Was Bo French’s tweet racist, or just the truth people are afraid to say?”

By using that title, Rufo and Keeperman were invoking a familiar, now infamous, rhetorical device — putting a marginalized or minority group at the center of a “question” to debate their status in society.

Phrases referring to this or that group as the subject of “the x question” emerged at the end of the 18th century and became widespread in the early 19th century, said Holly Case, a historian of modern Europe at Brown University and author of “The Age of Questions.” Pamphleteers, essayists and legislators in Great Britain considered what the British should do about its North American colonies under the banner “the American question.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: CNN’s “Word of the Week” brings you the meaning behind the words in the news.

Illustration by Alberto Mier/CNN

By the late 19th century, diplomats, debaters and activists had expanded their concerns to all sorts of other “questions”: the woman question, the worker question, the Jewish question, the Eastern question. In that era, “the Indian question” referred to the indigenous population who had occupied North America before the arrival of European settlers.

“Instead of being understood as questions to be answered, these were treated as problems to be solved,” Case writes in her book.

But the answers to these “questions” weren’t necessarily predetermined, Case said. In some cases, the “question” was brought forth by the group at its center — she said Poles raised “the Polish question” to bring the prospect of an independent Polish state into the international sphere.

Similarly, women weighed in on their rights in debates about “the woman question,” and Jewish thinkers engaged with “the Jewish question,” discussing the extent to which their communities should integrate into the broader societies of the countries where they lived, said Lila Corwin Berman, professor of American Jewish history at New York University.

To pose a “question” in a political pamphlet or the pages of a newspaper, Case said, was a surefire way to invite the broader public to weigh in on the issue. “It’s not just deploying an idiom,” she added. “It’s deploying an idiom that is designed for amplification.”

Over time, though, the use of the term shifted to something less participatory — a framing device for people to declare what they intended to do about other people, Case said. The 20th century saw European diplomats and Ottoman authorities debating “the Armenian question,” or what should become of Armenians living under the Ottoman Empire.

And then, in 1942, Nazi Party and German government officials gathered to discuss the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” — the systematic annihilation of Jews. From then on, if anyone chose to raise “the Jewish Question,” it was understood that the answer that person had in mind was the Holocaust.

Contemporary neo-Nazis and other organized bigots use the term “the Jewish Question” — or “the JQ,” when they want to be coy — to signal their embrace of antisemitism.

In that light, “the x question” today often reads as shorthand to describe a group that the question-asker wants to see removed from society.

“It’s using language as a political tool to emphasize the otherness of a group of people, and to try to rally people who are not part of that group to come together and feel some sense of unity,” Berman said.

Alex Slitz/Getty Images

In the podcast discussion of “the Indian question,” Keeperman argued that the very fact that people like French objected to the picture of the football crowd showed that Indian Americans were not part of the American mainstream.

“Successful assimilation is precisely that you wouldn’t notice it,” Keeperman told Rufo. “The mere fact of us being able to notice — that no, this is not an assimilated group, this is just a bunch of Indians at the game — is itself sort of definitionally the case that they’re not yet assimilated.”

At another point, he called Indians “visibly conspicuous, in the way that darker-skinned people are.”

Asked whether he intended to invoke the Holocaust in the title of his podcast episode, Rufo responded in an email: “That’s a ridiculous comparison—anyone can read my moderate, mainstream views on immigration here, ” linking to a commentary he published in City Journal, the policy magazine of the conservative think tank Manhattan Institute, where Rufo is a senior fellow. He added a complaint about CNN and a wish for its employees to lose their jobs.

Rufo did not respond to a follow-up question asking him to clarify whether he was aware of the use of “the Jewish question” when titling the podcast. Keeperman did not respond to a request for comment.

In the City Journal article, Rufo described the idea that “people of Indian descent are an eternal Other who will never become Americans” as a “lie,” and cited the Texas football photo as evidence that Indian Americans “have demonstrated a strong capacity for assimilation.”

He also wrote that Americans were anxious about large-scale immigration, warning that “mass immigration always carries a risk of increasing cultural tensions, balkanization, nepotism, and dislocation” and noting that there are “cities in Texas that are now 20, 30, or 40 percent foreign-born” (that is, 80, 70, or 60 percent native-born).

And, notwithstanding Indian Americans’ ability to enjoy college football, he argued that Indian immigrants were importing a “high-stakes testing culture” that was at odds with what he called the American approach.

In the podcast, he returned to that point, even as he disputed some of Keeperman’s other anti-immigrant positions. “You’re not supposed to study for the spelling bee,” Rufo said, nodding to Indian Americans excelling in spelling competitions. “It’s just a fun thing you do once a year … That’s the American culture. The Indian culture is different.”

The question the hosts were debating, by pointing to a specific subset of one immigrant group, was precisely how incompatible Indian Americans were with American culture, and by what degree Indian immigration should be discouraged.

Rufo is open about his desire to use rhetoric to achieve political ends. “You have to fight on terms that you define,” he said in a 2022 speech at the conservative Hillsdale College. “You have to create your own frame, your own language. And you have to be ruthless and brutal in pursuit of something good.”

On X and in media interviews, he has stated plainly that he seeks to use propaganda to further his goals. When asked on “ The Ezra Klein Show” about Tucker Carlson promoting false narratives that fed the racist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, Rufo claimed that the underlying claims beneath the bigotry had merit.

“In fact, it’s just a basic question — a question that people in the United States have been asking since the 1770s: Who are we? What is an American?” he said. “And if we are a sovereign nation, we have not just the right, but really the obligation, to determine these great questions of who comes in and who doesn’t come in.”

Though Rufo prefers to present himself as just asking questions about Americans’ concerns about race and immigration, he also promotes bigotry. After Donald Trump falsely claimed in a 2024 presidential debate that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating cats and dogs, Rufo offered a $5,000 bounty to anyone who could substantiate the claim. A few days later, he claimed success, sharing a grainy video from 2023 that was filmed in Dayton, Ohio — not Springfield — showing an unidentified and ambiguous-looking animal on a grill, attributed to a purported cook who was not Haitian.

In posing “the Indian question” on his podcast, Rufo tried to strike a similarly measured tone. He said that some Indian Americans, “especially upper caste Indians where we’re skimming from in our immigration system,” had proven themselves to be highly capable of assimilating and that the group’s regard for success, family stability and education were admirable.

But the reality, he said, was that too many immigrants — Indian and otherwise — had arrived in the US in too short a time. And their presence, his co-host added, threatened the white majority and the “Anglo-American” character of the nation.

“It’s important even to preserve a white majority and preserve this white, Anglo-Protestant sort of character,” Keeperman said. “That actually is essential to who we are.”

That premise is more and more openly expressed by the political right in the US, including many of the most powerful and influential members of the Trump administration. The country’s current immigration policies are controlled by people who believe that the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, which ended exclusionary quotas against non-European immigrants including South Asians, needs to be rolled back.

The political right has been targeting Indian Americans for more than a year, with racist rhetoric deployed against the H1-B visa program, Sikh truck drivers and Hindu temples and festivals.

Researchers from the Center for the Study of Organized Hate report a sharp increase in anti-South Asian sentiment on X and fringe social platforms since 2025. Raqib Naik, the center’s founder and executive director, said that the team documented an influx of posts portraying South Asians as invaders, job thieves and a demographic threat, evoking Great Replacement theory and remigration rhetoric. He also noted the emergence of doxxing networks targeting South Asian individuals, influencer-led harassment campaigns and documentary-style videos from right-wing organizations that frame the presence of Indian immigrants as an inherent problem.

The podcasters’ choice to hold forth on “The Indian Question” is helping manufacture the idea that Indian immigrants pose a threat to American society, Naik said.

“We need to understand the fact that the real-world harm to these communities doesn’t happen as one straight step. It’s a process,” he said. “This demonizing, this hysterical, stereotypical, violent language contributes to that process, and people with platforms as huge as Chris Rufo contribute immensely to that process.”

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插图：Leah Abucayan/CNN/Getty

最近，以带头反对“批判种族理论”而闻名的右翼活动家克里斯托弗·鲁福，开始关注另一个身份认同问题。

在鲁福与乔纳森·基珀曼（Jonathan Keeperman，网名洛梅兹，立场更为右倾）共同主持的一档播客节目中，两人花了一个多小时讨论他们称之为“印第安人问题”的话题。

这意味着要讨论他们认为祖籍印度次大陆的人是否有可能融入美国社会，他们的文化是否与美国文化相冲突，以及应该如何应对他们在美国日益增长的人口数量和影响力。

鲁福在引言中指出，引发这一“问题”的导火索是德克萨斯州政客博·弗伦奇（Bo French）在过去几周里激起“让美国再次伟大”（MAGA）运动支持者们的强烈不满。弗伦奇是德克萨斯州铁路专员的共和党候选人，他此前就以发表极端言论而闻名。他在X网站上分享了一张照片，照片中德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校的学生们正在庆祝橄榄球队逆转战胜俄亥俄州立大学。令他沮丧的是，照片中许多头戴牛仔帽、身穿橙色T恤和其他助威服饰的欢呼雀跃的人似乎都是南亚裔。

“我听说今年德克萨斯大学的毕业典礼是这样的，”弗伦奇写道。“我简直不敢相信。现在看来，问题显然比任何人想象的都要严重得多。”

这篇帖子遭到了各界人士的广泛谴责，包括许多共和党人。但随着弗伦奇坚持己见，继续错误地将学生描绘成取代“德州人”的“外国人”，鲁福和基珀曼则借此机会宣扬长期以来在右翼政治派别中盛行的关于种族和美国性的理念。

“印度问题”究竟是什么？YouTube上的播客简介是这样解释的：“这是种族问题、阶级问题，还是完全其他的问题？我们将直面美国最棘手的移民辩论。” 随后，主持人账号置顶了一条评论：“博·弗伦奇的推文是种族歧视，还是人们不敢说的真相？”

通过使用这个标题，鲁福和基珀曼援引了一种熟悉的、现在臭名昭著的修辞手法——将边缘化或少数群体置于“问题”的中心，以辩论他们在社会中的地位。

布朗大学现代欧洲史学家、著有《疑问的时代》一书的霍莉·凯斯表示，将某个群体称为“X问题”的短语出现于18世纪末，并在19世纪初广泛流传。在英国，小册子作者、散文家和立法者们在“美国问题”的旗帜下，思考着英国应该如何处理其北美殖民地的问题。

编者按：CNN的“每周一词”栏目为您解读新闻中出现的词语背后的含义。

插图：Alberto Mier/CNN

到了19世纪末，外交官、辩论家和活动家们将关注范围扩大到各种各样的其他“问题”：妇女问题、工人问题、犹太人问题、东方问题。在那个时代，“印第安人问题”指的是在欧洲殖民者到来之前居住在北美的原住民。

“这些问题没有被理解为需要解答的问题，而是被当作需要解决的问题来处理，”凯斯在她的书中写道。

但凯斯表示，这些“问题”的答案并非预先设定好的。在某些情况下，“问题”是由其核心群体提出的——例如，波兰人提出“波兰问题”，旨在将波兰独立建国的前景引入国际社会。

纽约大学美国犹太历史教授莉拉·科温·伯曼表示，同样地，女性在关于“女性问题”的辩论中表达了她们的权利，犹太思想家也参与了“犹太问题”的讨论，探讨他们的社群应该在多大程度上融入他们所居住国家的更广泛的社会。

凯斯说，在政治宣传册或报纸上提出“问题”，是吸引广大公众参与讨论的有效方法。“这不仅仅是运用一种修辞手法，”她补充道，“而是运用一种旨在扩大影响的修辞手法。”

然而，随着时间的推移，这个词的用法逐渐变得参与性降低——它成为人们用来表明自己打算如何对待其他人的框架，凯斯说道。20世纪，欧洲外交官和奥斯曼当局就“亚美尼亚问题”展开辩论，即生活在奥斯曼帝国统治下的亚美尼亚人应该如何处置。

随后，在1942年，纳粹党和德国政府官员齐聚一堂，讨论“犹太人问题的最终解决方案”——即系统性地灭绝犹太人。从那时起，如果有人提出“犹太人问题”，人们便默认其答案就是大屠杀。

当代新纳粹分子和其他有组织的偏执狂使用“犹太人问题”（或“JQ”，当他们想委婉一点时）一词来表明他们对反犹主义的拥护。

从这个角度来看，“x问题”如今常常被解读为一种简略的说法，用来描述提问者希望从社会中清除出去的某个群体。

伯曼说：“这是将语言作为一种政治工具，强调某个群体的异类性，并试图团结不属于该群体的人们，让他们走到一起，感受到某种团结感。”

Alex Slitz/Getty Images

在播客中讨论“印度人问题”时，基珀曼认为，像弗伦奇这样的人反对足球观众的照片，这一事实本身就表明，印度裔美国人不属于美国主流社会。

“成功的同化恰恰在于你根本察觉不到它的存在，”基珀曼告诉鲁福。“我们能够注意到——不，这不是一个被同化的群体，这只是一群来看比赛的印第安人——这一事实本身就从定义上证明了他们还没有被同化。”

在另一处，他称印度人“像肤色较深的人一样，在人群中非常显眼”。

当被问及是否意在播客节目标题中提及大屠杀时，鲁福在邮件中回应道：“这种比较太荒谬了——任何人都可以点击这里阅读我关于移民问题的温和主流观点。”邮件中附有他发表在《城市杂志》（City Journal）上的一篇评论文章的链接。《城市杂志》是保守派智库曼哈顿研究所的政策杂志，鲁福是该研究所的高级研究员。他还对CNN进行了抨击，并希望其员工丢掉工作。

当被问及是否知晓播客标题中使用了“犹太人问题”一词时，鲁福没有回应后续提问。基珀曼也未回复置评请求。

在《城市杂志》的文章中，鲁福将“印度裔人士永远是‘他者’，永远不会成为美国人”的观点描述为“谎言”，并引用德克萨斯州橄榄球照片作为证据，证明印度裔美国人“已经表现出很强的同化能力”。

他还写道，美国人对大规模移民感到焦虑，警告说“大规模移民总是会带来加剧文化紧张、分裂、裙带关系和动荡的风险”，并指出“德克萨斯州的一些城市现在有 20%、30% 或 40% 的人口是外国出生的”（也就是说，本地出生的人口占 80%、70% 或 60%）。

尽管印度裔美国人能够享受大学橄榄球，但他认为印度移民正在引入一种“高风险考试文化”，这与他所谓的美国方式相悖。

在播客节目中，他再次提及这一点，同时反驳了基珀曼的其他一些反移民观点。“你不应该为了拼字比赛而刻意学习，”鲁福说道，同时点头表示印度裔美国人在拼字比赛中表现出色。“这只是每年一次的娱乐活动……这就是美国文化。印度文化则不同。”

主持人通过指出一个特定移民群体中的特定子集，来辩论一个问题：印度裔美国人与美国文化究竟有多么不相容，以及应该在多大程度上阻止印度移民。

鲁福毫不掩饰自己想要利用修辞手段达成政治目的的愿望。他在2022年于保守派希尔斯代尔学院发表的演讲中说道：“你必须按照自己定义的规则去战斗。你必须创造自己的框架，自己的语言。为了追求美好的事物，你必须冷酷无情，毫不留情。”

在X电台和媒体采访中，他明确表示，他试图利用宣传来实现自己的目标。当被问及塔克·卡尔森散布的虚假信息助长了种族主义的“大替换”阴谋论时，鲁福在“埃兹拉·克莱因秀”节目中声称，这种偏见背后隐藏的某些论点并非毫无道理。

“事实上，这只是一个基本问题——一个自18世纪70年代以来美国人民一直在问的问题：我们是谁？什么是美国人？”他说道。“如果我们是一个主权国家，我们不仅有权利，而且确实有义务来决定谁能入境、谁不能入境这些重大问题。”

尽管鲁福更愿意将自己塑造成一个只关心美国民众对种族和移民问题的提问者，但他实际上也在宣扬偏见。在2024年总统大选辩论中，唐纳德·特朗普错误地声称俄亥俄州斯普林菲尔德的海地移民正在吃猫狗后，鲁福悬赏5000美元，奖励任何能够证实这一说法的人。几天后，他声称自己找到了证据，并分享了一段拍摄于2023年的模糊视频。这段视频并非在斯普林菲尔德拍摄，而是在俄亥俄州代顿拍摄的。视频中，一只身份不明、外形模糊的动物被放在烤架上，而烹饪者据称并非海地人。

鲁福在播客节目中提出“印度裔问题”时，试图保持类似的谨慎语气。他表示，一些印度裔美国人，“尤其是我们移民体系中被边缘化的上层种姓印度人”，已经证明他们具有很强的融入能力，而且他们对成功、家庭稳定和教育的重视令人钦佩。

但他表示，现实情况是，太多移民——包括印度移民和其他国家移民——在太短的时间内涌入美国。他的搭档补充说，他们的存在威胁到了白人多数群体以及美国的“盎格鲁-撒克逊裔美国人”特性。

“保持白人多数地位，保持这种白人盎格鲁-撒克逊新教徒的特征，这一点非常重要，”基珀曼说。“这实际上对我们是谁至关重要。”

美国右翼政治势力，包括特朗普政府中许多最有权势和影响力的成员，越来越公开地表达这种观点。美国现行的移民政策由那些认为需要废除1965年《移民和国籍法》的人掌控。该法案结束了针对包括南亚人在内的非欧洲移民的排他性配额。

一年多来，右翼政治势力一直以印度裔美国人为攻击目标，对 H1-B 签证计划、锡克教卡车司机以及印度教寺庙和节日发表种族主义言论。

来自组织仇恨研究中心的研究人员报告称，自2025年以来，X平台和一些边缘社交平台上的反南亚裔情绪急剧上升。该中心创始人兼执行主任拉基布·奈克表示，他们的团队记录到大量帖子将南亚裔描绘成入侵者、抢走工作机会的人和人口威胁，并援引了“大替换”理论和“回流”论调。他还指出，出现了针对南亚裔人士的“人肉搜索”网络、由网红发起的骚扰活动，以及右翼组织制作的纪录片式视频，这些视频将印度移民的存在描绘成一种固有问题。

奈克表示，播客主播们选择就“印度问题”大放厥词，助长了印度移民对美国社会构成威胁的观念。

“我们需要明白，这些群体在现实世界中遭受的伤害并非一蹴而就，而是一个过程，”他说。“这种妖魔化、歇斯底里、刻板印象和暴力的言论助长了这一过程，而像克里斯·鲁福这样拥有巨大影响力的人更是对此推波助澜。”

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白宫及其他地区记者证的复杂之处

美国何时开始使用“美国”这个名称？

将古巴人丢弃在非洲算是“驱逐出境”吗？

在硅谷看来，任何事情都可能是“心理战”。