Dana Parsons, the Los Angeles Times columnist whose recent column Naina critiqued last week took notice of her post on Sepia Mutiny, as well as some of your comments that followed. He decided to use more print space to defend himself against comments from some foreigners that bruised his ego. In the old days, “the good ol’ pre-blogosphere days,” pompous columnists could say whatever they wanted without being called out, unless the editor of the paper decided it was ok. Parsons is waking up to the fact that this isn’t the case any longer. Let’s take a look at part of his rebuttal to Naina’s post. The column was titled “Write locally, insult globally:”
Readers in Newport Beach complained years ago because I let a local resident sound off on his town…
In another column, I upset Stanton residents with some chippy remarks, all meant in good fun. Was it a cheap shot to call the city “the Gateway to Garden Grove?” Yes, but we’re all friends here.
The point is, I expected to be ripped in Newport Beach and Stanton. After all, this column runs in Orange County. They’re part of the local audience.
But those were the 1990s, the good ol’ pre-blogosphere days.
What I didn’t expect was to be clobbered last week by readers of a blog known as Sepia Mutiny that focuses on South Asia issues. That is not what I normally think of as my target audience, although I heartily welcome them if Orange County news is to their liking.
What upset some of its readers were two columns highlighted by blogger Naina Ramajayan. I’m going to guess the website is U.S.-based, because its homepage says “We work out of a top-secret bunker in North Dakota with a passel of trained monkeys…” [Link]
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It is okay to counter Naina’s points but the insinuation he makes here is clear. Parsons is attempting to get his local audience to sympathize with his plight. How dare these foreigners offer their opinion on a local OC matter. In the age of the blogosphere such things are bound to happen, he muses (winking at the audience). In case the xenophobic undertones here aren’t clear, how about the following:
Naina is free to spin the columns however she wants, although I appreciate spin much less when it touches a global audience.
and this:
But I at least can try to soothe the ruffled feathers of a miffed Stanton city councilman, as opposed to a reader I can’t reach in India.
In the end, whether you’re writing to an Orange County audience or South Asian, the words speak for themselves. And in that vein, some of Naina’s readers put more thought into the columns than she did and cut me some slack
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p>or this:
So, sorry for the hurt feelings in India and Nepal.
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p>What Parsons didn’t realize…well, here was my email to him (emphasis added), educating him a little about a blog called Sepia Mutiny:
Not only is our website U.S. based but all of the writers are U.S. citizens, most of us born in the U.S. (I for example have lived in CA for 18 years, 4 of which were in local LA, and I received my PhD from UCLA on Monday). We are an American blog and ~70% of our audience is American, with the rest in India, the UK, Canada, and other places. We do not focus on “South Asia Issues.” Only a minority of our posts deal with South Asia. We focus on issues of importance to mostly South Asian Americans. That is a big difference. The vast majority of our posts are about happenings in the U.S. that concern us. Your newest article is therefore misinformed. You are dealing with a mostly “local” audience. Please don’t let our names lead you to believe that we are foreign. You make it sound like Orange County news shouldn’t concern us. Orange County is our backyard.
Thanks.
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p>A minute later I felt compelled to send a follow-up responding to his crack about “hurt feelings in India and Nepal:”
Yes, we must be from India and Nepal. That would make it all so much simpler wouldn’t it. Naina graduated from UCLA also just so you know.
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p>I wanted to end that last email with “bitch,” but I decided to be professional. I wouldn’t want him thinking that people with foreign sounding names were impolite. After all, the local Orange County residents are quite proper.
Bottom line Mr. Parsons, in attempting to defend yourself against a slightly bruised ego, you ended up sounding like a xenophobic ass. Stick to the facts. And remember, we write globally, but we act locally.
hey now – at least spell the name of my birth-city correctly.
Hey guys, sorry I’m late to the party — my big excuse is that my parents are in town (and y’all know how that goes).
Anyway, a few points: 1. THANK YOU, Abhi — I couldn’t have said it better myself. 2. I’m kind of scratching my head as to why Parsons chose to devote an entire column responding to my posts — considering that I’m not the first person who has openly criticized his work. So I guess I’m kind of flattered. And to those of you have emailed me or posted congratulations here, thank you. In all honesty, however, the bulk of the credit really goes to the mutineers and everyone in the bunker. If I had written those posts on my personal blog, there is no way that it would have provoked the same reaction, so if anything, his defensive column is a testament to the influence of SM. 3. I felt that his column was also fairly self-congratulatory, as in, “I only write for a local paper, but it looks like I have a global audience — clearly, I’m more important than I previously thought!” He’s writing as though he’s never heard of google. Thanks to the internets, everyone who posts anything on the web now has a global audience, not just him.
essactly!
Devil’s Advocate said:
HOLY SHI#, Dr. Phil just left a comment on Sepia Mutiny.
The reason you put yourself out there again is: you’re talented, you’re smart and we love you. (The emoticon was supposed to mean that I was just teasing. Perhaps I need to take Emoticons 101 again.)
I took a moment to write to Mr. Parsons…
And, FWIW, I hear Edison, NJ is the most desi city on the East Coast, if not in the US.
Maurice Reeves, why on earth should you feel ashamed of being white just because of what Dana Parson’s said? Am I supposed to feel ashamed because of what some other desi says? Sorry, I just don’t get this attitude.
You don’t get it, do you? This is exactly the attitude that Naina and other “shamers” on the left are trying to cultivate among Americans of european descent: “You, heirs to the perpetrators of colonial brutality, should feel very very very bad about what other people with the same skin color as you have done at other places in other times to colonized peoples. How dare you say anything critical or even comment ever so blithely upon the circumstances of the millions of brown people whose lives you have destroyed! Instead, you should be continually apologizing and show contrition, and assume it as your solemn responsibility to pay (mental, moral, economic, etc.) restitution to the downtrodden brown people of India whose children you eat for breakfast, etc, etc, etc. . . “
Dieter you last comment was the best comment on this topic. As a non-white person, I have alot of liberal white friends who done the stupid white guilt thing, and it drives me crazy.
Americans of European descent should stop blaming themselves for everything that some one who looks like them as done in the past.
Would that apply to all societies?
Thanks, Abhi, for doing that. My thoughts exactly when I read the piece. It just goes to show how many people still assume–just because our names are Abhi instead of Alan or Priya instead of Patricia–that we don’t belong. His “rebuttal” cemented my opinion of him. I’ll assume you know what it is.
KarmaByte
It is kind of funny how over and over the last 6 years we have heard that all brown people should not be blamed for the action of few on that one sad day in september of 2001. Yet at the same point some who say that, have no problem blaming whitey X for the actions of whitey Y.
Double werd. Sloppy journalism on Parsons’ part. That’s what shocked me the most.
i don’t feel any guilt for the harm wrought upon Dalits and my ancestors, even in bizarro-world Sri-Lanka, certainly had something to do with the perpetuation and settling of the caste system into Indian and Sri-Lankan life (across religions). This is because i can admit their complicity in the centuries-old process. There is no need to feel guilty–indeed no one in their right mind would call for the descendents of slave owners to find their former property and prostrate at their feet–but it IS necessary to react to the historical argument of complicity with a refutation, modification etc…and not a rejection of historical inquiry with, “i ain’t into liberal guilt.”
huh? yeah, that stuff happened years ago, but it’s like…there’s a racial hierarchy now because of it, and it’s being maintained because of various structural injustices in our world. what’s wrong with being opposed to that? the comparison to 9/11 doesn’t make sense.
Do you have equivalent examples (like 9/11) for that within this country?
Abhi:
Am late to this party but wanted to say — great job! I am glad to see Parsons finally getting his comeuppance.
Isn’t that the basis of affirmative action? No white guilt implies no affirmative action?
No, that is not the essence of affirmative action. It’s not about guilt, it’s about righting structual and cultural institutions which impede the progress of blacks, etc. It was intended to be a short term ‘fix’ for a changing society until some of the structural and cultural institutions righted themselves, so to speak. Hence, the friction today. At what point on the continuum are we?
Anway, my original comment about Maurice Reeves was why feel ashamed of being white? No one should feel ashamed of who they are: Black, white or brown. Abhor racism, but don’t hate yourself.
“yes, we are all Americans here, but until OTHER Americans see us that way,”
Well Anna we gots a ways to go yet….still in the meantime desis will stay paid in full and we will buy out this mofo 🙂 ..
🙂
And Seahawks fan, thank you. Too kind (and I would’ve said that even if I hadn’t had that fourth latte)
😉
This is crazy, I’ve been a OC resident most of my life and have relatives there since the late 60s. The whole you if you are desi you don’t have an interest in OC issues angle is ridiculous. Then again I remember once when I got on a school bus when I was kid and someone making the comment that I had got way too much sun. Maybe dana parsons explains brown people he sees in OC the same way.
I’m not trying to defend Parsons. And I too have relatives in Orange County that have been there since the 1960’s. There are indeed a fair number of desis. And I think everything you said is correct Siddhartha. But the thing is…all the above, while being true, could have happened (and did happen) without Dana Parsons ever being aware of any of it. And by extension, without us ever registering on the radar of most of the people in Orange County. At the end of the day we are still a low-profile community in all but a handful of locations in this country.
And, in those handful of locations, like Edison/Iselin (New Jersey), when the others finally notice us in their midst, it ain’t exactly pretty. That’s when they come out to protest OUR protest against police brutality.
To Dieter, Clueless, etc.:
The funny thing about your statements is that they are the ones which end up sensationalizing the racial aspect of Dana Parson’s identity. I don’t know if Naina or anyone else on here is a regular reader of DP’s column – I’m guessing not, but correct me if I’m wrong – but I’m sure Naina and others would have criticized his work even if he wasn’t white. In fact, by just reading the article, you can’t assume he’s white. And in fact, just because someone “looks white” does not mean they identify as such. And the thing is, the critique would have still stood its ground.
Because the critique was more about bad journalism and the politics of representation — not about denying the right of a white person to speak about South Asia. I just wonder, why do these sorts of discussions always end up becoming about rights and not rationale? It always becomes about the gut emotional reaction of “How dare he/she tell me I have no right to do that! They have NO idea who I am or what I’ve been through or what I know!” instead of “Hmmm, I wonder what this critique is all about and what my role in all of this is.” But that would require introspection, which, well…yeah.
Anyway, I guess all it takes is one crazy ass activist who told you that you have no right to write/speak/draw about this or that or that you have to pay for the sins of all your ancestors with your life, etc. to turn you into an unreasonable thinker who screams “reverse racism!” anytime anyone brings up whiteness or privilege or blah blah blah.
And to all those types of people, I ask: what draws you to this board? It’s obviously a South Asian-American centered blog borne from the multicultural/identity politics idea of speaking for and about yourself. Assuming you are people of color (and there’s a high chance you aren’t) – doesn’t this blog go against your code of de-emphasizing your ethnicity and proclaiming that you are “an American first and foremost”? I’m sincerely curious as to why you seem to consistently post on a board which obviously celebrates ethnic identity in addition to national identity?*** And also, tell me how are we supposed to speak about racism without sometimes bringing up whiteness? It’s like speaking about sexism but pretending that men don’t exist.
Or maybe you all just think that every -ism is bullshit…
***These are just my views about Sepia Mutiny. Also, I’m sure many SM bloggers and readers disagree with my views on whitness and privilege and whatever; I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m in the minority on this. So I’m just speaking for myself, not this board or a collective “us” or whatever.
Neale – thanks.
pea, Ennis – dude, Yuba Duba is by far the desi’est city in California, although Fremont is definitely a close second. Yuba is historic, though!
Dieter – Your point is ridiculous and misplaced. You have no idea what Naina’s intentions are vis-a-vis race or white guilt or whatever you want to call it. Naina was criticizing sloppy journalism and discussed the politics of representation. Not once was the “legitimacy” of someone’s voice, with respect to their race, an issue in the conversation.
P.G. Wodehouse – No, white guilt and the legacy of slavery is not the basis for affirmative action. I am personally astounded by such a ridiculous attempt to characterize a policy that seeks proactive interim solutions to systemic racism.
Sigh – right on!
Since when are columnists bound to the same standards as reporters? There is a big difference between straight-up factual reporting and doing a POV piece, the genre that Parsons’ columns definitely belong to.
As long as you’re not being egregiously, explicitly abusive or inciting people to commit violence, you can pretty much muse all you want to about your view of things in an Op-Ed piece. If a reader disagrees, Op-Eds should be refuted on the merits of the arguments put forward, not by invoking identity politics or by pontificating on who can say what about whom based on their nationality or their economic/racial/political/social background. I believe that’s called an ad-hominen argument.
What was Dana Parson’s errror? Can you state you critique succinctly? Was to “using his writing to hold himself aloft from the wretched masses of the 3rd world?” Or “primitivizing Mumbaikars by mentioning their less than stellar hygiene habits?” Isn’t this what VS Naipaul did? Why is “A Wounded Civilization” (which by the way is much more mean-spirited and arrogant in tone) considered a penetrating critique of Indian society while Dana Parson’s rather innocuous remarks by comparison elicit shrill, nay, hysterical rebuke? Again, one is led to believe that it is because of the identities of the narrators rather than the content of their observations.
Sigh – Awesome points! Well said.
As I resurrected the specter of white guilt, I don’t feel that way very often, and I certainly don’t feel personally responsible for the actions of slave owners in the South, or even the fact that my grandfather fought for the Nazis in WWII. Those are historical facts that I had nothing to do with.
My sense of shame reading Dana Parsons was more one of “Dammit, shouldn’t educated people like him know better? And hey, he’s a loud-mouthed white American. Look how he’s stooping down to paternalistically pat the heads of the people he imagines he offended.”
Yes yes, I know loud-mouthed idiots exist in every place and every color, it’s just we’re currently talking about this dumb idiot.
If I remember right, there some severe detractors of Naipaul on this board.
Wow, I think I’m one of the few Desi individuals on here that sort of sides with Dana Parsons. Here’s my view (with all due respect to Naina and other bloggers here):
(1) I felt Naina totally overreacted to Parsons piece. He was simply observing that in his everyday life he takes a lot for granted (as so many of us do), and hearing from his cousin helped ground him. It was a U.S. vs. India comment, nor was it a white vs. brown comment–it was one of perspective being shed on how different lives are around the world.
(2) Parsons rebuttal wasn’t at all anti-brown or xenophobic in any way. Abhi you wrote:
But no where did I see him insinuate anything about it being blasphemous that “foreigners” offered their opinion. He merely pointed out surprise that his audience has grown to a global market.
(3) After reading so many of these comments here–it’s just reinforced something I’ve believed for a long time. Indians can be so super sensitive and see a cultural angle to every supposed comment made. I saw NOTHING in Parsons article that indicated that he was singling us out as foreign as a way of deriding us. I mean hell, this is a blog who’s readership is majority South Asian–and the article in question spoke of India–it was all in context.
I just feel like Sepia Mutiny was too quick to jump on this guy. Had folks been more open minded in the intent of the original article (instead of bristling when they read the truth about India being dirty) it would help tremendously.
This is a pet peeve of mind to a grand scale. I have a mother who can’t stand to watch anything on the news or in a documentary that shows India is a negative light and it drives me bonkers.
Abhi you wrote:
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blockquote>A minute later I felt compelled to send a follow-up responding to his crack about “hurt feelings in India and Nepal:â€
“Yes, we must be from India and Nepal. That would make it all so much simpler wouldn’t it. Naina graduated from UCLA also just so you know.”blockquote>
I simply don’t understand how Parsons comment about “hurt feelings in India and Nepal” was a crack. The dude genuinely thinks the folks on here are from overseas…so he made the comment as such. There were hurt feelings… but his only mistake was assuming those who were hurt were geographically located elsewhere. No where did he insinuate those folks were less for it.
Again, way to over-sensitive.
dang, zoroastrian said it wonderfully.
Ennis wrote:
Yuba City rocks my world with it’s history. I did part of my masters thesis there and was fascinated with engrained/yet not engrained with the community-at-large the Sikh society is there. What’s most fascinating is their dialect–a mix of Spanish and Punjabi that resulted in intermarriages with the local Hispanic population (because the Sikh men couldn’t afford to go back to India for brides).
Shal, to bring it back to reality, the readership of SM is not majority South Asian, we are majority South Asian American. There is a difference. Unless he got a truckload of letters/emails from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal, then his response was not at all in context, and even if he did receive such a hypothetical truckload, I still don’t buy his reasoning. While he may have had “global critics,” in this case he had local critics and tried to justify that his (in my opinion) lazy writing was appropriate for locals (of OC/LA), but not for others. Perhaps readers on this web site simply have higher expectations.
Oh, and Dieter, being an op-ed columnist does not give a person free range to be an asshat. While op-eds are not held to the same standards as news articles, they still have to comply with journalistic requirements, and I personally expect better from columnists from major newspapers. Maybe that is my bias, but if you are representing a view on the LATimes, then maybe you should take yourself and your writing as seriously as your readers do.
And further, no one was saying, “Don’t cover issues of poverty in India and Nepal.” We often have really animated and intense discussions around caste, poverty, and a number of other issues in the subcontinent. I don’t think anyone could say SepiaMutiny entirely avoids any negative representation of the desh, and in fact, I think there are often really intelligent, interesting, and nuanced explorations of many of the key issues facing the subcontinent. Again, the concern in Naina’s critique was NOT that Parsons is bringing attention to key issues in Mumbai/Nepal, the issue was that his representation of the situation was ignorant, sloppy, and Orientalist.
Not to split hairs, but this is not entirely true. Early intermarriage between Punjabi Sikh men and Latina women was not solely because men “couldn’t afford to go back to India for brides,” it was because U.S. immigration policy prohibited the immigration of “Asian” as well as family reunification. The same can’t be said today, but definitely held until the Chinese Exclusion Act was overturned. There is also, in my opinion, a really unique and beautiful history of the early South Asian California Central Valley experience that is remarkably different from the 1960s/70s wave of (mostly urban) immigration.
I have tried to wrap my brain around this, and I still fail to understand how accusations of journalistic sloppiness can be justified in this case. How was he sloppy? The article flows well, granted it is not Shakespeare. It is more of an introspective piece, rather than an informative piece. Also note that he is relaying another persons views about Mumbai, not his own first hand account. If one assumes that he is faithfully relaying passages from his cousin’s letter, how is this being sloppy? Again, remember, this is not an investigative reporting piece, but a personal reflection.
camille…
naina…
maybe camille, but parsons didn’t come out and say indians are inferior either. It’s the tone. which is subtle and debatable. those who live by the tone must die by it.
Dieter, I feel your pain. The whole Dana Parsons column fallout is a weird PC thing I still don’t get. Especially here on Sepia Mutiny, where there are frequent and appropriate threads about the conditions in the Dharavi slum, female infanticide and sex selection in Punjab, domestic violence, and other social woes that plague India. Parsons didn’t say anything wrong or inaccurate; he wasn’t even sloppy; he just apparently reinforced a stereotype–which white people aren’t allowed to do. That would be colonialism, don’t you know . . .
You astutely pointed to Naipaul, who hated Indian defecatory habits even more than Gandhi did (the Mahatma was a fastidious installer and cleaner of latrines). But all of that stuff has been forgotten.
Yes. That’s what it is. And that’s the problem…all bigots use stereotypes but not all stereotypers are bigots. It can be hard to decipher. Thank you, you colonialist prick.
Did anyone notice Abhi’s subtle sexism? The Patriach protecting his woman, which of course is a form of seduction, thus the gratuitous Ph.D reference which sits well with the auntijis and of course the context…a single, brown, clintonite on the verge of blast off.
It all adds up.
You are right that was subtle. If I made a statement like “Manju is a girl’s name,” that would be blatant sexism. Keep us honest by pointing out the difference for our readers.
Preston, your comment might be valid, but perhaps it is on the wrong thread. This particular thread was about his ill-conceived response, not Naina’s original argument.
Attack the messenger! Manju watching too much Fox News there?
Preston et al,
It’s becoming increasingly obvious that regardless of how many times I try to flesh out my critique of Parsons, it’s going to fall on deaf ears. For the last time, let me state: I never once said that Dana Parsons is not allowed to write what he writes because he is white. If he was brown, black, or of any ethnicity — heck, even if he was a second-gen like me — I still would have blogged about it.
Don’t believe me? Fine, I really don’t care. I’m not going to keep reiterating myself just so you and other commenters can reduce everything to being a conspiracy against white people. You’re right in that you don’t get it. You don’t get it because you think that my two posts criticizing Parsons’ writings are all about you. Whatever issues you have about not being able to say what you want to say because you’re afraid of backlash from supposed “militants” like me is your own problem. You need to deal with that on your own terms instead of projecting it onto me.
If you don’t understand something, try researching it. If you don’t get libertarianism, read Ayn Rand. If you don’t get orientalism or primitivism, try researching it. It’s a lot more productive than sitting there and sharing your “pain” with other commenters who insist on reducing everything to a conspiracy. I’m sorry my critique wasn’t literal enough for you. Let me give you an example, Preston – much of your photography deals with the South Asian diaspora. The comments you, Manju, Dieter, etc. continue to make are the equivalent of me coming up to you and saying, “Yeah, all your work is about Indians in India.” You’d say, “No, that’s not exactly it.” Me: “Nope, it is. I don’t get it. It’s all about India. India India India.”
And finally: don’t patronize me with statements about what’s “appropriate” for Sepia Mutiny. The goal of SM is broadly defined for a reason. We all have different issues and topics that we are particularly attuned to; that’s what makes this blog interesting. Not everyone is going to like everything, not everyone is going to “get” everything. Heck, you were a guest blogger on SM too!
This isn’t meant as a personal attack, but I’m getting really tired of this pointless back and forth. Sorry, I’m not a fan of circular discussions.
P.S. Also, guys, the “Oh no no no, I’m a big bad colonialist!” type of humor is getting really old and cliched. Humor is great, but using it as a crutch because you can’t think of a logical counter-argument is played out.