A Dinner Proposal For Saira Rao

A three course meal for anti-racist activists to learn about their own racism.

Saira Rao: racism disguised as anti-racism

by Ben Cohen

Recently, anti-racist activist and filmmaker Saira Rao was dropped from her powerful Hollywood agency CAA over what they perceived to be antisemitic comments about the Israel-Gaza conflict. Rao also recently intimated on Twitter that Jewish doctors were involved in a conspiracy to harm minorities:

This is a story worth exploring for a number of reasons, but primarily because it highlights the overt racism of left wing activists under the guise of “anti-racism.”

The dinner party from hell

According to her various social media channels, Rao’s life is almost entirely dedicated to telling white women how evil they are:

Rao and fellow activist Regina Jackson founded an organization called “Race2Dinner” where they charge white women $2500 for “exceedingly difficult conversations” about how they “uphold white supremacy every single day.” Through the program, Rao and Jackson aim to “decolonize” white people’s dining rooms through a mixture of confrontation, shame, and emotional manipulation. Almost everything white women say and do is, according to the anti-racist activists, part and parcel of white supremacy — including questioning the ludicrous price tag of the dinner.

“White supremacy culture has you believing that you are doing us a favor by even caring about racism or antiracism,” say Rao and Jackson. “This results in your incessant demands that we educate you—on your own racism, on a system you created to harm us for your benefit. For free.”

Black and brown women have, according to the duo, “provided free labor for you [white people]” for far too long, so the extortionate price is part of compensating them for historic injustices.

To most reasonable people this sounds like what it is: a grift. The pair have found a remarkably lucrative business taking advantage of self-flagellating liberals. Unfortunately, in the new era of radical identity politics and hierarchies of oppression, Rao and Jackson are being hailed as heroes.

How exactly did liberals arrive at a place where blatant racism towards white people — and Jews — makes you an anti-racist? The personal history of Rao, and others like her, provide some clues.

The new hierarchy

Class and caste systems are fairly alien concepts to most Americans. In the US, society largely divides itself by skin color. From the historic legacy of slavery and Jim Crow to new radical left wing identity politics, your skin color is used to categorize your virtue, or your privilege.

In today’s racially charged climate, the ethno-nationalistic ideology of the right ascribes virtue to whiteness, while radical left wing identity politics ascribes moral superiority to non-whiteness. As Bangladeshi-American journalist Razib Khan writes, this poses a complex issue for second generation Indians — most of whom have grown up with immense privilege due to the Indian caste system:

In 21st-century America we do not talk much about class. We talk about race. When “black and brown” is used as an incantation it is not surprising that many young Indians are attracted to the idea that they, too, are among the wretched of the earth.

So you see young people of a bronze shade with names such as Iyer, Mukherjee and Tripathi, claiming for themselves the centuries of oppression and trauma of others, American history adopted and co-opted. They decry white supremacy which confirmed upon their ancestors’ their ancient ritual purity during the colonial period — for the forefathers of these Iyers, Mukherjees and Tripathis were the rural landowners of British India; they were the Indians who manned the colonial civil service. But before that, their privileges went back centuries, long before the United States existed and indeed even before England or France emerged.

There is nothing inherently wrong with taking up the fight against racism as an ally, and most Indian Americans likely have noble intentions. But as Khan notes, there is something decidedly wrong about co-opting other ethnic groups suffering to improve one’s social status. Khan’s argument is supported by hard evidence too: surveys show first generation Indians are far less likely to report incidents of racism than their offspring — this despite the US becoming far less racist than it ever has been.

One example of this ‘suffering appropriation’ comes from Indian American comedian Hasan Minhaj, who invented stories about discrimination he experienced growing up. In one particularly egregious case, Minhaj claimed on his Netflix special “Homecoming King” that a white girlfriend rejected him because the girl’s parents didn’t want their daughter to take pictures with “a brown boy.” The New Yorker tracked down the woman in question who gave an entirely different account of events — an account Minhaj begrudgingly accepted was true. As a result of Minhaj’s lies, the woman and her family “faced online threats and doxing for years.”

Minhaj is a comedian and does have some artistic license to retell stories for effect, but the trend is worrying. As Bill Maher commented in response to the Minhaj story, “Younger generations have a real problem with wanting to build their identity around being a victim. They want to have racism to fight, not fight racism — have racism to fight so badly that when it’s not there, they make it up. And there’s enough real racism in the world, but making it more doesn’t help.”

Anti-racist activists like Saira Rao though, have taken the co-opting of suffering and victimhood to an entirely new level.

How to be an anti-racist racist

The Virginia born Rao is a second generation Indian American of Brahmin descent. Brahmins are the highest ranking of the four social classes in Hindu India and part of a deeply entrenched, 3,000 year old caste system that still dictates most social and economic interaction. Brahmins in modern India and around the world still hold on to immense privilege. From inherited wealth to access to education and higher learning, Brahmins wield huge power over other Indians — and not just in in India.

Rao’s parents were doctors, she went to private school, and is a lawyer by training. She also ran for Congress in Virginia, and is married to a wealthy private equity investor.

For Rao, this battle against white supremacy is intensely personal — so personal that Rao has openly admitted to hating white people:

In the wake of the Israel/Hamas conflict, Rao has directed her anti-white venom towards Jews (or Zionists).

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When in doubt, go for the Jews

Zionists, claim Rao, are really white supremacists in disguise. More than that, these white supremacist Jews are involved in sophisticated plots to do harm to real minorities (ie people of color).

There is a lot to unpack in Rao’s charge against Jewish doctors.

Firstly, there’s the inference that Zionists are white supremacists or racist — an argument that has no basis in reality. Zionism emerged in the late 19th century in Central and Eastern Europe as a national Jewish revival movement. It arose specifically in response to anti-Semitism and waves of pogroms in Eastern Europe. Theodor Herzl, the movement's founder, believed anti-Semitism to be so entrenched in European society that Jews could only be safe in a nation-state of their own. In other words, Zionism was about protecting Jews from racism.

Secondly, in classic radical identity politics fashion, Rao also portrays the Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, South Asian and Black population as a monolith — all black and brown victims of white (or Jewish) oppressors. Never mind the fact that violent hate crimes against Asian people in America are disproportionately committed by black people, or that anti-black racism is rife in South-East Asian communities.

Thirdly, Rao’s provides no evidence of Zionist/Jewish doctors conspiring to harm black and brown patients. In her world view it is a given that Jews (white people) want to do harm to black and brown people, because that’s just what white people do:

It is of course a little difficult to reconcile Rao’s depiction of the appalling racism she has suffered in white supremacist America with her astonishing financial success. But then questioning this is no doubt another form of white supremacy.

A dinner proposal for Saira

Given Saira Rao is dedicated to confronting hierarchies, racism, and unconscious bias, Rao might find the following proposal for an expensive dinner with the Holocaust survivors to be instructive.

During this dinner, the Holocaust survivors could tell Rao about what it actually means to suffer from white supremacy. They could tell her about the thousands of years their ancestors have suffered in every country they have ever lived in, from the violent expulsions in Spain and England to the pogroms in eastern Europe. They could tell Rao about the mass slaughter in Germany that saw six million Jews enslaved, tortured, and burnt in ovens. They could also tell her what it was like to endure scientific experiments on their bodies, to watch their parents, siblings and children tortured to death.

After the first course, the Holocaust survivors might tell Rao what it is like to live with the ever present memory of this murderous persecution, and to know that the country you live in can — and will — turn on you in an instant. She can learn about the history of violent persecution Jews have faced in America, and the violent persecution they face today. The survivors can explain the fear all Jews live with — the nervousness that only other Jews recognize that resides deeply in their DNA. They can explain to her what it is like to not be able to trace your ancestry because they were all murdered in death camps.

For desert, Rao can sit through a lecture on the great privilege she has not being Jewish. She can learn about why her children won’t have to stay home from school when there is a “day of vengeance” targeted towards all Jews. She can learn about the privilege of not being the perpetrator of virtually every popular conspiracy theory in history. She can learn about the privilege she has not seeing Jews murdered on social media, then having global celebrations because of it. As someone who succeeded in part because of her caste, Rao can also learn about what success looks like without ancestral privilege. She can learn why genuinely oppressed minorities don’t appropriate the suffering of others for profit, because they truly know what it means to suffer.

Perhaps most importantly, the Holocaust survivors can teach Rao what it means to be grateful. Despite its difficult history, America has long been a haven for ethnic and religious minorities. Rao has the freedom to marry whom she chooses, work in any industry, and speak her mind freely. These are freedoms Americans of all colors fought for — including white Americans.

Of course Rao would never entertain the idea of a dinner like this, because it would challenge her worldview that skin color alone defines privilege and power. It would also threaten her status as an officially oppressed person — a status that confers immense power in the circles she moves in. More than that, it would chip away at her belief that she is an anti-racist and confront her with the real truth: that she is the very thing she claims to hate.

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