The mediated life of (Ajit) Pai: Disciplining ‘model minorities’ in neoliberal times

ABSTRACT The last several years has seen an incredible rise in the visibility of right wing South Asian American politicians. This essay examines the unprecedented media battle waged by and against one such figure, Ajit Pai, the Trump-appointed Chair of the Federal Communications Commission who led a charge to repeal net neutrality. This battle, which took place through promotional videos that Pai produced and a racist meme-driven backlash, is a rich archive for exploring the shifting racial constructions of the ‘model minority’ in neoliberal times. It reveals new ways in which the ‘model minority’ is performing race and in turn being racialized. It thereby extends our understanding of how model minority discourse works as a strategy of state governance and of disciplining people of color. Pai enacts what I call ‘model minority cool’, a subject position that insidiously deploys race: while it performs ‘cool’ to identify as a person of color who experiences racism, it perpetuates white supremacy. In turn, the backlash against Pai reveals that the model minority is now fungible with the intersecting, abject categories of terrorist, fag, and Black, extending the disciplining reach of model minority ideology.