Chandler Langevin faced censure from Palm Bay council and calls to resign from series of posts condemned as ‘vile’

A city councilmember in Florida is facing backlash from national Indian American organizations, members of Congress, and local residents after posting a series of social media messages that insulted Indian people living in the US and called for them to be deported en masse.

Chandler Langevin, a Palm Bay council member elected last year, made derogatory comments about Indian people across several posts on the social media platform X over roughly three weeks this fall. He claimed that Indians come to America to “drain our pockets” before returning to India, “or worse … to stay”.

His remarks have sparked widespread anger. Since 29 September, residents along with regional and national Indian American groups have crowded Palm Bay city council meetings and demanded that he step down.

  • I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world
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    8 hours ago

    Yes, I agree. For too long now, wealthy Indians in the top 1% have been coming to the US to become CEO’s or executives of US tech companies and completely running them into the ground with greedy, short-term, profit-driven strategies; completely spitting in the face of their customers and the legacy the companies once stood for, and eroding their position in the global market.

    Of course, he means those Indians, right? Not the massive number of hard-working individuals who simply came to try and build a good life for themselves?

  • teft@piefed.social
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    10 hours ago

    “The Brevard Republican Party does not condone or share Mr. Chandler Langevin’s position with regard to the Indian community and culture here in our County,” Brevard county’s Republican party chair, Rick Lacey, said in a statement. “Even though Mr. Langevin is a registered Republican, his views are his, and his alone.”

    Yeah, just ignore that you can shake a republican tree and fifteen racists fall out. Yeah, it’s just his opinion. Not the rest of them. No sirree.

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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    12 hours ago

    I’ll never really understand why so many Indians think white supremacists will accept them, just because a lot of Indians also have bigoted views on skin color.

    Like, they can bond with white supremacists over hating darker skin. But at the end of the day no white supremacist will view any Indian as “one of us”.

    Hell, they still don’t really accept Irish or Catholics. They’re never going to accept an Indian.

    I’m constantly surprised they haven’t turned on Rafael Cruz yet, but if they stay in power long enough. Eventually they’ll turn on him, Rubio, and everyone else that doesn’t have the complexion of a blank piece of paper.

    They think if they do enough for white supremacy, they’ll be accepted. But the only thing white supremacists hate more than minorities, is “race traitors”. So they hate these people for being minorities and for betraying their own race, even though they hate that race too.

    • tal@lemmy.today
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      11 hours ago

      “White” has been pretty malleable in definition over time.

      Here’s Benjamin Franklin complaining, way back when, about how German immigrants were going to make the US non-white and how German immigration to the US would surely all end in tears:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observations_Concerning_the_Increase_of_Mankind,_Peopling_of_Countries,_etc.

      https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-04-02-0080

      And since Detachments of English from Britain sent to America, will have their Places at Home so soon supply’d and increase so largely here; why should the Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into our Settlements, and by herding together establish their Language and Manners to the Exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion.

      Which leads me to add one Remark: That the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth. I could wish their Numbers were increased. And while we are, as I may call it, Scouring our Planet, by clearing America of Woods, and so making this Side of our Globe reflect a brighter Light to the Eyes of Inhabitants in Mars or Venus, why should we in the Sight of Superior Beings, darken its People? why increase the Sons of Africa, by Planting them in America, where we have so fair an Opportunity, by excluding all Blacks and Tawneys, of increasing the lovely White and Red? But perhaps I am partial to the Complexion of my Country, for such Kind of Partiality is natural to Mankind.

      I also note that somewhere along the way, the “Christian nation” crowd switched to “Judeo-Christian”. And that was after the big fight over whether-or-not Catholics were bad news, and it would be a disaster if the country weren’t just Protestant. People mostly bring up the KKK today as being opposed to blacks, but they also really had it in for the Catholics.

  • CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de
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    12 hours ago

    Oops. He’s running ahead of the script. For now they’re just supposed to be angry about “illegal migrants”.

  • _deleted_@aussie.zone
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    11 hours ago

    Weren’t the Indians there first? If you want to deport “illegal immigrants”, start with the white people that invaded and “colonised” their lands.

    • dan1101@lemmy.world
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      11 hours ago

      People from India, not Indigenous tribes. You don’t even need to click the article, it’s in the excerpt.

    • tal@lemmy.today
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      11 hours ago

      This is “red-dot Indian”/someone out of the subcontinent in southern Asia, not “peace pipe Indian”/Native American.

      EDIT:

      What they’re talking about:

      What you’re talking about:

      • teft@piefed.social
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        10 hours ago

        Dots not feathers is how we usually distinguish them in my neck of the woods. I usually use natives though nowadays.

        • tal@lemmy.today
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          6 hours ago

          Yeah, I kinda wish that there were a shorter term than “Native American”, but I’d say that most modern usage has switched. You still have some institutional inertia, like the Bureau of Indian Affairs, but I suspect that if you’re starting something new in 2025, it’s probably “Native American”.