Progressive Racial Representation or Strategic Whiteness?: Raj and Priya Koothrappali in The Big Bang Theory

ABSTRACT This racial rhetorical analysis draws from strategic whiteness to examine the 2007–2019 TV sitcom, The Big Bang Theory (TBBT)’s construction of Asian Indian characters, Raj and Priya Koothrappali. This critique maps how Priya, through White racial bonding, is rhetorically developed as the wary antagonist of TBBT, and Raj is constituted as childlike and sexually ambiguous. Subsequently, both are situated as unappealing romantic partners to those within the bounds of whiteness, and serve as catalysts for White racial coupling, thereby maintaining White normativity and power. The paper closes with a discussion of the analysis’s ideological implications within a historical context characterized by the racialization, exclusion, and maltreatment of Asian Americans within the U.S.