I think someone owes Sikh people an apology [via India West].
When Los Angeles right-wing talk radio host Al Rantel referred to a turbaned Sikh as wearing a “diaper” on his head last week, one local Indian American man decided that he’d had enough.
“If he does not correct himself, on the air, we’re going to put pressure on him,” Navraj Singh told India-West by phone Sept. 17. “I’m getting calls from around the country, and Sikh temples are collecting signatures,” said Singh, adding that he was ready to lead a protest outside the radio station
Rantel is a conservative host whose show airs on KABC 790AM every weekday in Los Angeles. During his Sept. 10 show, Rantel was discussing airport security, and said that if his own 80-year-old mother had to take off her shoes during a security screening, “… then why shouldn’t a Sikh be required to take off the hat that looks like a diaper they wear on their heads?” recalled Singh. [IndiaVest]
When contacted, Rantel’s accomplice producer eloquently stated that this @$$#o!#’$ words were “taken out of context”. Awww. Of course they were! Because there obviously exists a context wherein diapers and turbans nestle innocently in the same sentence. Maybe Rantel was saying, “I saw a nice Sikh man changing his baby’s diaper…it’s great to see Fathers taking such an active role!” Yeah, no…as my little cousin would say.
See? They DO exist:
Singh describes himself as a semi-regular listener to the show, and says he himself is a conservative Republican.
In a strongly worded letter he sent to KABC Sept. 12, Singh challenged Rantel to an on-air debate. Rantel’s team has not yet responded to him. [IndiaVest]
coughCHICKENcough. Gosh, I really need some Ricola. Must be the weather. Seasons change, feelings change, (and now I have Expose in my head, as I fume over this latest example of disrespect).
This Uncle has weathered b.s. in the past:
After a successful career as a decorated officer in the Indian Army, Singh immigrated to New York in 1974, and says he has faced discrimination as a turbaned Sikh in the United States. He says he was laughed at when he started a job as a door-to-door vacuum salesman that year (he later became the company’s top seller, he said), and maintains that he was forced out of another successful sales job in 1979 because his boss was afraid of anti-Iran sentiment during the Iranian hostage crisis.
For those of you in the L.A. area, Singh is the man behind India’s Oven/Tantra. One of his restaurants (the original “oven”) was destroyed during the ’92 riots. But I digress.Rantel the ignorant (I shall bestow this title upon him, yes), is gay and the grandson of Italian immigrants. I know that the latter detail is irrelevant, because this country is fine with Europeans choosing to settle here (shocker– he’s a Minuteman fan), but I am naive enough to be disappointed that his sexual preference didn’t gift him with any compassion. I guess no one ever gave him a hard time. Heh.
So Rantel’s schtick is getting his listeners to “think”, while being funny…which is exactly what we try and do here. Ek teeny weeny difference– I don’t think we’d ever say something as nasty as what he did. I’m thinking that has to do with the whole compassion thing, along with, you know, not being thoughtless.
Singh sees no levity in Rantel’s “diaper” comment.
Me, neither!
“I’m grateful to God that I am a Sikh,” he said. “Our religion is an open book. I want to tell Americans that we have to somehow maintain a nice tone when speaking to each other. Then we can understand each other better, and create a better world for all of us.”
Blame the mouse (Disney owns a majority of Citadel):
KABC 790 AM is a Los Angeles radio station, and a West Coast flagship station for the American Broadcasting Company. A pioneer of the talk radio format, the station went “all-talk” in 1960; they are of the first station ever to do so. This is one of many Disney/ABC Radio stations that has now merged with Citadel Broadcasting and remains an ABC affiliate to this day.[wiki: KABC]
Rantel has characterized his program with several trademarks: live on-the-spot promotions of products and services (unusual in talk radio), frequent presentation of unusual and unknown news stories, and citation of analogies and adages, many of which are his own. [wiki]
He believes in diversity! Well, except diversity of religious headgear.
Despite the numerous appearances of conservatives such as Ann Coulter, the program often features guests with very different opinions than the host. In addition, many guests are authors or leaders of a particular organization. [wiki]
So this next part contains an interesting detail– Rantel doesn’t like anti-semitism. Problem solved! Someone should explain that a turban is more like a yarmulke than a diaper.
Rantel is clearly a political conservative on issues such as the role of the Judicial Branch and taxes. He is known to be a strong supporter of the policies and presidency of Ronald Reagan. He is distinctively critical of what he perceives to be political correction, very supportive of Israel, and irritated by antisemitism, outsourcing of tech support, excessive body weight, and certain statements of Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamente and Madeleine Albright. Primarily in regard to differences with the Bush administration over illegal immigration issues, Rantel is noticeably at odds with specific policies of George W. Bush and Republican members of Congress. [wiki]
He’s edgy! He disagrees with Dubya! But hey, what’s up with the size-ism?
Anyway, here’s the obligatory “we’d love to hear from you”-bullshit from KABC’s website:
We appreciate you taking the time to contact us. We always enjoy hearing comments from our listeners. Unfortunately, due to the large amounts of e-mail that we receive, we may not be able to respond to each and every message. Feel free to call us during business hours, Monday – Friday, 9AM-5PM at 310 840 4900.
Our mailing address is: 3321 S. La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90016.
To advertise on TalkRadio 790 KABC:
Please Contact: Matt Mallon (310) 840-4955
If you have feedback for any of the departments at 790 KABC, please let us know!
Okay, then! They asked for it. Let’s let them know!
This incident just goes to show how “persecuted minorities” are not above practicing discrimination themselves. Al Rantel is a gay who according the rainbow-coalition moonbats should know persecution and therefore should not do it to others. Yet this is a stunning rebuttal to this BS theory. And this is not the first time that a gay has been racist. There was a post on SM called Homophobia trumps Racism. Bottom line: Every race and group looks out for their own. That is why we desis should not care if Mexicans or blacks are discriminated against. Does Al Sharpton or La Reza come to our rescue? No.
Coulter has even dated a Muslim. She has never been married, loves NYC and has no children – such a mirror image of her family values minions;)
Louiecypher, I heard from someone who talked to Laura Ingraham in a D.C. resteraunt recently and in that conversation, Ingraham apparently said that she used to date Dinesh D’Souza in college. Are you sure you haven’t confused her with Coulter? If not, that boy gets around.
yes, he dated both of them.
Sharpton has commendably supported a long path to citizenship ( it is not amnesty ) for hardworking undocumented Hispanic immigrants. The Sharpton of today is a very different animal than the Sharpton of many years ago. He has evolved and in a good way. He comes across so much smarter than the O’Reillys and Hannitys when he debates them.
He comes across so much smarter than the O’Reillys and Hannitys when he debates them.
you sir have some standards indeed!
he debates them.
Posterity–let’s get those baseline standards up, on both sides–yeah, you’re right in a way, but, boy, are you bottom-fishing!
True that!
coulter commented on the attractiveness of her brown heckler a few years ago, remember? she likes it cinnamon. too bad she looks like a man baby!
Care to elaborate Razib? I mentioned those names because they represent the right wing that frequently ridicules, trivializes and demonizes Sharpton.
both D’Souza & Coulter have gone crazy since the “glory days,” when D’Souza was the DbD scourge of pro-Soviet Third-Worldism–now he’s a crank pushing for the right to make common cause with the Islamic world on social issues (ugghhh!–about 180 degrees from my conception of “right”) & Coulter is just downright an offensive clown. How the mighty have fallen….
That is why we desis should not care if Mexicans or blacks are discriminated against. Does Al Sharpton or La Reza come to our rescue? No.
Oi, oi, oi.. haven’t you ever heard of divide and conquer? Has the fall of India to the British taught us nothing? While we’re at it, why don’t the Sikhs refuse to help the Hindus who should refuse to help the Brahmins who should refuse to help Marathis who should run screaming from Punjabis and while thus traversing through crazy-land, they should all stand at the border and level gunz at the Pakis.
I once called the NAACP to find out whether they’ll help other people of colour. The lady on the phone didn’t hesitate. I got an unreserved YES.
All this when Indians have some of the greatest colour prejiduce known to man in their society, and the word “calla” is a stinging insult.
Even if I was white I would stand with black civil rights activists, anyway. Its unfortunate that the principle of the thing means nothing to certain people.
Care to elaborate Razib?
o’reilly and hannity are tards. so yeah, i can believe that sharpton is more intelligent; but that’s like being the class valedictorian in a special school for kids with down syndrome
Ennis et al,
The hope of (some of us) Desis on the right is that these crazies like Rantel are just “useful idiots” that are distastefully necessary to putting together a winning coalition that can get a lot of good done, like the free trade and growth that continue to make the US impressive and is really starting to lift Desh out of economic misery–maybe won’t work, but (1) we’re certainly not deluded, (2) Dems are scary on these issues (e.g., catering to protectionism, high taxes, anti-meritocracy(which seems really anti-Desi), & (3) the “useful idiots” don’t really “get” anything they want–e.g., immigration continues, Roe remains valid, etc.
Coulter has repeatedly made extremely bigoted statements and the best he’s done is to “caution”? Heck, Rove has done that much about anti-Latino statements.
The fact that Coulter is a popular figure is important because her remarks show you what the rank and file can tolerate.
Exactly!!! People like Norquist might “caution” Ann Coulter, but she is still regularly invited to GOP speaking events. When she infamously called John Edwards a “faggot” she was speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference, a fairly major gathering of 5000+ conservative activists.
A lot of people asked “Why didn’t Republicans/conservatives denounce her more strongly after she said that?” I think the real question should be, “Why exactly did they invite her to speak in the first place?” It’s not like they don’t know what her schtick is.
I am leery of painting with too broad a brush… I don’t mean to suggest that all conservatives embrace Coulter, but the fact that she’s still gainfully employed as a public speaker suggets many of them apparently don’t have a problem with her.
Yeah, fair enough– and a lot of Dem’s don’t have a problem with Jesse post-“Hymietown” comment. neither party is pure, you have to hold your nose & go with what has the best overall predicted consequences. I’m no GOP stalwart, but these (true) anecdotes about the seamy side of the GOP hardly impel me to be a Dem–my bottom line is just that party affiliation has little to do with the topics we’re interested in here on SM.
o’reilly is an extremely loud mouthed tard…
Look at how he talks to dawkins
And in contrast, here is a perfect illustration of how to effectively talk to such unusually loud mouthed tards, who do keep showing up in real life too, every now and then…
to be clear, i think hannity is a born tard, he’s just not that bright. o’reilly is so narcissistic that he is devolved to tardishness though he has basic raw material to work with (spent some time at JFK school of gov @ harvard).
@ Razib:
Interesting point that you make, and it leaves me with a question. Do you see the South Asian community as a whole ever completely settling into mainstream America, or do you fully expect South Asians to continue into the remainder of this century as a physically and culturally distinct and somewhat “closed” group with a very high SES, as your examples with the pattern of prior Japanese and Chinese immigration. Also, do you see any difference between Pakistanis and Indians in this stated pattern, or would both groups follow a similar course?
Oh, and I agree with your assertion that Arabs have had a really easy time of it “blending in”. My finance’s parents are Arabic Christians(Catholics) of Palestinian and Jordanian origin, and her father never had trouble passing as just another “ethnic/swarthy” white American from the Northeast of the U.S, with most people thinking him Italian or Greek. It helped that he also had a very “Christian” sounding first name. This seems to have been the pattern with Levantine Arabs as a whole over the last century, and it benefited them rather well it would appear. As you alluded to, it seems to me that if the majority of Arabs had been Egyptians, Gulf Arabs or Moroccans, and Muslim at that, things may have been a little more difficult in the area of fitting in.
Do you see the South Asian community as a whole ever completely settling into mainstream America, or do you fully expect South Asians to continue into the remainder of this century as a physically and culturally distinct and somewhat “closed” group with a very high SES, as your examples with the pattern of prior Japanese and Chinese immigration. Also, do you see any difference between Pakistanis and Indians in this stated pattern, or would both groups follow a similar course?
the model which i have offered on SM for several years is this
1) one group of south asians preserves ‘old world’ cultures. e.g., kashmiri brahmins who don’t know any indian language still marrying amongst themselves, ismaili gujaratis marrying amongst themselves. to use a jewish analogy this might be the ‘modern orthodoxy’ option, a people apart in private life but integrated in work life.
2) another group will generate a new pan-south asian (predominantly indian) identity. this will be racially based. the chinese and japanese model works here. i think SM community illustrates some of the basic outlines, e.g., even if ethnically predominantly heterogenous some common touchstones of particular regional cultures become normative, like punjabi bhangra music or the use of hindi slang and idiom. the main issue i see there is religious division, but most american brownz are hindu nominally at least anyway, and i think a secularization process is pretty here too. chinese or japanese have predominantly converted to christianity and generated a racial identified culture. interesting bobby jindal and his wife fit this model, manish told me she was malayali and jindal is punjabi, but they are both assimilated to the mainstream religion of their region (catholicism).
3) and the last group will be part-browns and intermarried people who serve as the nexus point with the rest of american culture. i doubt that in 20-30 years many brown people whose families arrived between 1965-1980 won’t have someone in their extended family who is married to a non-brown, or is part non-brown.
of course you will have families where options 1, 2 and 3 play out because of choices by different 2nd generation kids born in the 70s. the proportions of the three groups is, i think, pretty strongly determined by the size and character of the immigrant stream. a large population size makes options 1 more viable. additionally, a large immigrant population will probably reinforce communal norms. option 3 would be at the other end, while 2 would lay at a balance. right now the outmarriage rate for 1.5 and 2nd generation is around 30%. if the immigration stream remains large, increases, or skews lower in the SES scale the rate may drop in the future, though i wouldn’t bet against an equilibration. the pattern you saw in the german jewry between 1800 to 1900 was that high rates of outmarriage & conversion by the middle and upper classes was compensated by immigration from eastern europe. in other words, the german jews who were outmarrying at high rates in the 1920s were the offspring of later immigrants, not the original jews of moses mendelsshon’s time (his last jewish descendent lived in the late 1800s).
Also, do you see any difference between Pakistanis and Indians in this stated pattern, or would both groups follow a similar course?
oh. well, indians are still 80-90% of american south asians, but it seems many religious pakistanis are identifying as “muslim americans.” the white ethnic pattern was for interreligious intermarriage, that is, irish catholic + italian catholic, or german jew + russian jew, and so on. later on (after world war ii) this broke down so that interreligious marriage became prominent, but i think the emergence of a religious identity is probably a ‘first step.’ in fact, this option is i think for muslim south asians their equivalent of 2 above, that is, while non-muslim south asians (and i’m talking mostly hindus here) who have a community identity tend to marry within race but often outside of customary ethnic group, muslim south asians may marry arabs or southeast asians or white converts (racism will probably limit black-brown marriages). some of them, like the ismailis i alluded too above though would remain separate for various reasons and generate a form of 1. and others will go 3 (from the information i have now at this point i am willing to bet that none of my siblings nor myself will be marrying brown people or muslims).
@Razib:
Thanks for the very quick, and I must say incredibly detailed response to my question. After reading it, I think I need a good nights sleep just to think about it. My first thoughts on your assertion that the nature of South Asians as a distinct group in the United States will be heavily effected by the level of continued immigration, seems completely plausible. What throws me for a curve as a “non-Desi” outsider looking in, who grew up around plenty of Indian-Americans, is that various elements within the South Asian community can already been seen taking each one of the three courses you mentioned. Thats is certainly my own personal subjective view, and one open to plenty of misinterpretation on my part(I am no expert in any way, shape or form). Either way, this topic seems just ripe for an analytically based sociological study over the next decade or so.
Thanks for the very quick, and I must say incredibly detailed response to my question.
i’m just repeating what i thought up in my email conversations with manish, v-man and another friend back in 2003. so no wonder the response was quick, i just had to retrieve the structure of my thoughts 😉 in any case, one of the reasons i read SM is to observe the contours of 2, because that is the most fluid and unspecified of the options (i.e., what exact bounds will exist in the new identity? ethnographic research tends to suggest that 2nd and 3rd gen asian americans of chinese, korean and japanese origin most def. see themselves as a coherent cluster at a distance from southeast asians, and most certainly south asians).
@Razib:
Razib, I also have noticed this pattern of Pakistani-Americans leaning towards a more “Muslim American” identity over one of a greater South Asian ethnic view to be very much the case. Assuming of course, as you pointed out, they are not a rather isolated ethno-religious group like the Ishmalis. I also can see how it is very much their version of a option #2, i.e a “Pan identity” of sorts.
Again, thanks for answering my rather pestering questions. No offense, but it sure beats annoying the hell out of a Desi buddy of mine with these inquests. He would insist I buy him a shot at the bar for each one asked, and that can get expensive. 🙂
Razib, I also have noticed this pattern of Pakistani-Americans leaning towards a more “Muslim American” identity over one of a greater South Asian ethnic view to be very much the case.
i used to go to intervarsity meetings to meet chicks in college. there were some brown girls there who were evangelical. i think they were a bit like the pakistani muslims in seeing more commonalities with their brothers and sisters in christ than with other brown people who were after all going to hell (this doesn’t seem to be as operative a dynamic among brownz who are from the more localized christian denominations out of the syrian tradition, but i’m going on what v-man and anna have communicated to me).
maybe we should be more sympathetic to rantel. if your life’s work involves uncontrolled brain farts and more, headgear does begin to look like diapers.
i attended a couple of campus crusades for christ because they had great ice cream. made me a believer in sundae school, for sure.
i attended a couple of campus crusades for christ because they had great ice cream.
the utility of these groups differs from campus to campus. at my university intervasity had become thoroughly parasitized by free riders, but crusade was still hard core and would cramp your style with too much demand for reciprocated jesus talk. of course, when an organization like intervarsity is swamped with other parasites it’s pretty worthless 😉 too much competition for low hanging fruit.
Just sent in an e-mail to the station manager complaining about this dude. In the e-mail, I asked the manager how quickly AR would have been fired if he had equated the yarmulke to something offensive.
In any case, how does one find out who advertises on his show?
not sure if the e-mail was delivered. I got two responses, one thanking me for the e-mail and the other saying that the mail was undelivered because “User mailbox exceeds allowed size: alr@kabc.com“
Razib – I started out by saying that I didn’t think there was a reason why Desis and Sikhs couldn’t legitimately hold opinions over a wide spectrum. But I think there is a difference between being a, for example, log cabin republican historically and a log cabin Republican after 2004, when national and state level campaigns across America were run using the gay meance to bring out the rank and file. When a party vilifies you, you wonder if they will be willing to work with you on anything, even the areas where you are in agreement. For gay republicans before 2004 they could point to multiple streams and progress within the party, but after that … you have to wonder how much is enough?
Here is a similar argument from the perspective of Latinos:
Before the 2000 elections, I knew a coaltion of conservative non-Christian groups that supported Bush. Muslims, Hindus, even followers of Santeria (believe it or not), all united in their opposition towards gays and opportion and in their suport of school prayer. We know how well that worked out.
Yes, people have multiple goals and weight them differently. But when your political party is personally antagonistic towards your identity, when this antagonism is widespread in the base and stoked by the leadership, you really have to wonder how long you can stay. This was true for a friend, a long time Republican activist in CA, who was Latino. For a decade he said he was willing to live with the xenophobia because he believed the party was right, not just for his sub-group, but for the country. But recently he quit because he said it got overwhelming.
I’m sure some people will stay forever. To take extreme case, there are neo-Nazi groups in both Russia and Israel, which is incomprehensible to me. So if that can happen, then clearly other people are willing to maintain their allegience in inhospitable groups for a while. But still … you gotta wonder.
(1) Fair enough, but what do you do when Coulter gets up in front of a room full of the conservative leaders of tomorrow, spews bigotry, and gets applauded? (2) Except that, according to Alan Greenspan, the Dems were better on these issues. As a matter of fact, if you look over the last few decades, democratic presidents have been considerably more fiscally conservative than Republicans. (3) They scuttled an immigration bill, and look at the new Supremes w.r.t. Roe.
There are plenty of fiscally conservative democrats, but if you look at the quote above, even Latino evangelical leaders are saying that they are not welcome in the Republican party.
I guess this is somewhat personal for me as a Sikh, because I think this administration handled things far better post 9/11, but since then has really milked xenophobia and thrown away human rights in ways that (a) I really oppose as an American and (b) affect me personally. So I wonder how long guys like Singh will identify proudly as conservative Republicans. For that matter, it bothers me that he used to listen to Rantel. He should have known what Rantel was about long before he criticized Sikhs. You can’t be surprised when a guy like that turns on you.
Razib, I also have noticed this pattern of Pakistani-Americans leaning towards a more “Muslim American” identity over one of a greater South Asian ethnic view to be very much the case.
religious identities often get stronger in the diaspora. even abd hindus often acquire a more doctrinal form of their religion than their peers in india. one thing about pakistani-americans ive noticed however is that they tend to speak far better hindustani than their indo-american counterparts. because of this they are actually much more tapped into indian mass media. this is probably because most abds are not of up, bihar, mp, or rajasthan heritage… typically the only other indo-american households using hindustani as the home language are punjabis, sindhis, and dakhni muslims. for the most part all the bong, gujju, telugu ect. -american kids WOULD have known hindi as a second or third language had they grown up in india, but its hard enough retaining the mother tongue in the US for many. point is, language is important to culture and the pak-american kids are in a lot of ways more “desi” than ind-americans even if it is unintentional. i’ve also noticed more understanding between adb and dbd pakistanis unlike the indian crowd wherein there is often mutual scorn
So criticising racists and their political affiliations is the same as making racist and racially derogatory comments about an entire group of people? Your moniker is perfect — you’re the most clueless halfwit alive.
This guy Al Rantel does a link up show every Saturday morning at 3am GMT across the UK with Mike Mendoza on Talksport Radio . He comes across as an extreme right wing prick, and shits his pants when someone comes on the line to be critical of the American foreign policy he rhapsodises over, or takes issue with the crap he comes out with on a range of subjects. He’s always going on about Mexicans and how they’re ruining America and grumbles with Mendoza about multicultural Britain (he always talks about how he loves England). I didn’t know he was gay, and it’s interesting because he and his listeners were outraged when a discussion about gay marriage, which is legal in Britain came up, and he thought that civil marriages for gays would lead to the end of civilisation in America. Weird self loathing gay, but that’s always interesting in all circumstances — -just look at the number of self loathing Uncle Tom house sand-niggers who post on internet message boards. I might call up some time on a future show and cuss the racist prick down.
Interesting that Rantel is gay. His co-host on the international broadcast, Mike Mendoza, was recently reprimanded and suspended by his station for linking homosexuality with paedophilia. They get on like bum-chums on the air.
I might call up some time on a future show and cuss the racist prick down.
And he’ll coolly turn the volume slider down on the external audio input while you do it. That’s the power he has by having the show and you calling in, this isn’t a statement against you, rather more for the person who claimed “we give the media” their power.
Well HMF, he actually does get some eloquent abuse from British callers, on the times I’ve listened.
point is, language is important to culture and the pak-american kids are in a lot of ways more “desi” than ind-americans even if it is unintentional.
can you elaborate on this? the only example you gave is that they can speak hindustani…and it doesn’t seem to me that tamil, gujarati or bengali are “less desi.”
then clearly other people are willing to maintain their allegience in inhospitable groups for a while. But still … you gotta wonder.
but like i said, it isn’t necessary a function of ideological nimbleness. sometimes it is simply personal circumstance. singh is a business person, and perhaps he is more on the margins than you might think. so he might simply identify as a republican primarily for local political reasons (sometimes the policies on the local level can determine whether your business profits or not. e.g., in my town there are many service sector jobs with low pay where workers come from the next town over, 2 miles away. activists were pushing for a ‘living wage’ so these people could live in town, but some of the business people blocked it based on the argument that they simply wouldn’t be able to hire help in some cases if the wage increased by 50%).
The whole left-right paradigm is so arbitary and amounts to what I feel is a personal imposition. Its never made any sense to me. Ethnic minorities end up being left wingers, although more often than not they are fiscal conservatives (living in a developing economy will do that to you) and so they are forced to accept all of these hokey financial schemes just so that they can get their dose of diversity. Why is it that you have subscribe to all of these completely disparate issues in one fell package? Why do the left and right valuations even exist? They’re so predictable and they prevent new parties from busting through with a mish-mash of attributions.. (although in the US the two party system has also got to go, but I’m speaking from a Canadian perspective.) The scary thing is that this stupid boxed in limitation is now being used to describe politics all over the world, from India and Africa to the elections for your local cricket club. Really, its got nothin’.
Well HMF, he actually does get some eloquent abuse from British callers, on the times I’ve listened.
Oh, I’m sure he gets abuse, abuse is drama, drama sells the show, but ultimately he’s holding all the cards, you’re in his universe.
if i ever wanted to torture someone, i would sit them clockwork-orange style in a room and make them listen to the inanity that is talk radio (right and left) or watch those politics shows on cnn/fox etc. (at least they got rid of crossfire) for hours on end. it surely must destroy a significant number of brain cells.
Ethnic minorities end up being left wingers, although more often than not they are fiscal conservatives (living in a developing economy will do that to you) and so they are forced to accept all of these hokey financial schemes just so that they can get their dose of diversity.
do you have survey data on this? i have seen results which suggest that muslim ameicans are socially conservative and fiscally liberal. i can believe that immigrants, many of whom are small business owners, are opposed to onerous legislation. but it seems to me that generally they support a ‘safety,’ especially when many members of the extended family make use of them.
and of course the socially conservative & fiscally liberal characterization is probably relatively true for blacks and latinos as well (though many people tend to play up the social conservatism of these groups too much, both groups are more socially conservative than their economic views would predict in the case of whites).
You can’t be surprised when a guy like that turns on you.
And for those of you who think the anti-immigration brigade is really only upset about illegal Hispanic immigration and is perfectly fine with legal Indian immigration, just read the comments following Michelle Malkin’s latest post. Now I know that Malkin and her flock are hateful idiots but they can’t be dismissed because they have the ear of the Republican Party and those Republicans ( numerous ) who find for example Malkin repulsive are afraid to upbraid her in public.
http://michellemalkin.com/2007/09/21/shamnesty-watch/#comments
Here’s a boldfaced excerpt from a comment: If we do not stop this ( H1 Bs ) we will not have a middle class any longer.
The post itself is about denying ( without an argument ) a long path to citizenship to US born Hispanic kids who enlist to fight for America. Could one get more villainous than that? Btw yesterday’s WSJ noted that Hispanics have the highest rate of enlistment of all ethnicities.
Here’s another excerpt from a comment :
I have a dream….I dream about a Congress that takes our borders, culture, language and security seriously…I dream about two political parties that argue on the merits of an issue, and not because some fat cat Chinese lobbyist gave them money,………….
The ‘Chinese’ lobbyist being referred to obviously is Norman Hsu, an American. I think that some of these people won’t hesitate to call Michelle Malkin a Filipino bitch if she were to wake up and do an about face in her opinions.
Oh and by the way I was a hardcore Republican until not too long ago. Someday I’ll tell my long story.
Razib, I really shouldn’t have said ‘ethnic minorities’.. where did that come from ? ;)In using a blanket statement that seemed to cover all people of colour, I was guilty of extreme reductionism. Man, its Saturday morning and I still haven’t drunk down my home fermented kefir.. You see the problem.
I meant the average Indian. The vast majority of middle class Indians tend to not borrow on credit. There are few mortgages in India- (this link refers wholesale to “India’s relatively underdeveloped credit markets” http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2006/07/20/hdfc-banks-on-indias-growth.aspx.) You save up all your money, THEN you buy the house. And with the exception of the black money high society elite or the extremely poor harried into usury, most Indians are notoriously tight fisted.
In India, YOU are your family’s social security net, so the idea of louche and liberal spending (a working deficit, not using surpluses to pay down the debt) doesn’t sit easy with almost all of the Indians I grew up among. Somewhere in their heads, most people from the subcontinent seem to harbour a genuine fear that if they purchase toilet paper at full price, they’ll be on an urban city street with their suitcases in the aftermath of an atomic bomb, forced to call relatives from a pay-as-you-go cellphone to come and bail them out.
(I did look for more formal research per se, but could not find any studies for or against, meaning that as usual there is another exciting opportunity for academics to contribute to the paucity of knowledge about the South Asian diaspora.)
Also, is it normal for S-M to take twenty minutes to post each comment? ;P
My sentence above should read:..most Indians are notoriously tight fisted and reluctant to borrow.
Somewhere in their heads, most people from the subcontinent seem to harbour a genuine fear that if they purchase toilet paper at full price, they’ll be on an urban city street with their suitcases in the aftermath of an atomic bomb, forced to call relatives from a pay-as-you-go cellphone to come and bail them out.
sure, i agree with this. but i do think one has to make a distinction between personal and public fiscal attitudes. there are many small business people who believe in small gov. and fiscal responsibility who have no problem in taking government loans which are subsidized. people tend to oppose gov. programs which they think result in a transfer of funds to people who they feel aren’t worthy and so on.
Michelle Malkin will one day wake up and think, “holy shit I’m not really white”
My above matchup is just one example. But you can also, be, say, morally conservative but believe in gay marriage- because gays should be allowed to have no sex before marriage, too! Just look at Dick Cheney’s lesbian daughter, who stuffs envelopes for him with her partner come election time. The poor creature doesn’t fit in anywhere.
socially conservative and fiscally liberal. anecdotally, it seem like most browns and blacks in america fall into this camp (with asians probably being a tad more fiscally conservative).
it like we are the worst of both worlds.