Earlier, somebody asked if the incidence of hate crimes in the UK was worse now than in the past. The short answer is yes, immensely so:
In the three days after the bombing, police in London recorded 180 racial incidents. A total of 58 faith-related crimes were recorded, compared with one in the same period last year.Attacks have also been reported on mosques in Tower Hamlets and Merton, both in London, Telford, Leeds, Bristol, Birkenhead and Gloucester, and on a Sikh temple in Kent. [Guardian]
Today’s BBC Worldservice radio broadcast indicated that there have been additional reports of backlash related violence, but gave no further details. Before some of you start frothing at the mouth and comparing this to the violence of the bombings, there is no comparison. I was livid when the bombings occurred. Since then, it has only become more personal – my cousin was one of those lucky enough to dodge the bullet, passing through only 10 minutes before the bombs went off. There is no reason to mix the two issues though. The bombing does not justify anti-brown violence afterwards.
Where is the backlash from peaceful, civilized Muslims against the terrorists living in the midst, attending their mosques, etc.?
Sorry, Abhi, I can’t keep my mouth shut.
Sonal, I had the privilege of being the first person to respond to you. The first thing I said to you, as an American desi, was “thank you for putting this out there.” I think the issues that you raise are very real, and for every person who agrees with me that solidarity is more effective, there are people who agree with you that they need to protect themselves.
At this point, though, your comments are such a caricature of yourself, that you sound like a character that a 14 year old made up to harrass the commenters on this blog (along with those that are agreeing with you, expressing some long-repressed sense of “Proud Not To Be Muslim!”).
The real question is, what do you mean by “making life a bit easier?” You raised the example of your uncle, and while I didn’t really see the need for that last part where he fed into the anti-muslim sentiment of the other folks, I understood why someone about to get the $hit beaten out of him might want to avoid doing that. The same way I understand when Sikhs try to separate themselves out from Muslims by explaining what the difference is beteween Sikhs and turban-wearing Muslims. The same way I have an easier time arguing on blogs than when I’m confronted with threats in real life. I don’t agree with the approach, but I understand.
But if you’re talking about convenience, if you’re talking about just being able to avoid a few conversations with some people because they would be unpleasant, as opposed to fearing violence or fearing retribution of some other kind, well, it goes from being understandable to just being sad.
And if you can’t understand that, then that has nothing to do with you being 1st generation or respectful of your elders and the rest of us being ABCDs–I know plenty of 1st generation people that are far more progressive than you are–people–Muslim, Hindu, Christian, Marxist, atheist, whatever–who have absolutely no qualms about standing up for themselves and with other people who are getting abused. So don’t play that card with me; I respect my elders when they earn my respect.
Well, there is the whole Hindu youth movement that the Sangh pushes. With the camps and everything. Maybe someone else knows more abot the size of that.
But setting that aside, I think that “we’re all brown” is a very American construct and it comes from the fact that we’re all treated as brown (and everything gets talked about in terms of race in the US).
When it comes to actively experiencing an identity, though, my personal experience was that I never encountered a South Asian identity until I went to college. I grew up Bangali, the community I was in was Bangali, the desi friends I had were Bangali, and that was my identity. After I started a particular job and started meeting a lot of desi activists, I found that, as an adult, I enjoyed being around nonbengali desis for a variety of reasons (which would have been impossible anyway, for sheer numbers). And I did political work that was focused around a South Asian identity (actually, it was focused around a pan-Asian identity, which I reacted against and that strengthened my sense of South Asian identity). And I met a lot of different kinds of desis–people who didn’t have the predominant sensibilities of the community I came from. So now I say “South Asian” in an American context.
But in a “South Asian” context, it annoys me to no end that what serves to unify to the external non-brown world, serves to allow certain components of the brown world to dominate others and define what a real “south asian” is in the United States. Whether that’s Indians, or straight people, or Hindus, or professional class people, or Hindi-Urdu speakers or whatever.
So, in short, sometimes I am brown. Sometimes I am bangali. Sometimes I am none of the above. It really depends on where you place me and how I can be most disagreeable 🙂
This whole discussion of Indians from India not wanting to be termed South Asian is understandable, but at the same time it should be just as understandable why “ABCDs” do want to be referred to as South Asian. The anti-South Asia term camp seems to suggest it is arbitrary and Indians have nothing in common with Pakistanis and don’t want to be associated with them. However, think of it from our 2nd generation perspective when being “indian” seems arbitrary. As an Indian/South Asian American from the North I have more in common with Pakistani-Americans than I would with South Indian Americans (in terms of language, food and culture). So of course Indian-Americans like myself are going to be friends with Pakistani-Americans and Bangladeshi-Americans because we have a lot in common as second generation kids growing up in America coming from similar cultures. Especially considering the time most of our parents were raised in the subcontinent and grandparents (when there was no separate india/pakistan/bangladesh) so the desi things we learn from them seem to reach past the arbitrary national boundaries that present day Indians and Pakistanis find themselves in. So of course Indians today feel different and can differentiate themselves from Pakistanis but for those of us who grew up in the U.S. (not sure how U.K. is different because desis seem kind of segregated by country) we do feel a common bond with other people from the subcontinent and it is much easier for us to refer to each other as south asian americans. I don’t think most people in India know the term South Asian (my father almost always gets it confused and says Southeast Asian, and then I have to say no dad, that’s like Thailand), and don’t feel South Asian so I understand why people from India don’t want this umbrella term used for them and feel it is an artificial construct, but by the same token they should try to understand that for us desi americans all identity is a construct and is relatively arbitrary and if south asian is a term we feel comfortable with let us use it without disparaging us, it is our own unique identity, separate from being indian, pakistani, american.
Further, how do those Indians on this thread who do not want to be called south asian in an attempt to disassociate themselves from Pakistanis, etc. propose to disassociate themselves from Indian Muslims? Or is that a group that you all do not disassociate yourselves from because they have not generally been involved in terrorism?
I’m not, but if I was in self-preservation mode like Sonal, I would not be convinced to feel otherwise by the aggressive jibes made on this comment thread. And if information for the purpose of persuasion wasn’t the point, what was?
as that might make it harder for me to disassociate myself from that identity since they might imbibe the muslim view that one is always what one is born-which clearly holds sway among many here)
Razib,
This is more of a 3rd world view. In the West and Far East, religion has been relegated to the private sphere and numerosity of adherents has ceased to be a valuable commodity (resurgence of the republican religious right in America notwithstanding) I have had people espouse the’ born with it, sticks with you’ view to me from – 1. A Lebanese Druz. 2. Christian Nigerian. 3. Turkish Jew 4. Christian Indonesian 5. Ahmadi from Pakistan. 6. Zorastrian from Iran. 7. Muslims from India. Note : All the above people were completely atheistic/agnostic. They still held on to their ancestral religious identity. Some of them also made the argument that because of the socities they come from, when people ‘back home’ will kill them for being a Christian, then thats what you are. Of course all the people mentioned above were first generation immigrants to the US.
In 3rd world society, people dont profess open atheism/agnosticism in any large numbers and it is difficult for the common man to recognize it as a legitimate indentity and most people will usually disregard it. Of course extrapolating anything from anecdotal evidence is always suspect. I also think that this phenomenon might be a result of the religious strife in these nations. I know in Northern Ireland, completely irreligious people identity themselves as Catholics or Protestants though that might have an English/Irish dichotomy to it.
People will continue to identify with the religion of their ancestors if the society will disregard their agnosticism/atheism and treat them like they would treat the other members of their ancestral religion especially when there is religious strife in that society.
Ali Mujahid, as I said my take is not popular, and your critique is welcomed, but I would ask that you refrain from making fun of my family members/elders
I am not mocking your family members. I am mocking you for your puerile remarks. You surely cannot be serious with comments like
I am not South Asian. If my husband is about to be beaten up by a gang of bigots, I will scream out that I have nothing to do with Islam
Once you decide to get serious about having a debate on substance I will stop with my sarcasm/mocking and discuss the issues with you like an adult.
Is this a contest of who has more ethnic pride, versus who is more corrupt and western?
corrupt and western? you know that finland is almost always rated the least corrupt country in the world and nations where the modal color is brown tend to be near the bottom of the list?
corrupt and western? you know that finland is almost always rated the least corrupt country in the world and nations where the modal color is brown tend to be near the bottom of the list?
They were probably referring to ‘moral’ corruption, which in Desi culture is exhibited by sexual promiscuity.
I have question for all the brown people experienced in living in the west:
What would be the most prudent thing to do if one were placed in the situation of Sonal’s uncle ?
When you say “its was them not us” does not work, when you are being attacked, do you have any evidence (even anecdotal) ? I understand that some people would not make that choice for ethical reasons, but how effective is the approach purely for “not getting your ass kicked” ?
Are there many brown muslims born in the west here? What are your thoughts on conciously seperating your identity from the rest of diaspora from the indian subcontinent? I am of the opinion that amongst the subcontinent diaspora in the middle east, there is little concious dissociation… and I wonder if there are special reasons here to affect that, if it is true?
Thanks.
This is more of a 3rd world view. In the West and Far East, religion has been relegated to the private sphere and numerosity of adherents has ceased to be a valuable commodity (resurgence of the republican religious right in America notwithstanding)
i agree. ikram saed though has argued on my weblog for years that i can never disassociate myself from my muslim identity. muslims of course believe that one is a muslim if one’s father is a muslim. mine is.
now, i am very willing to compromonise on issues of fact as regards my appellation. if society alters the name it gives to my race, ethnicity or whatever, i don’t particularly care because i don’t value these things. but my atheism is important because it indicates a peculiar commonality that i have with a very small minority in the rest of that the world. i will simply not cede of my association with lack of god-belief because god-belief is so alien to my nature, and “my people,” who i trace to hsun-tzu, epicurus, diogenes and the carvakas have always been marginalized and pushed to side. and yet the longer i blog and interact with people the more i realize that the immutability of my identity on the religious level (and to some extent more broadly) is something that is strongest in in the minds of those who are extremely ethnically aware or “sensitive.” so, for example, many south asians (though not necessarily the majority, but a far larger than frequency than in the case of whites) tend not to want to cede to my preference with not being identified as a muslim. this tendency is strongest amongst muslims, some of whom are not even particularly religious but think that i share their “laxity.” i argue that i’m not lax, i simply have very different principles. some hindus on the other hand seem to think i view religion in the same way as they do, both a religion and an “ethnic identity” (broadly speaking, their caste identity is nested within the hindu religious identity), and i have a hard time getting it through to their heads that i’m an atheist, and i find it offensive to be called muslim (as offensive a hindu might find it to be called a muslim or a christian a wiccan).
of course, in relation to this thread, i think have made it clear that these niceties do not apply if someone is going to assault me. if i’m attacked as a brown, i fight back as a brown, if i’m attacked as a ‘nigger’ i don’t object i’m not. bring it on! if someone attacks me because i ‘worship cows’ or ‘pray to mecca’ that’s just one excuse to beat the crap out of them even harder, though i’m not going to lecture them on how offensive i find such aspersions in comparison to ethnic insults.
but all that is contextual. in my day to day life i will object to attempts to lump and group me against my interests, and i don’t see everything as an inevitable consequence of the structure of society as it is. i don’t, for one, perceive the ubiquity of anti-brown prejudice. to give a specific example, the one homosexual kid who i knew in high school was assaulted, tormented and degraded for being gay constantly. that rarely happened to me. so i would tell saurav if he moves in red america to not worry too much that is ass is brown, just keep his eyes off other dude’s asses if he doesn’t have back up.
(i have a friend who works on lambda legal’s helpline. he told me the story of a black gay waiter in north dakota. most of the insults against him were gay related, a much smaller minority were race related, for what it’s worth)
2. When you say “its was them not us” does not work, when you are being attacked, do you have any evidence (even anecdotal) ? I understand that some people would not make that choice for ethical reasons, but how effective is the approach purely for “not getting your ass kicked” ?
look, this is a country where in atlanta, georgia, christian religious refugee kids from sudan had the shit beaten out of them by black american christians after 9-11 because they were “muslims.” i am skeptical that in most cases someone who wants to “hate crime” on your ass is going to open up a dialogue and enter into a verbal discourse with you on your identity. honestly, we are not sure that those guys were even going to beat up that individual in question. they seemed belligerent, but a lot of that ends in talk. i’ve been jumped once and my only safety wasn’t in words but my friends. (they thought i was black american, in was a dark night, who was i to argue? they were drunk cowboys). i think broadly speaking sonal’s argument can work on reducing hostility against hindus on the level of verbal aggression though. remember in the 1940s there was a campaign to distinguish between ‘good asians’ (chinese) and ‘bad asians’ promoted in the major media.
“We are Muslims first, we do not want to be associated with you, the Arabs are our brothers, we reject you, because you are infidel, our interests and future is separate.”
If that is really an accurate picture of what the South Asian Muslim diaspora believes, it would be very naive of them to believe that given the treatment of South Asians in Arab countries.
saurav, regarding intermarriage.
i have done multiple surveys (which manish has criticized on reasonable issues of sampler error skewing toward high SES) that brown americans born or raised in the USA are outmarriage at around 40% rates. this is what the last census showed too. i also checked THE NEW YORK TIMES marriage pages once, i got about the same number (this is VERY high SES of course). i noted a few brown cross-religion marriages, but most of the it was brown on white (or white on brown if it was white male and brown female i guess).
i might do a friendster survey soon. when i have time. and i’m not commenting on blogs.
it would be very naive of them to believe that given the treatment of South Asians in Arab countries.
but they don’t experience what south asians in arab countries do. they can live with the conceit that arabs view them as equals…after all, to a great extent south asian professionals in the USA fund and support the immigrant run mosques. when i was a kid i remember having to listen to a rant by a yemeni preacher about how we should all learn arabic, as that was ‘the natural language of islam.’ (he was offended by the translation headphones that most of the congregants wore, as only 1/4 were arab, and a good 1/2 were brown)
Thanks for the advice 😉 My plan is to find someone here (or somewhere else with civilization–which I define as having a well-developed public transportation system) and then move somewhere peaceful.
Setting aside what Muslims say Muslim doctrine says about your faith, what about cultural or social affinities? Customs that have inculcated themselves in you (whther Muslim or Hindu or sycretic)? Many, if not most, of my Jewish friends are probably athiests–to the point where I joke with htem that the two criteria to being Jewish are not believing in God and having a thorough knowledge of Woody Allen movies. Even so, they retain some qualities from their religious educations, from their upbrinign, they attend rituals, etc. Similarly, even if I were to stop believing in whatever the hell it is I believe in, I don’t think I would be able to ever shed myself of all the Hindu influences (or the upper caste influences or the other influences). I think I’ve mentioned before that when my foot touches a book, my hand goes to my head almost automatically and I feel a sense of fear from having done something wrong–now the basis for that reaction has to do with respecting learning (and i suppose somme kind of ocd), but the particular way its manifested came through my mother’s Hinduism. I’m sure there are a million other things too–like not wanting to share drinks with people, etc.
Anyway, I can understand having a belief in godlessness so strong that it supercedes all that and also that you may have shed many if not all of the things you were raised with (if you were raised with them at all)–but it’s hard for me to imagine for most people.
I do not condone any backlash against Muslims/Pakistanis. At the same time, there is no point in sharing any collective blame/guilt for the actions of Islamic fanatics ,just because they too happen to be brown.
Other than “brownness” I really do not have anything in common with Pakis or Bangladeshis. Their worldview, politics and culture are far removed from from the culture of India, which is not perfect, but is a functioning liberal secular democracy.
Terms such as South Asian just undermine the very real differences between Indians and Pakistanis. Already in Britain the generic term Asian is used for Indians, Pakis, Bangladeshis . I recall a few years ago, during the race riots in Oldham, the British media characterised the riots as between “Asians” and white, when in fact they were between Pakistanis and Bangladeshis on side and whites on the other. The Hindu and Sikh communities had protested this unfair lumping of them with the Pakistanis. This is in essence the danger of the appellations South Asian / Desi. All brown people have to share the collective blame for the actions of (almost always)Pakistanis .I am not willing to assume this artificial “brown man’s burden”.
The incessant promotion of the South Asian tag by mainly 2nd gen ABCDs may result in an unfortunate situations in the future where acts of terrorisn by Pakistanis will instead be characterised as acts of terrorists by South Asians/Desis. This is too high a price to pay for an artificial manufactured “brown” unity.
This is extraordinarily myopic. In the worst case scenario, of course it can work. And you will have a group of people that are protected from anti-Muslim xenophobia or religious hatred. But as you keep mentioninig over and over, the person who’s looking to beat the $hit out of you (or discriminating against you at the workplace or not giving you an apartment or questioning your right to vote at a polling station) is not being rational. They’ll have some warped logic to waht they do (as we all do), but it’s fundamentally irrational because its misplaced anger or resentment. At the end of the day, you might be fine for a while, but you’re pretty much throwing yourself to the wind, leaving contingencies like which countries are depicted as taking jobs and which ones aren’t, which stereotypes morph into which other ones, etc., just waiting for it to come back around and bite you in the a$$. It’s not about protecting other desis–it’s really about allowing an undercurrent of not sentimental, but active intolerance to exist in the society in which you live. It’s just not a good thing.
Of course there are other factors–like getting better mental health treatment to most of the U.S., making sure that there are stronger civic institutions, making sure that people aren’t driven to the point of active resentment by making them broke or work 3 jobs. At the end of the day, though, all those things are connected.
WHAM!!
That was the sound of George hitting the nail on that head. (Sorry for the extra post)
i have done multiple surveys (which manish has criticized on reasonable issues of sampler error skewing toward high SES) that brown americans born or raised in the USA are outmarriage at around 40% rates. this is what the last census showed too
40% seems way too high. This seems more realistic.
Ethnic Groups who are Married to . . .
Asian Indians
Husbands Asian Indians 89.7 (404,104) Other Asians 1.5 Whites 6.3 Blacks 0.6 Hispanics/Latinos 1.4 Wives Asian Indians 92.0 (396,434) Other Asians 1.2 Whites 4.1 Blacks 0.7 Hispanics/Latinos 0.8
I havnt checked the methodology used in getting these numbers though.
Many, if not most, of my Jewish friends are probably athiests
this a problem where analogies do not carry over well. strictly speaking, if your mother is a jew, you are a jew, according to the pharisaec halakah. since the 1800s and the jewish enlightenment there has always been an avante guarde of ‘cultural jews’ who do not assimilate christian values and retain their jewish identity. but, sans a high level of ethnic segregation this doesn’t tend to last and their grandchildren are often part-jews with minimal jewish identity.
but consider a religion like baptist protestantism, for example, on the other end. all believers have to go through a baptism when they are conscious, there is nothing predestined or fixed about this, christianity is a personal choice. a lot of this emerged out of the radical reformation when some protestants gave up on the idea of universal salvation of society and decided to create communities of fellow feeling and belief which served as refuges against the world. the key is that belief was crucial, and i think that the radical protestant ethic in that sense is normative in america.
on the other hand, some groups, like jews have a different sense of religion, where it is passed down in a community rather than an individual profession of faith. so they get annoyed at baptists who try to convert them because it seems disrespectful. similarly, some hindus get mad at being targeted by christian evangelicals. i think this is simply a failure to understand the highly individual, free will orientation and post-cartel mindset of radical protestants. they also need to understand that the individual is the operational unit of respect in this country, and “communal” integrity will not be respected in the same way it is in more “traditional” cultures, where the emergent traits of groups are important cogs in the social order (muslims also have a problem with this, as they come from societies where it is usually forbidden to leave islam).
in 1980 during the primaries in front of an evangelical crowd one of the candidates for the republican nomination said that he was a good christian because he ‘was a methodist, my daddy was a methodist, and my granddaddy was a methodist.’ in contrast, ronald reagan said that he wasn’t a good christian, he simply ‘was a sinner who owed a debt to the man who died on the cross for him’ (or something to that effect). reagan’s answer went over well, the other individual’s (whose name i forget) did not.
i bring that up because i think there are average differences between groups in how people view their religion, whether it is about practice, culture or belief (religious jews for example tend to emphasize practice, religious christians formulae of belief). i tend toward a belief based orientation, and that is the tradition in the united states as a whole (1/3 of amerians switch religions at some point). i had little contact with other muslims, so i have internalized few of the ‘muslim’ habits of practice (i dislike ham, though i like bacon and sausage). my gf tends to complain about my hickish habits or my upper middle class background far more than my islamic habits, since the last are not particularly salient (she is an atheist with little sympathy for religious orthodoxy, so if i displayed them residually she would express her displeasure). a muslim ‘ethnicity’ might develop, but honestly i think that is only likely in the case of a nation like france or germany where muslims are mostly from one ethnicity, so the two get tied together. in the USA though i think muslims by necessity must tend toward the radical protestant idea, the test of faith where identity is the profession of belief, since that is what they have in common (those from different sunni traditions even pray and enforce halal differently, so practice is not an exact equivalence either).
click next page for:
U.S.-Born or 1.5 Generation: Percentages of the Six Largest Asian Ethnic Groups who are Married to …
Asian Indians
Husbands
Asian Indians 69.2 Other Asians 3.7 Whites 20.5 Blacks 1.7 Hispanics/Latinos 4.3
Wives
Asian Indians 69.9 Other Asians 4.1 Whites 21.1 Blacks 2.5 Hispanics/Latinos 1.6
Razib: yeah, but:
This is in essence the danger of the appellations South Asian / Desi. All brown people have to share the collective blame for the actions of (almost always)Pakistanis .I am not willing to assume this artificial “brown man’s burden”.
apples and oranges i think. sonal seemed to be arguing for an implausible person-to-person disuasion of haters by distinction. of course the media should be educated on differences between browns, especially when they are stark as in the UK.
Al Mujahid, I have a theoretical answer for you from standpoint of a libertarian hindu. And I would hazard that 70% Indians would feel the same. All we wish to hear from an Indian muslim is that he is an Indian Muslim and not a Muslim living in India. The difference being that you consider yourself Indian more than Muslim and if push comes to a shove, your loyalties would lie more with your country than your religion.
Now, I pose a theoretical question to you. Is it wrong for me to be pissed off at the general community near Jama Masjid, New Delhi, when during every India-Pakistan match, there are Pakistani flags flying high from every nook and corner. Even more outrageous is the fact that they actually burn (I have seen it !) Indian flags.
When they shout “Hindustan Murdabad” (death to India) should my sense of patriotism not inspire an outrage in my mind?
What India has faced since centuries, UK , US, The Netherlands etc are feeling only now. It has taken India’s monumental tolerance (which I personally feel comes close to being categorized as a lack of backbone) to maintain the secularity and a free and fair environment for everyone.
How do you think the UK will react, if there were (godforbid) 10 more blasts in the following months? How would US react if they have one more provocation on their home soil? They would have Musharaff by his balls. Thats what would happen. India has faced this for years and years.
Now Natwar Singh, is telling Pakistan that they have photographic proof of Pakistan’s support of terror camps. I hope to God that Pakistan cleans its own s**t before someone else does is forced to do it.
btw, call me jingoist, but after reading some of the more “indian” posters on this thread, why am i less terrified of the supposed indian dominance in the “knowledge” industries?
After Pearl Harbor, the Chinese alienated themselves from the Japanese after the backlash started here in the US. I guess they were all “stupid” too.
Might the Japanese invasion of China not have something to do with it?
btw, call me jingoist, but after reading some of the more “indian” posters on this thread, why am i less terrified of the supposed indian dominance in the “knowledge” industries?
maybe because you are one of those who refuse to see the situation and want to remain blind!!! or you might be thinking “oh..I write so damn good english and my logic is impeccable so I can not be dominated “. OR may be because you judge the Indian konwledge industry by looking at some posts by few individuals on a blog.
When these threads started yesterday I too was rather surprised by poeple resenting the “South Asian” tag, but whe I think about it I feel like they do have a point. Yep, I would prefer to be referred to as “Indian” (as long as nobody asks me about my sqaw) rather than South Asian. Why? Maybe Im just embarassed about being in a same generic ‘class’ as some guys who think their religon is the only right one. (Im no Muslim-hater , I hate anyone who does that, from blind muslim clerics to right-wing hindu zealots to stupid bible-belt fake-evangelists.). Yeah, Pakistanis embarass me… it may not be always about terrosirm….sometimes its just their backwardness/conservatism, like women’s rights, etc. But more than that , I found SR’s point in comment #57 very true. That is, South Indians and FOBs seems less ready to accept the “South Asian” tag than others, and like SR said this might be because they have much less in comon cultral ties with Pakistan than the Northies/2n Gen. So I was thinking, the folks who started the SA vs Indian debate yesterday (JJ, George, Lionel etc) were obviously South Indians and FOB. I am, too, and I feel they are not far wrong. So, is that a pattern? ( Actually there were others too who supported them that I dont remember the names of, but I thought most of them they were plain Muslim-haters, period.)
What SR pointed out was something very true, we SOuthies dont have a LOT of attachment the Pakistanis – hell, I might as well go out on a limb and say we dont have nuch attachment to North Indians, either, but then that’s a whole other flame war. 🙂
In my view the only thing the term is “South Asian” is good for is to segregate ourselves from the Mongoloid races whom Amreekans call “Asians”. I mean, I have seen so many Indian guys tick their ehtnicity as “Asian” in forms and stuff. Of course there is nothing for us, we just have to go for “Other”.
But , for God’s (yours/mine’s/anybody’s) sake, please don’t confuse “Indian” with “Hindu”.
Ewwwwwwww……….. I meant yours/mine/anybody’s, of course.
what continent is India part of?
Razib, I understand what you’re saying. Interesting.
juve: North Indians have more reasons for not wanting to be included in the same club as Pakistanis. And SR When people talk of being Indians they arenÂ’t implying Hindu by default. I hope you understand India isnÂ’t Hindu Republic and prolly is more diverse religiously than USA.
Quick survey question. When did all of you hear of the term ABCD? When was it coined? When did you come across the term South Asian.
I first “ABCD” around 1993. At first I thought it was just someone trying to be funny. Not a term that people self-applied.
I heard the term South Asian around the same time. And at the time I thought it was more of Berkeley thing. I think the term was first adopted by “political” desis in parts of the country where there was a critical mass of desis.
I grew up in the midwest (not Chicago!) went to school in the midwest. And did not know anyone who called themselves either ABCD or South Asian.
In the midwest we just like to think of us as white : ))
“us” s/b “ourselves” in the last sentence of the previous post.
Tef: you’re right that the South Asian / ABCD identity was much more of a coastal thing.
In college circles, people used South Asian to describe themselves in 1988, so it goes back earlier than that.
I’m trying to remember when I first heard the long “rhyme” that ABCD is part of. It’s funny that it no longer refers to people of Gujrati descent living in Jersey. It once had a specific referent but now is more general.
I don’t understand the opprobrium Sonal is facing. As a South Indian and 1st gen guy in the US, I guess I conform to the stereotype about not wanting anything to do with the South Asian tag.
My position is this – my folks are devout Hindus, and maintain a collection of idols to a constellation of deities. In other words, they are both idol worshippers and polytheists. We all know that mainstream Islam is ferociously opposed to both of those practices. We have a 1000 year history that documents clearly the results of that opposition.
Why in the world do us Hindus have to “stand in solidarity” with brown Muslims when it is highly likely that brown Muslims don’t feel any solidarity with us and their religion basically calls for the extermination of our religious practices? Because a few cracker whities might beat up a dozen of us? The risk seems to be vastly overstated, especially compared to the risk of claiming solidarity with an implacable historical enemy.
Ennis,
Yup that song!! All I remember is …Named Omkar Patel — bit.
And I suspect that the term ABCD atleast on West Coast might have some relation to ABC (American Born Chinese.)
Well, there were 400 incidents of violence or abuse against the Sikh community alone. I don’t have the numbers on hand, but I’m sure there were more than “a dozen” incidents against Hindus.
More to the point, nobody is asking you to approve of Muslim religious ideology or of Pakistani government practice. The question is, will you exert political pressure against hate crimes when those hate crimes are committed in the name of anti-muslim bigotry. I argue that there are good moral and prudential reasons for doing so.
Sorry, my last comment was in response to JM, not tef.
‘South Asian’ on college campuses was probably influenced by colleges’ ‘South Asian Studies’ departments, which in turn were originally funded by the Defense Department during the Cold War.
Nice. And the guys in pickup trucks will yell back, ‘Iraqi bin Laden go home,’ ’cause they’re all ironic like that.
Manish,
I did not know the South Asian and the government connection. To think we might all have been called African & Oriental : )
Btw, I think this whole ABCD/South Asian/Brown debate should have been a separate thread. Sometimes the comments go one way and entries are related to some concrete news item no one wants to talk about. You guys should just have a debate section. Who speaks for the Midwest here?!
tef (ends rant with three fingers down and three fingers up)
Razib wrote: ikram saed though has argued on my weblog for years that i can never disassociate myself from my muslim identity. muslims of course believe that one is a muslim if one’s father is a muslim. mine is.
I based that on the number of people on the web that call you a ‘Muslim’, some of which really ought to know better. But I accepted that in real life, things may be different.
i will keep adding tag lines until i make my non-muslim identity clear to everyone and prove ikram wrong
Prove me wrong, baby! But I don’t think “razib the Atheist” is going to work. I suggested long ago that you change your name (in real life and the web) if youw don’t want to be treated like a Muslims. I suggest un-Muslim, non-ethnic names like ‘Blake’, Chad’, or maybe ‘Stone.
If you have a classic Bengali last name, it could sound quite nice — Stone Suhrawardy. That rocks!
Anyway, I can understand having a belief in godlessness so strong that it supercedes all that and also that you may have shed many if not all of the things you were raised with (if you were raised with them at all)–but it’s hard for me to imagine for most people.
Your degree of religiousness is strongly genetically influenced, and some people are just wired to be much more rationalist.
Curious: Is trying to forge solidarity between Indian-Americans and Pakistani-Americans under the umbrella of South Asian/Brown equivalent to expecting solidarity between American Jews and American Arabs under the umbrella of common ‘Semitism’? Similar situation — Historical enemity of ancestors, Common Racial origins, Common Language origins, Democracy vs theocracy in ancestral countries etc.
Yes, I understand IA/PAs are Americans first, there is no point being chained to ancestral suspicions and insularity and we must become more open and inclusive going forward. That being said, I don’t think people will jump all over someone for suggesting American Jews ought to distinguish themselves from American Arabs and accuse people of being trolls.
Does anyone have documented proof of Pakistani Muslim reaction against the dot buster menace a few years back. Please no “My pakistani uncle Jinnah helped my chaachi Indira ..” type anecdotes, would prefer documentation.
Babloo,
I am not sure if the comparison is entirely valid. I don’t think the Ashkenazi have that much in common with Palestinian Muslims. I just don’t see them all sitting down to dinner and have same level familiarity with each other that Indian-Americans and Pakistani-Americans ‘have’. After you move beyond the possible Halal/Vegetarian issue they could easily talk about cuisine, music & movies. Everything except Kashmir of course.
And while I am at it…
Isn’t South Asian a very confusing and unfamiliar term to most Americans. Most Americans understand/know “Indian” and “Pakistani”. I am not sure so sure about South Asian.
Isn’t refusing to acknowledge someone’s self-described “difference” a bit rude. If someone wants to define themselves as Muslim, Hindu or Indian , why not let them. Unless the category is absurdly specific or obscure.
And I have checked the “asian” box. Why am I not an Asian? Speaking for myself, I find there is a common cultural strand between second generation Chinese, Vietnamese, Koreans and second generation desis.
Didn’t used to be like that. It’s odd. on a sidenote, I see the transformation is complete. You’re like batman.
Most second generation desis have more in common with second generation chinese, koreans than with FOB desis. So no surprise that second generation Indians feel some kinship with other second generation Pakistanis or Sri Lankans. People are free to identity themselves as ‘Indian’ or ‘Hindu’ and not as ‘South Asian’. So there is no reason to get upset over some people wanting to identify themselves as ‘South Asians’.