Monthly Archives: December 2007

Not Always a Model Minority

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For folks who study immigration flows, one of the interesting phenomena has been the tremendous success of the Overseas Chinese. In just about any country with a significant Chinese population, we find substantial overrrepresentation of Chinese folks at or near the top of the income distribution. Interestingly, this is the case even in countries where the Chinese were subject to both historical and on-going discrimination. Nevertheless, their ability to swim these currents results in interesting theoretical debates about “why”, what it means for other minorities and poses significant real world problems. Amy Chua’s groundbreaking book World on Fire does a great job of diving into these issues and extending Thomas Sowell’s scholarship in understanding the ebb and flow of different minorities in the economy.

In contrast to the Chinese diaspora, the Desi diaspora has a far wider distribution of socio-economic outcomes. While Sepia Mutiny regularly catalogs success stories in the US and occasionally across the pond in the UK, the Desi diaspora is unique relative to many in the world in that we can find different countries where “Desi” invokes different stereotypes at every rung of the ladder. At one extreme, in Fiji and parts of Africa for example, Desis are/were practically viewed as nouveau colonial overlords who unfairly “control” a disproportionate share of the national economy much like the ethnic Chinese in the Phillipines.

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The Kucinich India Connection

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The Washington Post has a rather odd profile of Congressman Dennis Kucinich and his wife, Elizabeth. It’s essentially an account of how a 61 year old midwestern Congressman with political views considerably left of the American mainstream (and, yes, a history of spotting UFOs) got together with a 30 year old British woman who, in the reporter’s words, “looks like Botticelli’s Venus, only with clothes on.”

It’s a bit weird that people are paying all this attention to Elizabeth Kucinich’s looks, rather than her husband’s political views. The WaPo piece acknowledges the oddity of the hype (including the bit that ran on The Daily Show a few weeks ago), but in some ways this piece adds to it instead of moving past it.

The style of the writing does get on my nerves at times:

He says: It was an ordinary day in May 2005. There he was, Dennis Kucinich, congressman, twice divorced, looking for love, as always. He was on the floor of the House, doing ordinary congressman things.

“Tell her about the morning,” Elizabeth says helpfully.

“Ooh! That’s right!” Kucinich says. Here’s the amazing part. (Things involving Elizabeth generally tend to be amazing.) That very morning, believe it or not, guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, who teaches peace through meditation and rhythmic breathing, had come to town. Dennis and Ravi have known each other for a long time. Ravi asked about Dennis’s love life. Dennis said he was still looking for that special someone.

“And his response was, ‘Stop looking and then she will appear,'” Dennis says. “And I said, ‘Okay, I’m going to stop looking.’ I said that. And that afternoon — “

“I walked through the office door,” Elizabeth finishes. (link)

On the one hand, this reads like political coverage as filtered through Danielle Steel (“looking for love… and doing ordinary congressman things” ?! Is this the same Washington Post E.J. Dionne writes for?).

On the other hand, if the Kuciniches really do say stuff like this in public, it’s a bit hard to truly feel sorry for them.

There’s more India a bit further on: Continue reading →

Further Proof That Bharath Obama is so Desi.

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Between the snow, the looming holidays, sundry drama and Keeping up with the Kardashians marathons, it’s gettin’, it’s gettin’, it’s gettin kinda hectic these days. It’s been heavy in addition to hectic, depending on which thread you’ve been marinating in (despite Abhi’s heroically adorable post about every college male’s dream sitch). Time for some high jinks and hilarity, I say.

The link to this wideo has been sent to me so many times, all that copying, pasting and emailing should be put to good use, right? Who cares. You’re gettin’ some Bharath und Bollywood, whether you want some or not. Don’t blame me, blame SAFO; this concoction has the manicured fingerprints of those over-educated hipster doofuses all over it.

If this mesmerizing mash up doesn’t inspire you to…um…do…something, then perhaps the crushing pressure of high expectations will– soon after Denton-offspring Wonkette posted this vid, a commenter thither wondered what we were thinking, here at Sepia Mutiny. Don’t disappoint everyone now– it’s bad enough that you didn’t go to med school, you sepia slacker. What’s that? Oh. Well if you did go to med school, it’s bad enough that it was overseas. And if you…ad absurdum. Continue reading →

FBI Hate Crimes Report & Desis

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MAJOR KUDOS to our administrators (particularly Chaitan) for fixing this post, recovering the comments and making the universe just a bit more whole ; they fixed my screwup.

The FBI recently released its latest statistical roundup of hate crimes throughout the United States. These stats are maintained as a result of a congressional mandate and provide an interesting time series analysis of crime against specific races and / or religions –

Statistics released today by the Federal Bureau of Investigation revealed that 7,722 criminal incidents involving 9,080 offenses were reported in 2006 as a result of bias against a particular race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity/national origin, or physical or mental disability. Published by the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program, Hate Crime Statistics, 2006, includes data from hate crime reports submitted by law enforcement agencies throughout the nation.

…Analysis of the 7,720 single-bias incidents by bias motivation showed that 51.8 percent were motivated by a racial bias, 18.9 percent were motivated by a religious bias, 15.5 percent were triggered by a sexual-orientation bias, and 12.7 percent of the incidents were motivated by an ethnicity/national origin bias.

Because racially- and religiously-motivated crimes are frequent topics on Sepia Mutiny, I thought it would be intersting to do some number crunching to make the stats available for future discourse….

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Posted in Law

Bone(s), thugs ~n~ western medicine

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If you’re a scientist, you say that your own understanding of the world comes from standing on the shoulders of giants. If you’re a doctor, it turns out that your knowledge comes from standing on the pilfered graves of dead Indians:

Alas poor Yorick

Medical students across the world rely on anatomical models to become informed doctors. What many don’t realize is that a large number of these models are stolen from graves in Calcutta, India. For 200 years, the city has been the center of a shadowy network of bone traders who snatch up skeletons in order to sell them to universities and hospitals abroad. In colonial times, British doctors hired thieves to dig up bodies from Indian cemeteries. Despite changes in laws, a similar process is going strong today. Throughout parts of Calcutta, many of the cemeteries have been empty for generations. [Link]

Last week Scott Carney broke the story of the human bone trade in West Bengal, with accounts at Wired, NPR and his own blog [Photos here].

Why Indian bones? Well, skeletons are hard to get in the west, so medical schools look elsewhere:

In the US, for instance, most corpses receive a prompt burial, and bodies donated to science usually end up on the dissection table, their bones sawed to pieces and destined for cremation. So most skeletons used for medical study come from overseas. [Link]

In 1985, the Chicago Tribune reported that India had exported about 60,000 skulls and skeletons the year before. The supply was sufficient for every medical student in the developed world to buy a bone box along with their textbooks. [Link]

See, everything really does come from India! Continue reading →

Like a kid in a candy store

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Does stuff like this happen in real life? I thought these scenarios only played out in mid-summer B-movie comedies. From the Globe:

To many women, he is simply “the boy.” They know who he is, even if they do not know his name. They know his story, even if they have never spoken to him.
more stories like this

In the small, all-female world of Wellesley College, Mohammad Usman is famous in this way. He is literally a man among women – about 2,300 women. Usman, 19, is the only man attending Wellesley College this fall.

“A lot of people don’t know his name, really,” said Johanna Peace, a Wellesley junior and the editor-in-chief of the student newspaper, the Wellesley News. “They’re aware that there’s a boy on campus. And if they see him, they’ll say, ‘Oh – there’s the boy.’ “

The boy in question has been living in a dormitory on campus since September, showering in his private bathroom, and, perhaps predictably, becoming something of a folk hero among his male friends. [Link]

You got that? He’s becoming a folk hero. Desis have arrived when some of us begin to achieve folk hero status. So what is it about Usman that let the Wellesley administration let this rooster in the hen house? They actually have an exchange program. Some people want to be exchanged to a foreign school. Those people are stupid. Why go abroad to meet a cute Euro/Australian/South American girl for the summer when you could attend an all-girl school (with more favorable odds) right here?

He wanted to come for the educational experience. (And the women.) He was looking forward to living near Boston. (And lots of women.) To him, this was a chance of a lifetime.

“I thought it would be really fascinating to be the only male at an all-women’s college,” said Usman…

“I want to try new things, and the greatest part of a liberal-arts education is experiencing a wide variety of things. It’s important to me to get the most of my 50 Gs…” [Link]

Brother, we all want to try new things and get the most. I admire your educational ambitions. Once more we are the model minority. But…what do your parents think?

Usman, the fourth child of Pakistani immigrants who own a variety store in the Bronx, enrolled at Wellesley for the fall semester like everyone else. His parents, who dropped him off on campus, were surprised to see so many women, mostly because Usman had failed to tell them that Wellesley was a women’s college. [Link]

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Turban + Beard = No <3?

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Last week, I wrote a post about ABC’s Notes From the Underbelly (which, btw, is on tonight at 9:30) and most of the comment thread was as fun and fluffy as I expected it to be. In light of that, I am half-willing to apologize for my bromidic attempt at virtually playing the right and left sides of the audience off each other, like it was an old skool rap concert or a pep rally, but most of you resisted my super-smack talk about Sunkrish vs Sendhil so all’s well that ends well…or is it?

One of the last comments on my post was left on Thursday, and it has bothered me since:

Punjabi Sikh kudis prefer clean-shaven men sans turban. They are quite vocal about that on all the Sikh dating and matrimonial sites. It has reached a crisis level in Canada and US with many Sikh men having to go to Desh to find a woman willing to take them with beard, turban and all. [link]

The handle this person chose (Broken Hearted Munda Looking for Kudi) made me extra sad. One of my closest friends is in this exact situation. He’s brilliant, hilarious, considerate and one of the sweetest people I have ever met—and he’s still single. And in his mid/late 30s. What would “normally” make a non-trivial number of girls gasp or pick out curtains— i.e. every attribute I listed in the last sentence PLUS two ivy degrees— seems to come second to the fact that he is a rather Orthodox Sikh. I don’t think the issue is his tee totaling/clean living; I think it’s his turban and beard.

Today, we received another pained comment, from a different person (Munda Still Looking for Kudi), on the same thread:

These women also cite 9/11 and subsequent discrimination against turbanned men as an excuse to avoid us like the plague. They say they don’t want to attract unneccessary attention and inconvenience and do not want to see their men and future children placed in possibly dangerous situations. Is this a cop out? [link]

Oh, 9/11. You changed everything. Now you consistently inspire nightmares like last week’s violence against an innocent Sikh cabdriver in Seattle, who was just trying to help an inebriated person get home, per the police’s request:

Trying to escape the attack, the 48-year-old victim stopped in a car pool lane Saturday night on Interstate 5, near Columbian Way, and scrambled out, state troopers said. His attacker had punched, choked and bitten him, calling him an “Iraqi terrorist,” according to police reports…
The suspect knocked off the victim’s turban and tore out clumps of his hair, according to reports. The beating continued as the victim fell onto the road. The victim briefly was hospitalized at Harborview Medical Center for injuries that included a concussion and bite marks on his head, according to police and acquaintances.
State troopers were called about 8 p.m. A Metro bus stopped next to the cab to block traffic after seeing the suspect attacking the victim in the road. Witnesses aboard the bus made dozens of calls to 911, Merrill said. [MSNBC]

The only comfort I take from that story is that the bus stopped while its riders frantically called 911…to report a crime which was inspired by those very numbers. Continue reading →