Vivek Ramaswamy Says ‘Heritage Americans’ Aren’t Real: ‘Either You’re an American or You’re Not’

Vivek Ramaswamy dismissed the idea of “Heritage Americans” as illegitimate during remarks at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest 2025 in Phoenix, Arizona, on Friday, directly challenging a narrative he says is gaining traction among some segments of the “online right.”

“There’s a different vision of American identity that’s emergent in certain corridors of the online right,” Ramaswamy said during his speech on Day 2 of the conservative youth conference. “And it says that your identity as an American is based on your lineage. That how long you have been in the country, your lineage and your genetics tied to the blood and soil of the country, determines how American you are.”

He described the “Heritage American” concept as the belief that the most authentic Americans are those descended from families present during or before the Revolutionary era. While acknowledging that the idea is gaining popularity, he dismissed it as “about as loony as anything the woke left has actually put up,” adding that “there is no American who is more American than somebody else.”

Ramaswamy framed his view of national identity in absolute terms. “It’s not like the left. They believe in this nonbinary stuff. There’s no nonbinary American. It is binary. Either you’re an American or you’re not.”