I was all for representation in politics until I had to think this much about white wives. But here we are, a week in, removed from the most important election in American history, and once again wondering out loud about J.D. Vance’s wife, Usha Vance.
The latest installment is an expansive feature about her, her career, and her (presumed) politics in a cut that attempts to unravel the mystery of Vance. “She has kept most of her beliefs, political and otherwise, secret,” Irin Carmon writes. The piece includes quotes from former friends and colleagues who remain perplexed by her silent co-signing of her husband’s fundamentally terrible politics. “At first I thought that she probably wouldn’t be happy with this and that they would eventually divorce,” one former friend told the Cut. “Then I saw her at the Republican National Convention and wondered if she could really make it.”
Let’s go to the quick answer. Yes, she is in it. It doesn’t matter that her parents are Indian immigrants, or that she was raised as a Hindu, or that she has remained silent about her political opinions. Given that she clerked for Justice Brett Kavanaugh (before he became a Supreme Court Justice) and Chief Justice John Roberts (while he was a Supreme Court Justice), no attempt has been made to decipher the tea leaves until now. It has been done many times before, but the truth is almost right in front of our eyes. .
What ultimately matters is who she is married to and whether she stays married to him. Vance hasn’t said much here about her own politics or how much she agrees with her husband, but you don’t need to know much about Vance’s personal ideology to know where she lands. Her position is clear, as she is married to the founder of the ideology in question. We don’t like that and would like to give her more of a chance to escape.
Perhaps it’s time to call out the ugly parts. If she were white, we wouldn’t be so embarrassed by Vance’s husband’s loud and quiet signs. It’s her identity and experience (brown, educated, lawyer, first generation) that puzzles people, realizing that she is perhaps more aligned with her husband than we realize. For example, if we were talking about fellow Appalachian bootstrapper Sally Vance, there would be less confusion about what she has shown so clearly through her relationships. For women, marriage is both personal and political. They offer protection but also demand loyalty. Vance has repeatedly demonstrated that loyalty by attending speeches at the Republican National Convention and by his silence when a foolish husband says he loves his wife, even though “obviously she’s not white.” It shows.
She hasn’t made any attempts to come to JD’s defense, including trying hard to understand his now infamous “childless cat lady” comment. “What he was really saying is that it’s really hard to be a parent in this country,” she told Tucker Carlson in August. This is not what he really said. Choosing to speak to a Fox News host in the midst of relative media silence is a position in itself. Her allegiance is not to her race, her gender, or the community she was born into. It’s about husbands, and it’s an agreement women have made since the advent of marriage licenses. For politicians’ wives, the arrangement is often even clearer. Vance is opting for a less far-fetched version of what first and second ladies have been doing in election after election. Her quietness doesn’t make her mysterious.
The hope among those around Vance seems to be that she will soften her husband, that her positions on minority groups can lead him to more moderate positions on abortion and immigration. But why is it more likely that Vance will push her husband to the left, and less likely for the couple to turn in the same direction, even to the right? What do we know about her and where she comes from ideologically? Even if people believe she is, they shouldn’t assume she is liberal in the first place, since they know very little.
What white voters, conservatives and liberals alike, seem to have forgotten is the long tail of the model minority myth that many in the South Asian diaspora have aligned themselves with for decades. From Dinesh D’Souza to Nikki Haley to Vivek Ramaswamy to your loser cousin who thinks he got into Georgetown because he’s smarter than everyone and not because of affirmative action, our public lexicon is filled with countless names. There are countless examples. We are good brown people and we have nothing to fear. South Asians sometimes associate themselves with their own oppressors in order to avoid hearing the issue of racism. That’s true for many minority groups, but when you add to this the unspoken terms of marriage (very Tammy Wynette, very “Stand by Your Man”), you create an inescapable vortex. If the woman in question even wants to run away.
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If Vance wants to distance himself politically from his husband, he is certainly free to do so. But the reality is she doesn’t and probably won’t. There is no greater protection in the world than marriage to a white man with education, money, and political power. Although Vance herself is highly educated and well-connected, it pales in comparison to what her husband brought to the world. This is the kind of security that women have sought for generations, and in fact for a long time was the only protection they had access to. We are still at the stage where women of color have the same rights as their white husbands. Asian American women like Vance did not receive full voting rights until the 1950s. Most states didn’t close the spousal rape loophole until the ’70s. Her marriage is a message, and it’s one she stands for, even if she chooses to do so mostly silently.
You don’t need to do any intellectual gymnastics to understand Vance’s position. There are no mysteries to solve here. Vance is intelligent, educated, and thoughtful. She knows who she married. So do we. She doesn’t leave him because she doesn’t want to. She has not spoken out against his policies. Because I have no interest in doing so. She’s not here to save anyone. She’s not a mystery. She’s just a woman married to a man, doing what wives always do.
