What Vivek Ramaswamy Leaves Out of His Story of South Asian Success

It's a culture not of success but of survival.

- Zaid Jilani

Mr. Vivek Ramaswamy, who has been tapped by US President-elect Donald Trump to help lead a government-efficiency initiative, recently argued on X that Americans can learn from high-skilled immigrants, especially those working in the science and tech industries, because "American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long."

He suggested that certain immigrant communities have promoted a superior culture that values excellence and produces "wildly successful STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) graduates."

I have heard some version of Mr. Ramaswamy's sentiments countless times over the years.

I grew up north of Atlanta in the 1990s as the son of two Pakistani parents, and came to know hundreds of Indians and Pakistanis who hail from the culture Mr. Ramaswamy is lionizing. (He noted that he personally knew "multiple sets of immigrant parents in the 1990s" who took meticulous steps to inculcate values of excellence.) Few of those immigrants would disagree with him.