After Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal announced Tuesday on Fox News that he would be “suspending” his presidential campaign because “this is not my time,” many online responded by revisiting the issues that Asian Americans have had with Jindal’s campaign, including his stance against “hyphenated Americans,” which was seen by many to be a distancing of himself from his Indian heritage.
Comedian Hari Kondabolu, who started the hashtag #BobbyJindalIsSoWhite and has been an outspoken critic of Jindal, took to Twitter to respond immediately to Jindal's announcement, joking that his career was over now that Jindal was out of the race.
He later added, "This is the second time Bobby Jindal quit a race."
Actor and comedian Aziz Ansari, who recently introduced his impression of Jindal on the "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon," appeared again as Jindal Thursday on late night to make fun of the former candidate.
Others have also noted that Jindal’s campaign never really got off the ground.
In an interview with NPR after Jindal's announcement, Karthick Ramakrishnan, professor at the University of California, Riverside and founder of AAPI Data, discussed a recent survey he conducted of Indian Americans regarding Jindal's campaign. "What we found is that Bobby Jindal had among the lowest approval ratings of all the Republican candidates," Ramakrishnan said. "They felt that he was inauthentic, that he was trying to run away from his identity and that he was embarrassed about being Indian."
That feeling of disconnect was echoed online this week on Twitter:
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