SM reader Laks Raghupathi sends us a link to an article in the May 30th European edition of Newsweek Magazine, titled The Big Squeeze. In it we see a yellow man, ostensibly representing a Chinaman, and a brown guy with a small red dot on his forehead. The brown guy appears to be squeezing the balls of the poor white guy (a.k.a. white-collared worker), as if all Americans and Europeans losing jobs are white. The white guy also appears to be wearing a bow-tie (what IS it with bow-ties?).
15 years after U.S. and European multinationals started shipping large numbers of manufacturing jobs overseas, experts are saying that the “second wave” of offshoring is at hand—and it promises to be bigger and more disruptive to the U.S. and European job markets than the first. In the years ahead, sizable numbers of skilled, reasonably well-educated middle-income workers in service-sector jobs long considered safe from foreign trade—accounting, law, financial and risk management, health care and information technology, to name a few—could be facing layoffs or serious wage pressure as developing nations perform increasingly sophisticated offshore work. The shift portends a dramatic realignment of wealth over the next couple of generations—valued by the U.S. consultancy McKinsey Co. at “hundreds of billions of dollars.”
I went over to Joel Elrod’s website to see his other work (which is quite good) and couldn’t find anything with this sort of xenophobic tone, which leads me to believe that Newsweek must have specifically commissioned this type of thing from him.Raghupathi sent off the following email to Newsweek:
I was disappointed to see a racist cartoon in an otherwise balanced article (The Big Squeeze – appeared May 30 in the European edition) showing a presumably Indian guy (identified by a dot on his forehead) and a East Asian looking guy (presumably Chinese) strangling a Caucasian person. Your portrayal is akin to the blame game played by politicians both sides of the Atlantic. Instead, you should have shown those big corporations who are strangling citizens of their own countries. Half of U.S. bound Chinese exports are by American multinationals themselves and everyone knows the biggest of them all – Walmart. Similarly in India, some of the biggest outsourcers are IBM and GE. Indians and Chinese are just driven by the ‘invisible hand’ of the ‘market forces’ to earn their livelihood.
The bindi is atrocious and gender-inaccurate. But the artist doesn’t use the word ‘Chinaman,’ and the bit about squeezing balls is a bit of a stretch, no?
disappointing, indeed. people fail to see racism in their own vicinity while they haraunge about racism happening elsewhere. Very much same thing is happening in the west.
It’s interesting to see the relative sizes of the men. It’s clearly meant to make the white man feel threatened and is basically dishonest. An honest picture would show a huge, fat white man on a couch doing brainy work with little, skinny people (Asians/Africans/South americans, etc) fussing about, doing menial work for him.
This is the classic strategy of an aggressor – namely, making a lot of noise and pretending to be a victim in order to justify the planned aggression. It worked for justifying war and it will work for justifying whatever they plan to do for trade too.
Sadly, the outsourcing issue has always taken racial overtones. Last week, I saw a press release from a union in America calling for “solidarity” with their European co-workers. This was for some large computer company that had announced layoffs to their IT staff.
Sigh… outsourcing is biting me rear too, but isn’t it interesting on how I’ve never heard talk of solidarity with non-European countries?
The word “Chinaman” and the “squeezing the balls” comment were both my own. Since art is interpretive I wouldn’t call it a stretch though.
abhi, did’nt expect you to post so soon. Ideally their Koran debacle should have been the cover story. Instead, they are clearly diverting with a ‘Europe’s Vanishing Middle Class’ cover page with this one as the leader article. BTW, the other article by Bob Samuelson is pretty balanced too. I wonder what made them do this.
/back to lurker status
Notable that this was in the European edition of Newsweek, not the US. From what I’ve seen, Europe is “whiter” than the US and socially is having great difficulty coping with current waves of immigrants, let alone outsoucing. Europeans like to accuse Americans of being racist, but racism only exists where there’s racial diversity, something Europe hasn’t had much of until recently (pogroms & concentration camps aside). I’ve never seen overt, unchallenged racism in the US like I have in Europe. Yeah, we have racial tensions here, but according to our dominant paradigm racism is a Bad Thing and People Are Supposed To Be Equal. Americans are much more ASHAMED of racism, which is why such an illustration wouldn’t be published here.
Not really gender-inaccurate – In south India, you can easily find men wearing the ‘dot’. It can be in the form of chandan (common in Kerala), or it can also be a real red one (The great singer Balamuralikrishna for example)
I’ve seen tilaks on men, but never something that looked like a bindi. Thanks.
hunh…when I first saw the pic, I thought the guy getting squeezed was African-American. Come to think of it – he kinda looks like DC mayor Anthony Williams , bow tie and all.
-D
Same old asian peril makin a comeback…
In other news, article is flawed, example they confuse India with China.
Indian university education is mostly in English with a heavy Indian accent perhaps, but the McKinsey Global Institute’s director was likely speaking about China in refrence to english language. But the newsweek journalist attempts use this to show how Indians are getting jobs despite lower skills.
I suppose it is to be expected given newsweek’s track record. Atleast the IT workers wont riot over an article about the desecration of their english skills.
“At least the IT workers wont riot over…”
Don’t be so sure of that. There’s only so much hazing they’ll tolerate from lazy fat white Americans who not only can’t operate household appliances and software but are chagrined that a brown guy has to help them with it…
One day, deep in the heart of a call center, inside a cubicle…
Could it be things like this that makes McKinsey et al. think that “most … grads do not have the English-language skills and training”.
Most Americans can’t understand ‘English-English’ either.
To all Indians(educated) English is atleast a second language and to many its third, even fourth language. But it doesnt mean their command over it is poor. Afterall humans are very well equipped to learn multiple languages. Maybe americans should be less lazy about learning languages in school.
Though not a perfect indicator, if you consider the verbal part of standardized tests like GRE and SAT – Indians score higher than Americans on an average and dominate the higher end of the score spectrum. Ask any Indian studying in an american university – grad or undergrad.( In the math and analytical sections the difference is much higher)
I and many friends of mine have experienced many instances where Indians are better read(sometimes leading to embarassing situations – even american literature),better informed and posess a better vocabulary than many americans. Ofcourse these are not average Indians, but average decently educated Indians.
English accents are a more complicated issue. One thing I can never fathom is why Indian accents get special attention. As far as I know, no two english speaking countries/regions speak with the same accent. For most americans a cockney, irish or australian accent would be much more incomprehensible than an indian accent. Maybe someone can shed some light on this.
I’m not sure if that’s true, but if it is, here’s some speculation–Americans encountered “White” english accents earlier and more frequently through the media/otherwise and their ears are therefore more attuned to picking them up. I find my parents’ English (educated/brought up mostly near, during and after independence) less familiar-sounding language than my grandfathers’ british-indian educated english.
and maybe there’s race, unfamiliar visual cues, an implicit sense that the person is going to be incomprehensible, the greater distance to the language generating the accent, etc. involved also.
Is there any hazing directed at the Indians working in the IT industry in the U.S. ?
I am curious as to why the other two men in the picture are depicted in finer threads (suit/tux) than the Indian? Is there a perception on Indian dressing that I am missing?
the indian man rocking that sweater is obviously a bengali uncle. 😀
Why? Will you report it to ACLU?
I don’t think McKinsey believes that most of these graduates cannot converse in English. Besides, it is about as immaterial as wondering whether Japanese or Korean college graduates speak English.
Moreover, Prof. Freeman’s chief conceit, which is one of farms of workstations in which desi workers are typing away insurance claim details is so last century. India, Korea and China are quickly turning into design houses. Lucent, Google, Motorola, GE and IBM have all moved R&D jobs to Asia due to the obvious cost advantage. In fact, these companies actually pay higher ‘real wages’ (normalized for cost of living) in these countries. And R&D is but one step away from Freeman’s ivory tower!
However, I don’t believe that the Newsweek article was xenophobic in itself. The illustration is doubtlessly graphic, but the article restricts itself to facts and economic projections. And it is a fact that these jobs are being outsourced to Asia. Not once does the author of the article exhort “Kinder staat Inder” like certain European politicians.
A friend of mine is a West African working in an IT firm in Massachusetts. He’s the only Black guy around. His co-workers are white Americans, and an increasing number of off-the-boat Indians. My friend reports that he has the white Americans complaining to him about the Indians and making comments like “why do they all stay together” in the cafeteria — I’m not making this up. It simply doesn’t occur to them that he might feel much closer to the Indians than to them. (As indeed he does.)
None of which stopped some of these same white colleagues from trying to block my African friend’s advancement when they realized that “despite” his Black skin beneath his fairly thick accent, he had far more education and IT training than they…
‘Kinder staat Inder‘:
This is an interesting article considering that I will be a “brown guy” studying abroad next year in Paris. I just hope that they donÂ’t make me squeeze some white guyÂ’s balls…
DDiA-
Ofcourse McKinsey doesn’t think these graduates can’t converse in English. If they really thought so, they wouldn’t be hiring from all the campuses in India. Also dont forget that the Big Boss at BigMC is Rajat Gupta – a furriner with an accent 🙂
Do you know Rajat uncle?He is my friend’s uncle’s brother’s sister in law’s paji’s nanaji’s mamaji 🙂
BTW you are totally correct about R&D transfer.
Also, I think the terms used in this debate should be changed from relatively cheap labor in India and China to relatively expensive labor in the west
I think that white guy in the bow tie getting his balls squeezed is Tucker Carlson. Tom Friedman was on that bowtied freak Tucker CarlsonÂ’s show this weekend and Friedman asked him which country gets the most outsource work in the world. Carlson said India. Freidman said nope. ItÂ’s the United States of America!
indo: “lazy, fat, white Americans?” I suppose you were speaking in the particular, and not the general? I seem to know quite a few lovely, thin, hard-working white Americans, but then I am also speaking in the particular…
We went through this in the 80s with Japan. Japan was supposedly buying up the US and going to leave us in the dust economically. Boy, those journalists were pretty accurate, huh?
Yea…i agree that Americans are overly wary of outsourcing but your argument that this cartoon is racist is too much of a stretch. India and China (fairly represented by a brown guy and a yellow guy, as India and China are full of these respectively, imho) are on a meteoric economic rise and this is something that Americans are concerned about; is that topic so wrong to report about?? Indians are generally brown, Chinese people are yellow, America is a country owned by whites…those are facts. Many Americans feel threatened by the economic competititive threat posed by these two countries…this cartoon simply depicts that feeling. Not everything is racist b/c it depicts racially specific individuals.
However, on the never-ending debate re. outsourcing…the funny thing is India outsources more from the US, than vice-versa, I read it in a Wired article maybe two-months ago…if the US ever tried to stop outsourcing to India, it would be double the loss for American business (loss of American jobs that India outsources as well as the need to hire more expensive American workers for jobs that America outsources) and would result in higher prices for the regular Joe-schmoe. God, I sound like a freakin Republican…but I think this one issue that Democrats never really thought out, or was used by Dems to court the ignorant and threatened portion of the American working class.
Indians are generally brown, Chinese people are yellow, America is a country owned by whites…those are facts
Chinese are not ‘yellow’ people. This is a racist term coined by ignorant Orientalists. There is no ‘yellow’ race.
Al-Mujahid…obviously asian skin is not a bright yellow but in general asians have a yellower/more olive skin than other races. I’m generally a progressive anti-racist/imperialist/oppresion liberal…but I love it when political correctness shoots itself in the foot by thinking if they doctor opinions they will change the facts. And by love I mean i think its sad and pathetic. The term “yellow” may have been used derogatively by “Orientalists” but the term is based in fact. Asians have yellower skin.
There are two major pigments in humans: eumelanin (black) and phaeomelanin (yellow). For that matter, the same two pigments are present in virtually every mammal, from mice to tigers, and can be combined to produce any color from white to red to yellow to brown to black. Makeup: Asian skin tends to be smooth and poreless with yellow undertones.
I had no idea whites “owned” America. Do whites have title over it? How did they acquire such title? Since South Asians are the richest ethnic group in the US as per the 2000 Census, whites included, wouldn’t that mean that they necessarily “owned” some of America too?
Don’t try to hide behind the Democratic apron. Ig’nant is ig’nant.
vurdlife- south asians may be the richest ethnic group per capita but our numbers are waaay too small to claim ownership…the US was founded by European Americans; if you look at the upper tier of corporate America and American politics you’ll realize who actually owns and runs America. I didn’t mean they literally had title but their numbers, wealth, and influence gives white America as a general group (not as individuals or your white neighbor down the street) defacto ownership of America…maybe it was poor choice in word or maybe it wasn’t but please stop with this bullshit semantic runaround and get to the heart of the matter is all i’m saying
vurdlife said “owned” SOME of america. if ownership is based on wealth/property, then anyone with some wealth/property can claim to own SOME of america.
joe, you are being cute/provocative in that new republic/slate kind of way. it’s charming but it’s tired and myopic.
one other thing i’ve been meaning to say: Vurdlife, you have the best moniker of all the regulars on this site. you get props over here.
peace.
So thats the best response i’m gonna get?…look, i love playing devil’s advocate to see if ideas and opinions hold up and I may have a provocative style…but so far i’ve been called “myopic” and “ig’nant”…and no one has refuted anything i am saying..i don’t see your guys’ ideas holding up. sorry.
Also, I used the term OWNED as a generality…OK so Indians own a very tiny bit of America…but who owns the vast majority of it…whites…if you are going to refute my general statement that ‘whites own america’ by stating that, o wait indians own a miniscule bit of it too, then you are missing the point of the comment and aren’t really refuting what I’m saying are you?
@Joe – I think most people here have a problem with the cartoon becaue it seems to blame the loss of jobs in Europe on Asian workers who are just trying to make a living. (see the letter quoted in the original post)
The Indians and Chinese don’t sit around saying hey there goes another European ( or American) worker lets steal his job. The heads of the companies make consious decisions to outsource, these companies are owned by Americans.
Basically the cartoon demonizes asians, as the reason for Europe’s job loss, in reality they are just poor people trying to make a living.
The same thing happened with the Japanese in the 80s, I am not terribly concerned.
Thats not even close to being an indicator. Indians studying in the US (grad students) represent .001% of the population of India.
I will give another example. Some of my Indian freinds laugh at how Americans are poor at geography and they say that Indians are better. They say these because the more than 35% of Indian who cant even read dont count at all for them, as if they dont exist. Only the people inside their gated community in Bandra West count.
I don’t know why I’m bothering to address this, but Joe, I always thought East Asian people are whiter than White people. So maybe we should start calling East Asian people “white”, call White people “peach” (that’s the crayola I used), and start calling Black people dark brown since their skin isn’t really black. Or maybe we can stick to the terms that White elites used to oppress the rest of us until we address that oppression fully, and then we can start having lame arguments about whether or not race hierarchy is literally accurate or not about colors.
Good use of pseudoscience though–you’re quite the anti-racist progressive 😉
Joe I would never concede that whites own the country. It may be semantics in another context but here I think it is that idea — that it is the whites’ country and they are getting screwed by browns and yellows — that makes it a racial issue and more than semantics.
But anyway, to address your overall point, the picture without the red dot would probably have been OK in my book. But somehow I don’t think Joel Elrod knows about South Indian men wearing “red dots”…(and do they really? I know they wear red and white designs but thats for pujas and not in every-day business contexts! Notice the Asian and White guy are in suits). The depiction of the “red dot” is evidence of stereotyping and racist intent.
On another note, I love it how the people who complain about outsourcing are the same ones who espouse capitalism, free markets and the spread of capitalism/freedom/democracy/[insert Republican buzzword here]. If they were true to their beliefs, they would suck it up and be more competitive, instead of looking for protectionist help from “big government”
Thanks bro, I must return the compliment for “the ill hindu”…! I was once on a basketball team called “The Hindu Ballers”
Rc – i dint mean to offend, but my point is still valid.
Thats not even close to being an indicator. Indians studying in the US (grad students) represent .001% of the population of India.
The percentage of American grad students is not all that high either. Plus any statistical model u consider for analysis must have a common factor. SAT and GRE indicate a set of college/grad school aspirants. I am not comparing a well educated Indian to a inner city or rural american or the other way round. We are comparing people of similar backgrounds,abilities and education.
I will give another example. Some of my Indian freinds laugh at how Americans are poor at geography and they say that Indians are better.
Sad but True
They say these because the more than 35% of Indian who cant even read dont count at all for them, as if they dont exist. Only the people inside their gated community in Bandra West count.
No one ignores 35% of illiterates, the comparision is between similarly educated people. Also, u r mistaken if u think all those Indians I am talking abt live in gated communities in Bandra. Most are middle-class Indians which would be pretty much be borderline poverty in USA in terms of actual value.
Dont forget the most important point – 10% of 1 billion is still 100 million. it is these indians who compete, not the bottom 35 %
But I get ur point, there is still a huge gap between India and USA(based on any set of reasonable metrics) which is unlikely to be bridged any time soon, if it will be bridged at all.
RC – most of India can’t afford a good education, access to TV, or enough to eat – what is America’s excuse for being stupid?
phaeomelanin is red-yellow. i emphasize the red because red hair is usually caused by expression of phaeomelanin at the expense of eumelanin (reference).
Asians are yellower peoples…
I didn’t know there was a race heirarchy of colors based on the “White Oppressor’s” color scheme. Maybe theyre trying to call all East Asians cowards because yellow is symbolic of cowardice, or maybe E. Asians just wanna be friends. If someone called you brown and it hurt you b/c of the white man’s derogatory subtext behind that word, it doesn’t change the fact your skin is browner than Scandinavians and the same w/ E. Asians who are yellower than the pure, good white man. Obviously its a simplistic and generalized classification, but I am saying that b/c the chinese man is depicted as a yellow skinned individual is not in itself patently oppressive or offensive, imho.
Vurd…ok you don’t have to concede my points about whites’ ‘ownership’, but i feel in the sense i stated above its true and you havent stated anything to the contrary.
Secondly, I agree with you the red dot is ignorance on the part of the artist, and is somewhat questionable. But, other than that, I don’t find anything racist re this cartoon and i don’t think the artist was trying to be racist about it, just incorrectly trying to identify the brown man as Indian.
This cartoon is using a yellow skinned person and a brown skinned person to symbolize China and India; these two giants of the third world are putting the squeeze on America (represented by a diminshed white man). Where’s the racism people?
Reminds me of the article by George Monbiot in The Guardian who had an entirely different view point….
Where’s the racism people?
Plenty of my brown friends got laid off in the downturn of 2002. Not just white guys. Most of the layoffs in the economy did not even have to do with outsourcing. It is just that outsourcing is a convinient culprit to blame.
Also the idea that jobs are ‘stolen’ is probably the biggest oxymoron in a culture that considers capitalism its bread and butter. Jobs are delegated, not stolen. Stealing a job means one has ownership over it, which is not the truth. This idea that your ‘entitled’ job is not yours anymore is what scares people who are not prepared.
This is no different that the scare in the 80s when people were running around thinking Japan was taking over everything.
Just more reactionary journalism that fails to explain or comprehend the fundamentals of economics. Folks like Lou Dobbs who harps on about how India and China are stealing America’s wealth are misguided and frankly dumb. This cartoon only perpetuates the myth.
I find it very difficult to consider this illustration particularly racist.
It clearly describes the content of the article and the artist has used quite simple and obvious symbols to identify each protagonist – the Chinese man has yellow skin and a red background (for communism/Chinese flag) and the Indian is not only brown but to differentiate from other S.Asians (all brown) he has a bindi. He could have had eight arms for that matter or many heads or a turban – all symbols that people identify with India.
The background is yellow as there is yellow/saffron in the Indian flag and it contrasts well with the red and brown, had it been green it could’ve indicated Islam/Pakistan/Bangladesh.
The illustrator has to make use of the cultural/political symbols to get the message across very quickly. Why these symbols exist and their veracity is another question altogether and these are not necessarily racist.
Joe – there really isn’t anything to refute in what you have to say – yes Chinese have various shades of yellow skin, S.Asians various shades of brown &etc &act. Brilliant, you win!
However, as to being not aware that there is a racial hierarchy based on skin colour – understood and adhered to for various economic, cultural and racist reasons, then here is a basic and very touching introduction: http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1046035,00.html – and that again is a very different matter altogether.
thanks for the info mocho…ill give you that a race heirarchy thing exists…but that doesn’t deny the fact that cartoon sometimes have to utilize stereotypes to depict races/countries/ethnicities like you so stated earlier..i dont see the cartoon using the concept of racial heirarchy is what im saying..the yellow man and the brown are depicted at equal size and the white man is dimunitive… people should be able to use inoffensive stereotypes to quickly depict the larger group….i do agree the premise of this article is somewhat narrow-minded, and that outsourcing in the long run helps the american economy rather than hurts it…but the premise that india and china are strong competitors and jobs that American could have had are being shipped off to them is not in itself wrong…i know the average reader will not anyalyze the protectionist undertones of the cartoon or the article, but that does not make the protectionist viewpoint racist or negate the facts that support such a viewpoint.
The main issue here is neither the main idea nor its contents. It’s the instant message the cartoon sends out its readers (in this case, European middle class). Also, I am sure that if this article is published in the U.S. edition, it will be without the cartoon (can someone verify this??), since American society is much more multicultural and multiethnic than Europe (especially Continental Europe). IMO, hate crimes by right-wing groups are far more prevalent in Europe.
Earlier, Newsweek relased an article criticizing the ‘American Dream’ in all the editions. The European and Japanese edition coverpage showed the U.S. flag on a trash can. But it was absent in the U.S. edition. http://ridingsun.blogspot.com/2005/05/newsweek-america-is-dead.html
Aten & TTG,
Its simple math. 1 billion Indian — 60% literate (this is generous assumption) = 600 million.
According to my assumption college accesibility in India is about 15% (for those who count in educated) and if you want “English education” than it drops to about 5%.
5% of 600 million = 30 million
US population = 300 million US literacy rate 92% = 276 million Even if you consider 15% college availability
15% of 276 million = 41.4 million
there you have it…. by making education in English India can never compete.
Bloody hell. I was really good friends with Joel when I lived in SF a couple of years ago, but haven’t kept up with him since I left. I assure you he ain’t xenophobic (plus he lurves Karsh Kale, Cheb i Sabbah and other Asian Massive music — I was with him at the Tabla Beat Science show at the Fillmore), although I can’t explain the illustration. He usually tends to the surreal and inexplicable. I’m gonna assume it was a commission.