J.D. Vance Is A Terrible Father
He's Throwing His Children To The Wolves In A Cynical Quest For Power
Eight years ago, as the first Trump campaign was reaching its crescendo, I had a falling out with an elementary school friend of mine, Jim. A staunch Trump supporter who wanted to ban Muslims and “put blacks in their place,” he finally crossed a line with me, and I cut off contact with him. He defended his overt racism by saying he voted for Obama twice and that he had a black wife who was a Democrat and two biracial children, then aged 12 and 10. One of the last things I said to him was his children would grow up to disown him because of his views. My exact words were a bit more colorful. I told him that when he spoke so negatively about black people, his children were going to hear it, internalize it, and struggle with their own identity because of it. He scoffed at that, saying, “My children know I’m not talking about them. They’re half white.”
You’ll never guess what has happened since.
Earlier this summer, I reconnected with a few elementary school friends who gave me an update on his situation. His children, now 20 and 18, have predictably disowned him since he and his wife divorced. A mutual friend explained that his daughter, the older child, was self-harming as a teenager and admitted it had to do with her father’s past comments about black women and how it made her feel as a black woman. Jim seemed shocked and blind-sighted by all this. The mutual friend said he clarified to his children that he “wasn’t talking about them.” In a similar response to one Elon Musk made about his estranged relationship with his transgender child, he complained that others, including his liberal ex-wife, had “brainwashed” them into hating him. Today, he no longer has contact with either child. He has since moved to – wait for it – Florida.
Jim’s situation came back into my mind again when Republican vice presidential nominee and Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance made comments last week suggesting that immigrants negatively affect the prosperity of the United States. The comment surprised me not just because it’s wrong – America is and has been the most prosperous country in the world, and immigration, bringing in both innovators and laborers like my ancestors, was a big part of that – but also because it’s a direct attack on his own family. Vance’s wife, Usha, is the child of immigrants from India. Vance’s in-laws are scientists and academics who immigrated to California.
His comments made me wonder how his young children would see their grandparents and themselves. I imagine he will say his remarks don’t apply to them. That’s not good enough. Vance telling his children that his grandparents are the exception isn’t going to work, just like Jim telling his kids his opinion on black people doesn’t apply to them didn’t work. It does not matter to a person of color that your father or son-in-law sees you as the “exception” because a million others like him don’t. They don’t know you well enough. Strangers will not see Vance’s children the same way he does, just like Jim’s daughter realized she wasn’t the exception to others who spoke like her father. There are no exceptions to bigotry. You are the negative stereotype until you prove yourself otherwise.
Anyone who, like me, has listened to how many xenophobic white people talk about immigrants knows that for them, anyone who is not white cannot be considered American, even if they were born here.
When Vance’s children are seen by the people whose votes he and his running mate seek, they won’t be seen as Americans. The voters Vance is trying to entice to elect him vice president are going to see his children and his wife’s family as invaders changing our culture, taking our jobs, and making America look less like America. It does not matter if they were born here. J.D. Vance is further fanning the flames of hate that risk reaching his own children for no other reason than to be one heartbeat away from the most powerful office in the world. What kind of father does this?
Even worse is that Vance made a complete 180-degree turn from his earlier opinions on immigrants. In 2016, long before he was a U.S. Senator and back when Jim and I fell out, Vance said, “Trump makes people I care about afraid. Immigrants, Muslims, etc. Because of this, I find him reprehensible. God wants better of us.”
Today, Vance himself is making immigrants afraid. What changed? Vance claims he was influenced into doing a complete change by “what he’s seeing” in places like Springfield, Ohio, where several thousand Haitian immigrants, all here legally, have moved in to fill jobs in local factories. Vance claimed the reason he changed his views was the lies he have regurgitated about immigrants there: that they’re eating pets and contributing to spreading disease and crime. None of that is accurate, and he even admits it. Yet he claims that is the reason he’s changed his views. It doesn’t add up. How do you completely change your views on something based on information you know to be untrue?
A better explanation is that he realized that to achieve the type of power he craved, he would have to change his views cynically and adopt ones that would boomerang negatively on his children and family. He sacrificed their mental, emotional, and even physical well-being for a taste of power. I don’t have children, but if I did, I could not imagine putting the quest for power over them. I couldn’t imagine doing it for my friends’ or cousins’ children.
That’s probably why I’d be a failure as a politician. But unlike Vance, I’d rather be a good father than a successful politician.
Great article. I can only imagine what Vance’s children will think of their father defending a racist who hates them for their color. It isn’t pretty.
This is the most pathetic, petty, unsophisticated bs I have ever read on substack. You sound like a fourteen year old girl plotting the demise of your nemesis through some sort rumour campaign about details you can’t possibly know anything about. Grow up.