Hate-crime charges have been filed against a group of Orthodox Jewish teenagers in the brass-knuckle beating of a brown, South Asian brother this week in Brooklyn (Thanks, tipster Ravi):
“They hit me in the face with brass knuckles four or five times while somebody held my hands,” said the victim, Shahid Amber, 24, a gas station attendant. “Then they all beat and kicked me. They were screaming ‘Muslim m-f-r. You m-f-g Muslim terrorists. Go back to your country.'”
Amber, who was eating ice cream outside a Midwood Dunkin’ Donuts when the gang attacked on Sunday, needed 15 stitches on his broken nose and reconstructive surgery.
Witnesses who called 911 said that 10-12 youths jumped him, a source said.
There’s an only-in-New-York dimension to this incident — the attackers were from the Orthodox stronghold of Borough Park and apparently dressed in full black-coat and black-hat regalia — but of course, we know that desis can be, and have been, taken for “terrorists” anytime, anywhere. I dare the “We’re not South Asian” contingent to tell me that what happened to Shahid Amber isn’t their problem.
Amber, who has lived in the U.S. for seven years, said, “I respect all religions . . . I love this country. It has given me everything. I would defend this country with my blood.
“These guys just break my heart.”
Yes, they do. Here’s wishing Shahid strength and a rapid recovery.
come on siddhartha…
this is a sad post … why must we go there and bring up the ill feelings from that other post here?
i feel awful for this guy and any HUMAN being should as well
have to second rani. not everyone who doesn’t use the term south asian to identify themselves personally or is not that fond of it (but doesn’t really object to it vehemently) is hard-hearted and blind to the fact that it could have been any one of us on that street. wishing shahid a full recovery and i hope his family can recover from being traumatised in such a brutal fashion. i also hope the perpetrators are prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
I dare the “We’re not South Asian” contingent to tell me that what happened to Shahid Amber isn’t their problem.
I second Rani 100% (comment #.1)
If you had read mine, rissible, sakshi, amitabh, and many many other’s comments on the other thread, you would not made this statement. You are mixing issues.
FYI: About a year ago, there was a little girl in Pakistan who had a serious heart ailment, and she had an emergency operation in Bangalore. All the protocols were broken in red-tape loaded society like India. Miracle, isn’t it – protocols being broken. During Kashmir earthquake, there was real concrete collaboration (somewhat seriously dysfunctional though) between India and Pakistan.
But implying that one should feel pulls on thier desi heart strings doesn’t preclude the human aspect. Hate-crimes, and I have only recently been persuaded that the special category is relevant, is violence against a group and motivated by a presumed weakness/inferiority of that victim-group. That presumption can be falsified by projecting a strong/positive/united/etc group identity…or several of these.
Can we let some more facts come out before we start pointing fingers. Yes this is bad for the guy who was beaten up and could happen to anyone of us Indians, but I would like to know if these kids were just some drunk idiots, had some old grudges that they wanted to settle. I also want the jewish kids to have a chance to give their side of the story.
Dude, this simply isn’t cool. Just as Abhi and Anna explained earlier one can have dual identities and they aren’t mutually exclusive, the people getting hate crimes commited upon them aren’t ALL from the subcontinental brown population. OBVIOUSLY, post 9-11 it has increased and there is common ground ON THAT ISSUE.
A coptic Egyptian was also killed post 9-11. Others, including folks from the med. sea area have had slurs/crimes committed upon them. Someone with an Indian identity, who may not consider themselves South Asian may have this commited upon them. It is their problem – as it is a bangledeshi American’s, Pakistani American, Arab American (or just first generation immigrants from those communities that haven’t developed a pan-brown-south Asian identity).
Folks with different identities can converge on this issue, EVEN IF THEY DON’T FEEL THE SOUTH ASIAN solidarity on other things. Using this issue to throw berate others who don’t feel South Asian simply isn’t cool.
This South Asian thing gets preachy, just as the South Asian doesn’t exist gets defensive. Let this thing grow organically, without each side telling the others what they should be.
I don’t think we’re missing any “side” of the story. ADL has even come forward and condemned this as a heinous hate crime. What more do you need to know?
I dare the “We’re not South Asian” contingent to tell me that what happened to Shahid Amber isn’t their problem.
Baba it’s very much my problem but I don’t see why I have to make common cause with Shahid’s identity as a result or because some punks may not know their head from their ass. Not everyone’s objection to the SA tag is about hate.
Horrifying and sad story.
Good reporting Siddhartha. That they are Jewish is, at the very least, plausibly relevant. The MSM is giving this fact a prominent position in their reporting, as a simple googling of Shahid Amber proves. But google french riots and something’s missing.
Very clever. You realize you’re asking people to let the bigot define them. But I don’t really have a better solution.
????. Does that mean you want to know the technique they used to swing the bat (e.g. did they choke up on it).
to add to naina’s comment above, even if their ‘side’ of the story is heard and taken into account, I dont think it justifies their action.
*their = jewish kids (ref: to comment #5)
From NY1 — an elaboration on what the teenagers said:
Well, there’s always an outside chance they didn’t do it. Think of other “ethnic” crimes that turned out very different than originally reported: scottsboro boys, central park wilding/rape, duke stripper, etc.
Alright, I ll take the bait. I am not south asian and will never identify as one.
Fair enough
Of course this isn’t a “south asian” problem.. the jewish kids askedhim if he was a muslim, didn’t they? They were discerning bigots. Unlike some other attackers that assumed every “south asian” was a muslim terrorist, these guys took the trouble of asking theie victim what his religion was.. and then assumed he was terrorist. Ergo, ipso facto, this is muslim problem. Over to CAIR.
(Jewish) Anti-Defamation League condemns the attack
C’mon guys. You see his point. He’s got us cornered. We’re all Muslims now.
Sorry, havent read all the comments before I posted. This discussion about SA tag doesnt belong here in this entry. My apologies again.
Siddhartha,
Since when did you assume Indian tag does not include Muslim. They are ~15% Muslims in India, in sheer (absolute) numbers more than Bangladesh, and perhaps even more than Paksitan (numbers vary from source to source). Is this a new propaganda machine Indian = Hindutva?
You are playing “goofy” games here, seconding Manju’s comment above.
Irrespective of his country of origin, this is a sad event.
Everyone calm down. Some silly little gang in Bavaria has nothing to do with us here in Berlin.
I dare the “We’re not South Asian” contingent to tell me that what happened to Shahid Amber isn’t their problem.
Why do I get the feeling that if one of the commenters had made a distasteful comment like that here, they would’ve been banned/classified as a troll?
Actually Kush, I wasn’t (in #17) accusing Siddhartha of playing games. I think he was revealing an uncomfortable truth…that sometimes identities are imposed on you, whether you like it or not. I see your point, this incident doesn’t make me a Muslim after all, but as Siddhartha noted, I can’t say it’s not my problem either.
i really don’t understand why you’re all getting so caught up in that line; hate-crimes ARE a group problem.
a human problem, yes, but a race problem more specifically. Ignoring that aspect is kind of…foolish. you might not call yourself South Asian and you might not be Muslim, but if you’re percieved as such by an assailant, isnt that classification at least somewhat relevant?
we must properly identify the problem before we can work to fix it — this was a racially/ethnically/stupidly motivated heinous crime. sadly, in these cases, the bigot lays the parameters and you gotta start within them to eventually break them.
espressa,
you’re right … you are not understanding why our knickers are in a twist
thanks for pointing that out.
can you be a touch more helpful and summarize?
Hope this guy gets better fast. Kobayashi, beware of Napoleon.
Throw the jew down the well!!
I’m still feeling like I got left hooked here.
One is reading about a hate crime, many beyond the brown community may identify with it, other ‘icebergs’ may identify with it beyond any labels.
Then WHAM, wasn’t even expeting the whole ‘which brown are you’ debate, thats been dominating the posts from the last few days (and comments section forever I guess on such issues) to be thrown out. Totally passive-aggressive.
espressa,
read comments 2, 3, 6, 8 (etc…) carefully
Ironic since the FBI stats ranks at #1 hate crimes against Jews by a wide margin for the past several years .One would think they should be the last ones involved in perpetrating the same crime .
Young men, fundamentalist beliefs, mob mentality, etc.
Common to pretty much ‘every’group. Though, I do have a feeling that the Jewish community at large will make an emphatic statement against hate crimes and behavior of such kids, since they’ve been at the receiving end of some of the worst in history.
First, that is a pretty sick reaction to a sick attack. Also, let’s not lump the whole community together, as has been done to us brown folk post-9/11. Organizations like ADL have been at the forefront of combating racist attacks and laws that marginalize minorities, post-9/11, for the reasons stated in comment # 30.
I don’t think screaming “Muslim M*****f*****” constitutes asking. Senseless violence against an innocent person is everybody’s problem, no matter who is the target, no matter who is the perpetrator and no matter how we, the bystanders identify ourselves. Consider the Holocaust, consider Rwanda and consider all of the other sickening instances of “ethnic cleansing” that probably started because patterns of persecution and violence were allowed to gain momentum.
Consider this poem first written by Martin Niemöller. The following version appeared in Time magazine to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the start of World War II.
First they came for the Communists, and I didnÂ’t speak up, because I wasnÂ’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didnÂ’t speak up, because I wasnÂ’t a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didnÂ’t speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.
Consider also what Gandhi said when aked if he was a Hindu: “Yes I am. I am also a Christian, a Muslim, a Buddhist and a Jew.” (These two references come from wikipedia if anyone else wants to look at them)
The purpose of solidarity is to provide a source for emphathy and support, to assuage the loneliness of life by blurring divisions and building connections. No matter what our faiths, skin colors or ethno-linguistic groups, we are all members of the human race and we should stand by those who are senselessly victimized instead of distancing ourselves and pretending that it will never happen to us and that it is not our problem.
My point is that we may embrace or deny the title of South Asian. We may struggle to quantify our own existence with complicated layers of semantics. But at the end of the day, a man was beaten for eating ice-cream outside of a dunkin doughnuts and although I don’t live in New York and although I am not a Muslim, it is my problem.
Sriram, you just fell victim to Borat.
What I do? What I do? In Kazakhstan, this is problem. We throw, and this make free Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.
For you catch your next fish with a piece of the last. – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Verses for After Dinner
Agreed. I did not know this. I am sure ADL and others did their research.
Even if they did it, the key for me is whether they did say what is being alleged. If they did not, I wouldn’t call it a hate crime. Remember the famous “Guiliani Time” comment which was later retracted by Louima.
i must be missing some important undercurrent here for not having read the 340+ comment thread. but yes, rani, i will agree with you that how one identifies herself on a thursday afternoon does not preclude her from standing in support of a victim of hate-crime. i don’t siddhartha meant to imply different…
Would you identify as an Earthling if you were talking to a Martian?
Siddartha…I am not a South Asian…I am an INDIAN & proud to say so!
Others have rightly and accurately pointed out your fallacy in the post. I will just add my view to it:
1.Its simply mean & disrespectful for you to implicitly suggest, one needs to identify themselves as SouthAsian to recognize/condemn..etc the hate crime. Pathetic on your part.
2.By saying so, you are essentially showing yourself in same streak as the “nationalists/right wingers/Hindutva-vaadis”..you love to hate. They too seem to say…if not my way….then the highway.
Another low point in Sepia Mutiny.
Earlier this year there was this incident:
You don’t need to pimp your racial “identity” to be disturbed by this. We all like ice cream.
So we’re supposed to feel more for this poor guy than if he was an Arab Muslim, or Persian Muslim, or any kind of non-South Asian Muslim? And I’m not even one of the people who objects to the term South Asian. Yes, maybe I feel for him more because he looks like me but so do some Arabs and Persians. I don’t feel kinship with him because we’re both South Asian; I would feel equally bad for any victim of a hate crime, but if I identify more with him it’s because we both belong to the “frequently mistaken for terrorists” group.
Totally missed the reference (I blame the lack of HBO). I must admit I felt pretty uncomfortable watching the clip, as well.
Oh c’mon dude, this isn’t a ‘low’ point in Sepia Mutiny. People blog, we discuss, and most blow a bit of work off. Lets not get all dramatic about a low point on SM, or any personal attacks.
Plenty of my friends have said stupid and asinine things, so have I. No one is immune to it, we discuss, call BS, throw some food, hand a beer over making peace, and move along.
Very clever Mr. Kobayashi. I almost missed that one…
Gangsters always rally around a BS ’cause’ don’t they? I know few teenagers that act rationally around a group of other teens. To me, this is gangster BS. Have any of the parents been heard from?
Last year my dad had his nose broken by one of those aryan brotherhood POS. Gangsters all do the same crap.
Ok, #40 is was ridiculous I laughed.
And for those of you who are so offended by the SA identity bit in this post, if you saw this in the news (hate crime against Pakistani Muslim immigrant) would you send it to the news tab here? Are you surprised to see a post about it? Do you think it belongs here? Do you think YOU belong here?
Shruti,
yes no yes yes
but what is your point?
um, that was supposed to be #40 was so ridiculous that I laughed. I hope Siddhartha did too.
Rani, my point is THIS is a SOUTH ASIAN blog.