Amid the row over the ethnicity of the students of the University of Texas, Austin, Indian-origin tech founder and an alumnus of the university, Vedant Nair, shared his experience of growing up in Texas and his struggle as a ‘brown kid’ to stay a step ahead because of the steep competition. The controversy started after Bo French, a Republican, shared the photo of south Asian students cheering at a football game and asked why so many non-Whites are admitted to the university. Two students, both of Indian origin, spoke out after they found their cheering faces all over the Internet but for racist attacks. It turned out that both of them are US citizens.Nair said Texas law requires 90% of UT’s freshman class to be Texas residents. 75% of those in-state seats go to automatic admission on class rank — and so the question of outsiders getting admission to UT does not even arise.Nair, the co-founder of Miru Robotics, shared how his race started in kindergarten. “Every summer, before the school year started, I had to finish the upcoming year’s math textbook.”“I sweated over getting As, even in elementary school. One funny memory is walking to my parents’ room, crying, to report my first-ever 89 on a report card.”“I went to math and science competitions, where I always lost, and came home crying again,” he said.Nair clarified that he was not an odd killjoy and he was not even in the top 10% of his class, the competition was that tough.“Actually, a lot of the kids worked much harder. I know people who took extra classes (zero period) just to boost their GPA. Who routinely slept 5 hours a night to nail every assignment they had after band practice. Who were distraught when they got a 98 instead of a 100. People who stopped doing things they loved, like sports or arts, because those classes dragged down their GPA,” Nair explained.
‘These are American kids’
Nair said the non-White kids in the UT photo are very much American kids who earned their way into the school in the most American way possible. “Kids like this have helped improve UT’s standing on the national stage. They made it out of the pressure cooker and placed well in Finance, Big Tech, and more recently, startups. They meaningfully contribute to the economies of our state and country. You should be proud of them too,” he said, adding that the racism could be slightly more intelligent.
