By Ruth Bayang
NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY
I wish I was wrong.
When I heard the announcement that the Khosla family entered into an agreement to buy the Seattle Seahawks, my first thought was, “Wow. How cool that it will be an Asian couple.”
My second thought was, “Uh oh… I should brace for the hateful comments, especially the racist ones.”
Sadly, that was the case.
I get that sports fans, especially Seahawks fans—the 12s—are very passionate. And any major team news would be met by passionate reaction.
Some fans boo’ed the fact that the owners aren’t even from Seattle.
Some didn’t read entire articles about the proposed agreement and couldn’t believe that the Khoslas also have a minority stake in the Seahawks’ division rivals, the San Francisco 49’ers. (The Khoslas will be required to give up their ownership stake in the 49ers as part of the deal.)
But among the thousands of reactions online, many replies to the team’s official announcement on X, for example, devolved into racist and xenophobic attacks directed at Khoslas.
Numerous public replies focused not on the business transaction but on the family’s Indian heritage. Several commenters used ethnic slurs targeting Indians, while others demanded that the sale be blocked because the buyers were “foreigners” or called for Indians to leave the United States. Other posts repeated anti-immigrant stereotypes involving H-1B visas and falsely suggested the team’s football operations would be replaced with foreign workers.
Some comments mocked Indian culture and cuisine, while others resorted to dehumanizing stereotypes. One user wrote, “Why did you sell it to an Indian.” Another complained that “foreigners” should not own “an American icon.”
Thankfully, some fans stepped up and condemned the racist responses and said the ownership group should be judged by how it manages the franchise, not by their country of origin. One person said, “Can’t you people just hate the new owner for being a billionaire VC guy instead of being all racist about it?”
I wish I had been wrong. Instead, the reaction became another reminder that, for many Asian Americans, even a milestone worth celebrating can quickly become an excuse for racism. The hateful comments shouldn’t be normalized or dismissed as “just the internet.” Call them out when you see them, and report incidents to Stop AAPI Hate so they’re documented rather than ignored.
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