Opinion | Vivek Ramaswamy Is the Latest in a Line of Politically Problematic Tech Bros

Ramaswamy has checked many of Republicans’ current ideological boxes, saying he wants to “shut down” the F.B.I., declaring “I will end affirmative action in America” and calling for raising the voting age to 25 unless younger voters enroll in the military, work as first responders or pass citizenship tests. So it’s not surprising that he’s quickly become a darling of the right. What initially surprised me, though, was an essay this week in Politico Magazine by the former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang — a lawyer turned tech entrepreneur turned politician — advising Ramaswamy on how to win the Republican nomination.

But after I thought about it for a moment, I realized it’s not that surprising, after all.

I started out admiring Yang. When we met on the set of “Real Time With Bill Maher” in 2019, I was impressed. He had a refreshing way of explaining his policy proposals, particularly the economic ones‌, with clarity and charm. I called him a “futurist among conventionalists and Bolsheviks.”

A few months after dropping out of the race, he voiced qualified support for reparations, telling Time: “This country was built on the backs of slaves, and we owe them a massive debt. And I’m for H.R.-40, the bill that explores what reparations would look like,” a statement that suggested that he understood the centrality of race and racism in American history, regardless of where anyone might come down on the issue of reparations.

But the more he revealed ‌himself, particularly around racial issues, the more ‌‌I was ‌put off: His campaign-trail jokes that ‌‌lean‌ed into the Asian American model minority stereotyp‌‌e — “the opposite of Donald Trump is an Asian man who likes math,” “I am Asian, so I know a lot of doctors‌” — caused‌ ‌a lot of Asian Americans‌, and me, to bristle‌.

In the early days of the pandemic, in a ham-handed attempt to address rising anti-Asian hate, Yang wrote, “We Asian Americans need to embrace and show our Americanness in ways we never have before” — as if the problem were Asian Americans failing to prove their Americanness and not vile anti-Asian sentiment.