00:04This isn't an American, he's brown. Get these things out of the United States, nasty
00:10human. For people who cannot speak English well, they sure can spell it. 14-year-old
00:15Shrey Parekh's victory at the 2026 Scripps National Spelling Bee should have been a moment
00:20of pride and celebration. Instead, his achievement has been overshadowed by a wave of racist
00:25abuse online, ranging from slurs and stereotypes to calls for the deportation of the young Indian
00:30American. Shrey's win makes him the 31st Indian victor among the 37 recent winners.
00:36The runner-up at the Scripps this year, Ishan Gupta, is also of Indian origin.
00:41The list of Indian American winners is actually crazy. Barring 2021, there hasn't been a single
00:47non-Indian American victory since 2008. The Indian American community's winning streak
00:52at the Scripps Spelling Bee harkens back to Nupur Nala, the winner in 1999. This phenomenon reached
00:58its crescendo in 2019, when the competition saw an unprecedented eight-way tie for the first time in
01:05its 94-year history. Of those eight, seven were Indian ethnicity. In 2022, Harani Logan took home
01:11the prize. In 2023, Dev Shah. In 2024, Bruhat Soma. And in 2025, Faizan Zaki became the first Muslim Indian
01:19American to clinch the trophy. However, this once-celebrated community achievement has been
01:24weaponized as an ethnic stereotype, pulled together with criticisms of the H-1B system,
01:29along with racial rhetoric against Indians in white collar spaces. Nonetheless, with this victory at
01:35Scripps, young Indian Americans not only continue to set records, but also empower their even younger
01:40compriots to carry this winning streak forward.
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