On Friday night, a doctoral student in the engineering program at Duke University was shot to death in his off-campus apartment (thanks, Zuni123). The parallels of this tragic crime to the LSU murders cannot be ignored; like then, our tip line is the conduit for confusion and frustration over another senseless murder. Via The Raleigh Chronicle:
The victim has been identified as Abhijit Mahato, age 29, a Ph.D. engineering candidate who was from India and was studying in the United States, Duke University officials said on Saturday afternoon.
“He was found by friends who came by the apartment to check on him Friday night,” said Kammie Michaels of the Durham Police Department. Mahato was pronounced dead on the scene when police arrived, say police.
Durham Police said they do not yet have a motive for the shooting. Their investigation is continuing…
Mahato, originally from Tatangar, India, was studying for an engineering doctorate degree focused on computational mechanics at Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering. He was in his second year in the program, says the school.
Larry Moneta, Duke’s vice president for student affairs, said the university has begun “reaching out” to Mahato’s friends and to his family in India, as well as to Indian and other international students on campus. It is offering counseling services and has begun considering appropriate ways of commemorating Mahato’s life.
One way they didn’t commemorate it was by finding it a happy opportunity to test a school safety feature.
Here’s how the victim’s adviser, Tod Laursen described him:
“He made friends very easily and always had a smile on his face,” Laursen said through Duke University. “Our research team was particularly close to Abhijit. He was very well read in both poetry and literature, and enjoyed conversation with others about what they were reading.”
More about a stolen life:
On his website at Duke, Mahato said his hobbies included reading books, playing chess, and photography.
Before coming to Duke, Mahato worked for two years for the GE Global Research Center in Bangalore, India where he focused on finite element analysis, a computer-simulation technique used in engineering.
Mahato earned his mechanical engineering degree from Jadavpur University in India in 2001 and a master of technology degree from the Indian Institute for Technology in Kanpur in 2004.
Mahato was very proud of his Indian heritage and seemed to enjoy talking about his hometown.
“My upbringing was in Kolkata; the City of Joy, the city of intellectuals, and much much more,” said Mahato on his website at Duke. “My native language is bengali. We, Bengalis, have a very distinct and rich culture.”
Mahato’s website is here. May his memory be eternal.
ummm I think you have a point. Many AA’s do this to themselves , with old school pathology ‘acting white’ or otherwise ,othering themselves,sometimes without realizing it. It’s supported /enforeced by the wider community of ‘real’ Americans.
Consciously [The Good Shepard]; Edward Wilson; “The United States of America. The rest of you are just visiting.”
I have met (white) Americans and Europeans who feel suprised/perplexed/cheated when they actually meet me because a real American , in their view, is a white American. I daresay with the Latino/AA turf war/ immigration debate- more blacks will start embracing a nativist view. I don’t endorse this in the negative sense. On the otherhand I don’t get how someone whose grand/parents came to the US in the 1950’s from Poland/Italy or anywhere else , should feel more ‘authentically American’ than someone whose family has been here from day 1, or at least from the same time the Europeans showed up.
Condolences to the Mahato family
On the otherhand I don’t get how someone whose grand/parents came to the US in the 1950’s from Poland/Italy or anywhere else ,
It’s what Malcolm described as the phenom of “white immigrants getting rights handed to them the day they step off the plane that black and brown folks haven’t been able to achieve in 200+ years” but there’s no reason to turn the discussion any further in this direction.
Would it make sense to write the governer or mayor or representative of this state to urge for a thorough investigation, reminding them that even people with darker skin, born in other countries are human beings as well?
I don’t think one needs to patronise blacks and make excuses for the behavior of the criminals that come from their community. However, I find it interesting that many Indians who come the the US are so openly racist. Why not just call a neighborhood an unsafe neighborhood ? Is there no crime in India? What do they call those neighborhoods in India? Black neighborhoods? It is especially funny when they make such references in Atlanta where blacks span the upper, middle and lower class demographics.
If a black guy was the killer in this case, fry him. But I do not see why this is seen as anything but a robbery related killing.
A lot of schools hand out I-20s like a christmas party and the F1-visa process at many consulates is a mere formality. In our days there were a huge number of rejections and that regulated the influx of grad students. Another factor was the quality of schools we applied to, today there are many schools that take students even without a GRE score.
so back then for n I-20s we had n*(3/4) visas but now it is n^3 I-20s and (n^3)-10 visas. With such a large number of students flying in, even the best schools have run out of not only on-campus housing but even off-campus housing near the univ that fall under the patrol area of the campus-police.
I know kids that arrived this winter who live 5-6 miles from school and commute by local transit each day. Strangely enough a lot of schools are adjacent to high crime localities, which doesn’t help in anyways.
Now who do you blame? school, consulate? students? or the dollar dream?
103 脗路 Pravin said
How can this be? Haven’t Indians been treated like 2nd class citizens too?
The point is, those of us whose experince with black folks goes beyond 346 viewings of Spike Leee’s Malcolm X know bigoted attitudes are prevalent b/c well, blacks are just like us. In fact, DOJ stats reveal that blacks are overrepresented as perpetrators of hate crimes, while whites are underrepresented. various polls show that blacks and whites have similar views regarding immigration. the obama vs. clinton battle has revaeled a split between blacks and latinos, with both sides having some problematic views.
i didn’t think all this had anything to do with this post until dipanjan revealed that the durham police are investigating a a series of robberies targeting Latino victims. the suspects are black males.
HMF, i’d be very interested to read more about this – could you point me to a source?
i think, in some circumstances, there is a case for universities to initiate good town-gown relations through community development exercises. the very fact that some universities do it shows that they derive utility from it. several universities get better deals from the municipalities they are located in – in terms of tax breaks, building code relaxations (despite the objections of residents), easier time with acquiring land, police support, and federal/state funding for particular types of research projects that are useful to the community. when universities undertake these community-focused activities, at the the very least, it is a useful PR exercise that can potentially make it easier to expand in the long run, and at its very best, it can promote better scholarship with more empirical projects (eg public health and clinical trials, stem cell type of research that is legal+funded in states but not permitted at the federal level, intervention studies in the social sciences, collaboration with high schools for funneling in local talent). It can also revitalize towns by bringing in diverse new talent but also creating more economic opportunities and providing a revenue base for a generally better public infrastructure. Symbiotic relationships between universities and the communities they are situated in, especially when coupled with well-designed market-based initiatives seems like a win-win situation for all parties involved. This also seems like a great prospect to me because, well, I do have a documented a yerba-mate-swilling* “progressive” bias.
i do hope that abhijit’s family is able to recover from this very unexpected and tragic blow, and draw meaning from what he was able to achieve as a young man.
Manju, like I said, one doesnt have to go to the extreme of patronizing blacks and making excuses for the behavior of the criminals that come from that community. However, it seems like almost every Indian I come across has to make some annoying comment about black neighborhoods. One doesnt have to deny that most of the dangerous neighborhoods seem to be predominantly black. But it’s not the necessarily the opposite. Getting back to this case, I wonder if they were targeting Latino victims because the perception is the cops pay less attention to cases involving minorities as victims. Some Latinos are illegal and are hesitant to report crimes against them. I have known on at least 3 occasions from personal experience where cops do not show as much concern when the victims of a crime are Indian. Their body language seemed to be “oh well. we will file the report. Don’t really expect anything to come out of this.”
It does have a certain ring to it. I do know several libertine libertarians who do who swill a great deal of Mate as well.
Watching Gandhi 346 times is just as frightening. That would cause strained eyes all round.
In fact, DOJ stats reveal that blacks are overrepresented as perpetrators of hate crimes, while whites are underrepresented.
Blacks also make up less of the general population nimrod, so stating they are overrepresented really doesnt mean much, as white still commit most of the hate crimes. So, given a hate crime has occured, the probability leads towards a white assailant.
various polls show that blacks and whites have similar views regarding immigration.
Again, doesn’t mean they hold similar views re: personal ownership of the land. You will find large swaths of whites who say “get your ass back to africa/india/china, etc..” and you simply don’t see that in the same #’s with blacks. You don’t have blacks telling whites, “get your ass back to england/holland”
those of us whose experince with black folks goes beyond 346 viewings of Spike Leee’s Malcolm X
You could use a few viewings yourself. Also, maybe some non-ideological driven readings of the data you present.
How can this be? Haven’t Indians been treated like 2nd class citizens too?
ANother binary reading, have you ever considered that different immigrants can be treated differently? and that levels of 2nd class citizenship might exist? Indians being treated as substandard is completely coexistent with them reviling blacks (especially the US)
at least you got the director’s name right.
Right, I got my HMF and Manju fix for the day!
much respeck’ for libertines 馃檪 (and for libertarians who know their nozick).
I don’t think universities owe their surrounding communities anything. Except for paying a living wage for non-academic/non-administrative staff so as to not contribute to the malaise. That being said, I think it would be cool for B-school students to have some partnership with community development banks to help & learn from minority small business owners.
pravin:
i agree with with your sentiments. i was also annoyed how black (and for that matter white) racism got dragged into this convo. and i think you’re right on target to be careful not to allow anti-racism to become a patronizing form of racism that white liberals like hmf often fall into: where blacks become one-dimensional paradigms of virtue and black entrepreneurship becomes more unrealistic than a lesbian paradise state.
but dipanjan comment made race relevant IMO. and for those who can’t understand how blacks can be racist, just look at the indian community.
Having said that, its still likely this has nothing to do with race.
Abhijit was not killed in a gang violence according to this TOI article.
it means a lot vis a vis nala’s queston to you in #84…ie “given the propensity of those residents to harbor those feelings?”
when did i say otherwise?
there have been a few post here on SM about desis facing post-911 xenophobia at the hands of black males. So if you want anecdotes on top of stats, you got it.
where blacks become one-dimensional paradigms of virtue and black entrepreneurship becomes more unrealistic than a lesbian paradise state
and the misrepresentation olympics are off..
Not exactly sure where I said blacks are one-dimensional paradigms of virtue or paradigms of anything, of course, I need to try and backpropogate anything you say through a UT filter.
Having said that, its still likely this has nothing to do with race.
It might or it might not. at this point, no information is really solid. I later clarified my statement to say that if it was uncovered that it was race-centric killing then it wouldn’t be much of a surprise.
However, it seems like almost every Indian I come across has to make some annoying comment about black neighborhoods.
Even blacks make comments about black neigborhoods by moving out to the surrounding suburbs e.g., Detroit and it’s suburbs Southfield, Warren, Farmington etc. I guess the annoyance factor may just be your perspective.
A lot of blacks will also not hestitate to move to a middle class black neighborhood. A lot of Indians tend to dismiss any black neighborhood as undesirable and that fact seems more obvious when you live in Atlanta which clearly has plenty of non ghetto black neighborhoods. Yet I have heard Indians comment frequently, “too many kallus in this mall”. HELLOOOOO!! this is freaking Atlanta. It does not have to be a ghetto mall to see a lot of blacks.
when did i say otherwise?
What else could be your implication to saying that blacks are overrepresented in hate crimes – to somehow unwedge the foregone conclusion that whites commit most hate crimes. but that conclusion is unwedgeable, because it’s… true.
there have been a few post here on SM about desis facing post-911 xenophobia at the hands of black males.
which is exactly why I said this:
and you simply don’t see that in the same #’s with blacks.
I’m actually a current engineering Phd student at Duke. I didn’t know Abhijit well, but I have met him a couple times, from which i could tell he was a great mind, and warm person. This is a tragic event for the Duke community and the Duke South Asian community as well. However it is not wise to jump to conclusions about this being a ‘hate’ crime as all evidence so far points to a random, senseless robbery…part of a crime wave which has swept through Durham(the city which hosts Duke) in the last few weeks. This is a law and order problem rather than a race-relations issue, and using labels like ‘hate’ simply confuse the issue.
Roger, thank you so much for taking the time to comment.
“Fair enough, but who’s done that? This is a straw-man. It’s about economics, and where international graduate students can afford to live, I think.”
Again as a current grad student I know plenty of Indian international students. It is NOT the case that they are living in any ‘worse’ areas than other students. In fact they are far more likely to use on-campus housing, which costs about 3 times as much as off-campus housing in the area. This is for many reasons, including that they are not that comfortable with the American system, they don’t usually have cars, and they often overestimate the danger of the surrounding area. Most of them come from affluent families, in real-dollar terms. If you come to Duke you will understand immediately that many of your pre-conceptions about the ‘poor’ overseas Indian grad student are incorrect. In fact one of the most impressive observations I have made since coming here has been the tremendous integration of the Indian overseas grad students into the Duke student body as a whole. They mix extremely well with other communities, and do not segregate themselves at all.
Also where Abhijit lived is adjacent to the Duke campus, in not a particularly bad area.
Manju, keep fighting the good fight. I agree with you 100%. I understand why people have told HMF to go back to his own damn country.
I have to agree with Roger.
In December (a month ago) flight to Delhi, I sat next to two Duke MBA students (couple soon to be engaged) from India. They both had worked in industry (both in India and US) before enrolling at Duke, and seem quite affluent, and cosmopolitan.
Therefore, a lot of stereotyping here, is due to narrow perceptions of commenters themselves, as often.
120 脗路 HMF said
well you claimed:
.
Nala aked if you’d say the same thing if we replace “white” with “black” and you said no based on your personal experience. but DOJ stats show that blacks commit hate crimes at an even higher rate than whites. so my implication is that your personal experience is limitd to reading malocom X’s autobio on a dateless saturday night, not unwedging the “foregone conclusion that whites commit most hate crimes” which i have no gripe with.
Prejudice is there in all races. And if you look at some examples, you will even find racism. Look at Uganda under Idi Amin. That was not just a prejudiced regime, but racist.
but DOJ stats show that blacks commit hate crimes at an even higher rate than whites. so my implication is that your personal experience is limitd to reading malocom X’s autobio
And I’m saying given the stark difference between the population split (say 83% to 12%) the even over-representation of blacks in hate crime offense doesn’t contradict my personal observations of having experienced less claims on personal ownership & entitlement based on principle, of US resources and land.
Either way, hate crime offense and laying personal ownership to the US land (from a principle point of view, not a historical injusticed one) are not the same thing, nice attempt to conflate the two.
And gee, how dare you insult me by saying I’ve read and understood one of the most influential and important books of the entire 20th century.
Manju, keep fighting the good fight. I agree with you
yes, please do continue on with the misrepresentation, it seems many other contenders have thrown down the gauntlet already.
I understand why people have told HMF to go back to his own damn country
which in all likelihood is the same as “your damn country” Mr. bachan. At any point do you plan to actually attempt to answer the actual point?
HMF, please stop… you’re doing a disservice to black people everywhere.
I might actually take that advice, but it didn’t rhyme.
128 脗路 HMF said
I conflated? You introduced the possibility of a hate crime then related it to whites having “a personal ownership to the US land.”
so, unable to defend your position, you now try to claim all your maintaining is the banal obvious point that there are more whites than blacks therefore you’ve experienced more xenophobia at the hands of whites than blacks. you’ve managed to misrepresent yourself.
You introduced the possibility of a hate crime then related it to whites having “a personal ownership to the US land.”
Because, believe it or not, in a white context, the two have much higher correlation. Again, I’ll refer you too… any history book in existence.
so, unable to defend your position, you now try to claim all your maintaining is the banal obvious point that there are more whites than blacks therefore you’ve experienced more xenophobia at the hands of whites than blacks.
unable to defend? how about too busy correcting your bullsh*t represntations? why do you keep generalizing to terms like ‘xenophobia’ and ‘hate crime’ when I was making a very specific statement about sentiments on being ‘the true/rightful owners’ of US land? Are you going to seriously sit there and tell me this sentiment is held by blacks and whites equally? get a clue. (just don’t ask clueless, he’s running low)
125 脗路 Kush Tandon said
Speaking from experience (still a grad student): While brown students doing MBA and Law tend to be more affluent (either due to family affluence but more due to saving in jobs) most grad students in science and engg come from moderate income households. Some of them work a year in India to save money for the trip and make things economically better at home. Most of these students opt for graduate housing in the first year and then move to less expensive housings, if available, in order to save money. So ‘affluence’ amongst Indian grad students (barring MBAs and Law) is more of an exception than a norm.
(Roger @123) Lastly, mixing well with rest of the community is more of a cultural thing than economic issue. So what is your point ? For that matter, grad students from Africa also mix well with the community.
That’s right…but I don’t share the same (in my view irrational and extreme) attitudes towards white people that you do.
132 脗路 HMF said
B/c general xenophobia and hate crime stats are much more relevant(though, not too relevant as i and others have tried to point out to you) to this post than your pedantic focus on rightful owner sentiment. If this guy was the victim of a hate crime, and that’s a big if, the motive is not going to be restricted to ownership sentiment that you claim blacks don’t exhibit as mcuh as whites. your focus on a hate crime was itself fairly irrelevant, this is even more irrelevant. but the whole point of you bringing this up is presumably to make the larger point that blacks are less xenophobic and therefore less likely to commit a hate crime, despite your attempts to misrepresent yourself.
but the only evidence of a hate crime is the alleged waive of violence targeting latinos. the suspects are black. DOJ stats show blacks are over represented in hate crimes, as we’ve gone over. surveys show that blacks have similar views on immigration as whites. bloggers and commentators, who get out more than you, have personally testified to xenophobic treatment at the hands of non-whites.
but in your bizaare world you can still answer no to nala’s question.
While brown students doing MBA and Law tend to be more affluent (either due to family affluence but more due to saving in jobs) most grad students in science and engg come from moderate income households
Thats mostly a function of the fact that LAW/MBA students are self financed (like most international undergrads) while science/engg grad students are usually TAs/RAs etc.
B/c general xenophobia and hate crime stats are much more relevant(though, not too relevant as i and others have tried to point out to you) to this post than your pedantic focus on rightful owner sentiment.
That may very well be, but it wasn’t the point I was making.
If this guy was the victim of a hate crime, and that’s a big if, the motive is not going to be restricted to ownership sentiment that you claim blacks don’t exhibit as mcuh as whites.
what do you mean that ‘I claim’ I claim it, as does every reasonable history book in existence. Also, there’s a big nuance you are missing, not all hate crime is race motivated, some is sexual orientation, among other things. So much of the black-offender hate crime could be just that. The stats would need to be consulted, which I dont have time for right now.
DOJ stats show blacks are over represented in hate crimes,
and again, as we’ve gone over, blacks also make up a significantly less proportion of the population, and how much of that representation is ‘race based’ hate crime?
As far as immigration, again a myopic, half-truth perspective. The black impetus against immigration is quite different than the xenophobic “get the bronwn people out” that whites adhere too. For example, if you read here It’s usually a case of “immigrants are rising on our backs” which has clear historical precedent with the slew of white immigrants, ie. irish, greek italians, the black communities issues against immmigration comes from far different place than the white one.
Yet, count on you to nonsensically equate the two. It’s a historical misread that’s uniquely manju.
but in your bizaare world you can still answer no to nala’s question.
The truth would seem bizarre to someone who distorts it.
Are you going to seriously sit there and tell me this sentiment is held by blacks and whites equally?
In this case crime —> caused by guns. The ownership sentiment about this piece of property is the same in whites and blacks. The brown ownership sentiment in this category is woefully lacking.
Saying that guns caused this crime is kind of like saying matches cause house fires. In both cases it’s the hand that holds the item to blame.
Read on… It’s the ownership sentiment. Although I blame the matches for my smoking.
but in your bizaare world you can still answer no to nala’s question.
by the way, I answered “not really” because, despite your attempts to cast my position as some kind of absolute declaration, I’m making a relative comparison, based on a group’s history. But I do agree, that it’s not fully clear that this incident is the result of a race based hate crime.
i certainly equate the two. there are more similarities between black resentment of Koreans for example and white feeling of encroachment than there are differences, especailly when a dead body is at stake. all peoples exhibit xenophobia, though it may take different forms. mexicans have a sense of ownership of their land too, which is why guatemalans can’t get in. we may have different histories, but when you boil it down, we’re all bloody racist.
now you can go ahead and nitpick the differences in order to justify one over the other, buit i don’t play that game. i’m a simple man.
While it may be true Generally that science/engineering students are less well off than law/MBA, and even at Duke. What I am saying is that the Indian science/engineering students here, either master’s or phd, ARE well off with respect to people from other countries.
With regards to ‘mixing,’ you are right that people from other places, like Africans and Europeans, often mix well this often happens in non-science or engineering fields. In those fields Indians have always done all-right socially. However with Indians in science and engineering, who someone pointed out are often less well of(those in liberal arts more often have rich families willing to support such inane endeavors(jk btw), there is often this mutual suspicion, which happens with other Asian students as well. It results partly from the way people have been educated, and what they consider important academically. While it is a stereotype, Indian and Asian students ‘look down’ on other students when it comes to pure technical ability, while the reverse is true regarding thinking ability/creative ability/ social skills, etc. It is also in the way the students interact with the professors. You will always see even first year grads who were raised in the US call their professors by their first name, while Indians still use ‘Sir’ or Madam. The Europeans seem to adapt quicker to this ‘equality’ than Indians, as do Africans, who you wouldn’t expect to due to their similar background to Indians.
However at Duke this doesn’t seem to be the case. The Indian students adapt much quicker, and I have to commend the Duke administration, faculty and general system for this. Particularly regarding Indian students who are seriously a strong force here at the grad schools in business and engineering, well represented both as faculty and students. Having a strong contingent of Indian professors and older grad students helps the newcomers to feel at home very quickly. I don’t want to sound like I’m ‘hyping’ Duke relative to other schools, however people get this idea that Duke is an ‘elitist’ institution…a White establishment type place. This has been unfortunately reinforced by events of the last couple years. Even I was wary when I first came here this year. However I was wrong. Not only is this school very well integrated and very diverse…in comparison to places like UCLA, Berkeley which I am familiar with, but there is constant and active effort on the parts of students and faculty to make it even more so. When you walk around you hardly see groups of people of only one ethnicity. In fact, if you take a camera and click randomly, almost every picture seems like it could be a post-card for diversity. Its really beautiful, and how more colleges should be.
there are more similarities between black resentment of Koreans for example and white feeling of encroachment than there are differences, especailly when a dead body is at stake
I whole heartedly disagree with this. Black resentment of Koreans has to do with the Korean’s (and other minorities, in particular in the 50’s and 60s, white minorities) rising on the backs of the blacks, etc. You call it a nitpick to actually take into account a sociological difference? Fine. I’ll continue increasing my understanding of this in a sophisticated fashion, while you trot around with your “everyone’s racist” chant.
With a murder in hand, it doesn’t matter as much, I’ll agree, it’s just which one is more likely to result in murder, that’s the real question.
we’re all bloody racist
Typical white responsibility dodging answer, you’re a committed UT. I’ll give you that.
In fact on this thread, there are already several posts about Duke being ‘elitist’ and having poor relations with its community. The second part is unfortunately true in a sense. There is a mutual suspicion, that doesn’t seem to exist as much with UNC and Chapel Hill. Partly this is due to the majority of Dukies being from outside the state, while UNC(a very good school as well) has a majority of students from NC. However I don’t believe this is an error on the part of the school. Duke provides top-notch healthcare to the Durham community and is by far the largest employer. Duke students volunteer throughout. It is unfortunately true that there is not much equal interaction between the communities, but then college students usually only interact with other students and professors with other professors, wherever you go. There is a sense of resentment however, and surely Duke could be doing more to address that.
143 脗路 Roger said
Roger, I appreciate your comments; I have seen really great integration of DBD students in other ivy schools as well, and do not agree with your 2nd para about mixing. But what I am curious about is HOW did you decide that Indian science/engineering students are better off with respect to grad students from other countries ? It might just be that Indian students are better at saving money (which is a hallmark of a 1st-gen desi I think).
SM Intern, I thought calling people UT was a no-no? And HMF, why do think you’re black?
SM Intern, I thought calling people UT was a no-no?
Being one should also be a no-no too.
You are right, 1st gen Desis have in the Past, seemed to be very good at ‘saving.’ That is in fact what will tip you of that here there is something different going on. The Indian students are equally good at Spending.. There is more comfort with dropping 40$ on a night out. They are more likely to look for cars, and nicer ones, than students from other countries. I don’t think this is a Duke only phenomenon….I think this is a new Wave of 1st generation Desis….they are more confident in the world, more willing to spend, more Global in their outlook. They have experienced middle class lives, in which spending is as big a part of their life as saving. They were raised in a more confident India, and I would bet as time goes on this will be more and more the case.
With all this back and forth, unfortunately the poor kid (Abhijit) is getting completely forgotten. The tragic dimensions of what actually happened to an innocent, hard-working, bright student from India, are being lost. Someone who was proud of his culture and his family. Look at that guy…to think someone shot him dead is just so horrible. A crime that we have no evidence was a hate-crime…but we’re discussing as a hate-crime needlessly anyway. And he didn’t look like any Mexican I’ve ever seen.