Kash Patel is the strangest Indian-American success story of his generation. Not because he runs the FBI. Plenty of Indian-origin figures now occupy the upper floors of American power. But because he got there without following the script that made those successes palatable, particularly for Indian-Americans.Over the years, it has emerged that Ivy Leagues were quietly de-ranking Indian applicants for being too studious, too narrow, not “well-rounded” enough.
And yet today Kash Patel is one of the most unusual Indian-American figures around, though one could argue he is almost aggressively well-rounded as an American: he guzzles beer, appears on random podcasts, sells merchandise, flirted with conspiracy narratives before distancing himself from them, dates a country singer, and projects a public persona far removed from the model-minority stereotype. And he is in the news again, this time for celebrating inside the US Olympic hockey locker room after the country’s biggest triumph in the sport since the “Miracle on Ice,” when Team USA defeated the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War.
