Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s beef with white mediocrity, explained

Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.

It was America’s first rap beef.

More than two centuries before Kendrick Lamar even met Drake, a certified pedophile who hid his secret child had fired subliminal shots at his West Coast rival. French naturalist George-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon had just released a 36-volume “Historie Naturelle “on the new system of human classification known as “race.”

Thomas Jefferson crashed out.

Jefferson didn’t dispute Buffon’s assertion that “Nature, in her most perfect exertions, made men white.” He even agreed with Buffon’s claim that  “negroes have little genius.” Still, Jefferson disagreed with Buffon’s overall premise that racial differences were the product of environment and culture, not genetics. As far as Jefferson was concerned, the French polymath’s prediction that the Europeans living in the New World would eventually succumb to the same intellectual inferiority as Africans and the “savages of North America” was disrespectful to everyone in Jefferson’s hood. And, like many other Enlightenment philosophers, Buffon viewed white Americans as culture vultures who were just appropriating Europe’s swag, noting that America has never produced a great philosopher, mathemetician or poet.

In response to the idea that American whites were slightly dumber than the original recipe whitest, Jefferson wrote the 1787 viral diss track “Notes on the State of Virginia.” The book defended white America’s lyrical skills and addressed Buffon’s condemnation of American enslavers as oppressors and tyrants. As proof that Buffon was just hating on American whites, Jefferson noted that mixed-race babies are smarter than Black children, a fact that “proves that their inferiority is not the effect merely of their condition of life,” and accused his opp of rapping “like you ‘bout to get the slaves freed.” More importantly, Jefferson defended the lyrical ability, intellectual ability and fundamental genetic superiority of Caucasian America. 

“So far the Count de Buffon has carried this new theory of the tendency of nature to belittle … the race of whites, transplanted from Europe,” Jefferson wrote. “[T]he blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind.”

In other words, “They not like us.”

Today, we know both Jefferson and Buffon were wrong. Race is just something dumb white people made up. Actual scientists have conclusively proven that there is no genetic or biological basis for race. Like werewolves, white Jesus and “wokeness,” the discredited, 300-year-old myth of race science is just a figment of the white imagination. But because America has not cleansed itself of dumb people who make up things, some people will never accept the truth. Just as Drake-o-maniacs can’t admit their 69 God lost the greatest rap battle of all time, America’s biggest stans can’t fathom the idea that a superstar child predator who wrote bops like the Declaration of Independence and the autobiography of White Jesus could ever be wrong.

Then again, some people believe Drizzy vs. Kung-fu Kenny was the best rap beef of 2024. It is not.

Nearly three centuries after the first battle over America’s GOAT status, two of America’s best and whitest faux intellectuals have divided the Caucasian community and produced more white tears than “Historie Naturelle,” Kendrick’s Pop-Out and Drake’s lawsuit combined…

Elon and Vivek vs. MAGA Lives Matter

On Christmas morning, the X CEO and Department of Government Effenciency appointee who grew up in a white supremacist government celebrated the birth of white Jesus by reviving the Jeffersonian view of white supremacy. 

The controversy began with a discussion over tech companies’ use of the H1B Visa programs to hire employees from other countries. Elon noted that the companies were forced to import talent because of the lack of qualified engineers and tech workers in America. When social media users pointed out that these corporate giants use the “talent gap” as an excuse to displace American workers with lower-paid immigrants, Musk disagreed by explaining that Americans’ declining work ethic and low intelligence are byproducts of genetic differences, much like the ability to run fast or jump high. 

“There is a dire shortage of extremely talented and motivated engineers in America,” Elon Musk told engineering talent in America on his purchased social media platform, X. “This is blindingly obvious when looking at NBA teams, as the physical differences are so obvious to see. However, the MENTAL differences between humans are FAR bigger than the physical differences!!” 

This is not the first time Musk has promoted the white supremacist views shared by the Founding Fathers and the apartheid regime of his youth. Tesla’s Grand Dragon (I’m pretty sure that’s Musk’s official title) often tweets about Black people’s low IQs and debunked junk science. But by including uneducated white people in the scientific racism algorithm, the billionaire fake engineer who did not invent anything ignited uncivil war among the white working-class citizens of MAGAstan.

On Thursday, well-known scammer Vivek Ramaswamy entered the fray. Taking the Buffon side of the race science debate, Vivek tweeted that America’s culture of mediocrity had forced tech companies’ hands.

“Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long,” Ramaswamy wrote, smarmily. “A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers… If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve … ‘Normalcy’ doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our asses handed to us by China.”

The MAGAmuffin outrage over Musk and Ramaswamy’s comments crossed racial lines. Apparently, white people find it offensive when entitled know-it-alls who inherited their privilege use “culture” as a scapegoat to explain away social and economic inequality. Freeloader, certified loser and self-described “white advocate” Laura Loomer called Musk a “welfare queen” during a conversation with alt-right convicted felon Steve Bannon, which resulted in Loomer losing her X verification badge. The consternation crossed racial lines. Mediocre white people joined their fellow non-white MAGAts to voice their outrage. And if you are wondering what this conversation has to do with race, I have no idea. Perhaps you should ask Musk, Ramaswamy and the incensed white people who translated their tweets into Caucasianese.

To be fair, most of the outraged MAGAts weren’t offended by the debate of culture vs. genetics. After all, fans of the 666 God Donald Trump had already weaponized the idea that racial inequality was caused by rap music, sagging pants and other parts of Black culture. According to the tenets promoted by the Church of Caucasity and MAGA Saints,  affirmative action and DEI could not fix the racial disparities caused by the systems that white people created and controlled. They truly believe the cure for white supremacy rests solely in the hands of Black people who were willing to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and focus on hard work and education like the white forefathers who built a culture upon the bedrock foundation of free labor, unequal schools and the generational wealth of stolen Black wealth — all while profiteering on the music, art and culture they did not create.

Apparently, the same people who believed affirmative action is antithetical to American exceptionalism are now demanding that institutions set preferences for certain groups of people. To them, considering a candidate’s nationality is different from considering an applicant’s race because… Umm…

The answer is white supremacy.

The reason these people are offended by the concept of American mediocrity is that they equate Americanism with whiteness. Like Jefferson, they see any criticism of American culture as an insult. On the other hand, denouncing Black “thugs,” Spanish-speaking “illegals,” or anyone from a “shithole country” is part of their patriotic duty. That’s just science. Even Ramaswamy noted the distinction between “first-generation” American citizens and “‘native’ Americans.” Populating their beloved country with educated, law-abiding human beings who are not white is as offensive to them as a Canadian rapper going to Atlanta to keep his music culturally relevant. But there is a good reason why two brilliant first-generation Americans couldn’t see this controversy coming.

What if Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk are just dumb?

The culture of white mediocrity

Vivek Ramaswamy is a real American whose immigrant parents valued education and hard work enough to send their son to elite schools. But he didn’t succeed on privilege alone; he became one of the GOP’s favorite oligarchs by scamming his way into wealth. Elon Musk did not invent the electric car or create Tesla from scratch. He’s just a rich boy who just a rich boy who grew up to be a rich man. To be fair, I am not the first to suggest that Elon Musk is not especially brilliant. For years, the actual smart people who worked with Musk have chuckled behind his back at his fake “boy genius” persona. 

To be fair, it’s also quite possible that Ramaswamy, Musk and the members of Trump’s merry band of MAGA oligarchs know what they are doing. After all, identity politics, race science and white fear is a Caucasian cryptocurrency that never loses its value. Is it their fault that millions of suckers are willing to help billionaires convert their inherited privilege into untold wealth?

The entire notion of American exceptionalism is predicated on the idea that some groups are better than others. And in a nation comprised of different ethnicities, religions and colors, perhaps the easiest way to build a political constituency or a billion-dollar grift is to convince the most mediocre group of their superiority. Whether it’s Jim Crow, Manifest Destiny or “economic anxiety,” the delusion of deservedness is necessary for capitalism to thrive. While most societies believe that hard work, studiousness and morality breed success, in the myth of American exceptionalism, white culture has concocted a set of uniquely Caucasian converse corollaries.

Everyone wants to live in a capitalist meritocracy where hard work and intelligence translate to financial success. Therefore, either financially successful capitalists like Donald Trump, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are smarter and more hardworking than everyone else, or America is not a meritocracy. Four centuries of codified, constitutionally approved bigotry discrimination could easily explain a racial wealth gap. But in a mythical meritocracy, wealth inequality proves that Black people are genetically and culturally inferior to their more affluent counterparts.

That’s just science.

But thanks to Elon and Ramaswamy, the people who believe that America is not a racist country are now rethinking the foundational doctrine upon which white supremacy was built. How could these brilliant capitalists who are only concerned with the bottom line replace white people with their social and biological inferiors? It can’t be that the American education system is unequal. It almost seems like these institutions hold some kind of racial resentment, but everyone knows systemic racism isn’t real. There must be some kind of mistake. Perhaps we need to institute some kind of preference that takes the fact that some groups don’t have access to the same educational and economic opportunities into consideration. We have to do something. White people deserve those jobs.

To be fair, this isn’t just white people’s fault. The assumption that white people have mastered a centuries-long game of three-dimensional chess is one of the most fundamental misconceptions of white supremacy, but it is not exclusive to white culture. Even most radical-minded Black liberation warriors subconsciously believe that America’s brilliant white forefathers invented a perpetual racism machine that could maintain their social, political and economic superiority for centuries to come. We believe the system is too complex to be dismantled. Even worse, a lot of people believe that white people are genetically predisposed to bigotry. 

They are wrong.

Race science is a myth. White supremacy is just something that dumb people made up. And if a wig-wearing white man can be so loud wrong about race and a Black poet from Compton can lyrically ether the biggest star of the biggest musical genre on the planet, imagine what we can collectively do if we unite against a handful of dumb, racist oligarchs who don’t actually know much about anything. Even with their billions of dollars, the fact that they believe in bunk science proves they are not like us. We are smart enough to know why they are weaponizing white supremacy to Make America Great Again.

They are doing it for the culture. 

Michael Harriot is a writer, cultural critic and championship-level Spades player. His NY Times bestseller  Black AF History: The Unwhitewashed Story of America is available in bookstores everywhere.