Frequent SM commentor Godless Capitalist / “GC” posts over @ GNXP – How the Asians became White.
I first noticed this effect 10 years ago, at a party where a friend of mine commented that the guests were all white. I responded by mentioning about a dozen Asians; oh, she said, that’s right, but you know what I mean. At a recent UCLA conference I attended, two speakers complained that everyone on the panel was white, without even realizing that one of the speakers was ethnically Chinese, and another was an Asian Indian with skin darker than that of many American blacks…
If true, it would leave many an aspiring desi race/ethnic activist unemployed….
This shifted post 9/11 though … as New York fashionistas once sayd. “Brown is the new Black!”
This shifted post 9/11 though … as New York fashionistas once sayd. “Brown is the new Black!”
really? brown people get pulled over for driving nice cars in nice neighborhoods? they have to reassure everyone in department stores that they aren’t out to bomb it? they have to appear less threatening if they are male? there is a perception they are lazy, aggressive and violent?
come on, get real, there are noted sociopathologies within a segment of the black american population which results in a fair amount of stereotyping that black americans who are not part of the underlcass (about 1/2-3/4 depending on how you count it) have to endure day to day. it isn’t like they live under a police state, but daily slights are pretty constant.
on the other hand, what about south asian americans? people are more cautious around us perhaps, and if we can afford to fly regularly we might harrassed more, etc. etc. but there really isn’t a comparison, is there?
i had an asian american activist friend who would always regale us with a tale of white cops beating the crap out of a chinese american in hawaii, as if this was typical of how asians were treated. of course, he had to use the SAME STORY over & over.
racism is real, anti-asian & anti-brown prejudice exists, but assuming that the predicament of asian american groups is identical to african americans is an analogy that simply creates false predictions on too many fronts to be useful. it’s like american feminists behaving as if their predicament is equivalent to women in shariat dominated northern nigera, great for rhetoric, but inaccurate and a bit exploitative of people whose situation is rather more difficult than their own.
but hey, perhaps those of you who live in urban areas have experienced more terror of racism from the white racists there than i have in rural oregon. or during my recent travels through idaho, montana, south dakota, minnesota, etc., i noted a relative lack of concern at my appearence at the truck stop or road-side restaurant. peculiar. perhaps people in the hinterlands are just too stupid to hate me quite yet.
words can’t translate proportion very well sometimes. “racism” is a word that needs quantitative clarity. in any given day, how many white people are “racist” towards a given brown person? in other words, how many (racist events)/(white-brown interaction). most of the comments directed at my brownness have to do with people who went to south india and want to talk to me about the temples (my family is muslim so i have no idea what the hell they are talking about).
Not the first time I’ve heard this. A friend, working as a TA at NYU, told me that the professor remarked that the students were all “white” – even though at least a third of the class was Asian-American.
Some South Asians are more white-identified than others. People who can’t be readily included include those who have a) an accent b) visible religious apparel — hijab, turban
Also, as Razib points out, how this affects you depends on where you are. If you’re getting on a plane, at a political protest, or taking pictures of national monuments, you are definitely not white. If you’re at a gas station, you’re not white — I ROUTINELY get mistaken for an employee at gas stations! I guess I have that “gas station dude” vibe.
However, if you’re at a law/med/grad school social event, your class markers (especially how you dress and your ability to speak in a certain way) are probably more important than your ethnic difference.
So I agree with that aspect of what Razib is saying — we need a more complex, contextual way of thinking about racialization amongst immigrant minorities. We can’t think of ourselves as “oppressed” as a group. But racial discrimination is real for some South Asians. Again, class (education, accent, habit) is the key marker in my view.
Luckily for us, given the massive income mobility in the US, class markers are particularly liquid and subject to meritocratic achievement. In HIGHLY liquid regions like Silicon Valley, the accent can actually become a positive marker (albeit one which is quickly nullified by manners & dress 😉
Nevertheless, versus the other, more sticky markers that pervade nearly all other societies we’re in pretty good shape.
BTW: I highly recommend this book:
How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America
Jews are white? Since when? (Actually, I know some places where neither Jews nor Greeks were white, fairly recently)
White golfer loses to other white golfer!
It’s funny but most Indians can get very indignant about the mild racism here but do not even think about the horrible and demeaning class system which is still practiced in India.
I never thought about it when I lived in India — I guess I took it for granted. It was only after I came here and knew what it felt like to be at the bottom rung that I began to think about it and felt appaled and ashamed of my role in it. How man of us have treated servents or hired help as our equals? I don’t mean just treating them kindly but rather seeing them on the same level as us when it comes to social interaction (marriage, friendship, etc.).
This is not to say that I think mild racism against brown people is okay. All forms of bigotry (including intellectual) are wrong and makes the world a worse place. The golden rule rules!!
In Australia Italians (and Greeks) still aren’t “white,” while in some parts of the US being Italian defines being white.
Not totally off the subject, but how many SA people do you know that refer to ‘white people’ as Americans rather than caucasian, or their ethnic background? This peeves me to no end because I consider myself American. Is this necessarily racism or a colonialism mentality? I don’t think so, but I think more of bias in identification.
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Admin check the above posts.
blank- thank you. it’s been taken care of.
FYI- every one of those comments was from the same person. SM did not have a mini-race war, sorry to disappoint.