Barack Obama dropped a “bombshell” today, something not mentioned in either of his two books:
According to his campaign staff, Mr. Obama visited Pakistan in 1981, on the way back from Indonesia, where his mother and half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, were living. He spent “about three weeks” there, Mr. Obama’s press secretary, Bill Burton, said, staying in Karachi with the family of a college friend, Mohammed Hasan Chandoo, but also traveling to Hyderabad, in India. [Link]
Whoa. He went to Karachi and probably had Hyderabadi biryani on the same college trip over 25 years ago! If he is elected President might not this learning experience alone help him bridge the divide between the South Asian nations? Remember when he said he was appalled that one of his staffers wrote the D-Punjab memo? At the time he stated an affinity for the South Asian community because his college roommate was desi. Turns out BO rolled at least three deep in his younger days:
In “Dreams from My Father,” he talks of having a Pakistani roommate when he moved to New York, a man he calls Sadik who “had overstayed his tourist visa and now made a living in New York’s high-turnover, illegal immigrant work force, waiting on tables…”<
p>During his years at Occidental College, Mr. Obama also befriended Wahid Hamid, a fellow student who was an immigrant from Pakistan and traveled with Mr. Obama there, the Obama campaign said. Mr. Hamid is now a vice president at Pepsico in New York, and according to public records, has donated the maximum $2,300 to the Obama campaign and is listed as a fund-raiser for it.
Mr. Chandoo is now a self-employed financial consultant, living in Armonk, N.Y. He has also donated the maximum, $2,300, to Mr. Obama’s primary campaign and an additional $309 for the general election, campaign finance records show. [Link]
Clinton (D-Punjab) loves India and Indian food, but as far as I know, on a day-to-day basis she only runs one deep. And McCain? I don’t know if he has any desi friends but his daughter is desi, so I guess that also counts as one deep. All this is important because having desi friends means that you might understand aspects of foreign policy better, as Obama explained today:
“I knew what Sunni and Shia was before I joined the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,” he said. [Link]
He might have a point. We all know that W. doesn’t have a desi posse and, as you’d expect, he didn’t know what a Sunni or Shia was. Bottom line: Having South Asian American friends = good. That is something both parties should be able to agree on.
He might have a point. We all know that W. doesn’t have a desi posse and, as you’d expect, he didn’t know what a Sunni or Shia was.
fair enough, but since the overwhelming majority of brownz are sunni there is a strong probability that you’ll get a skewed perspective… (i now pakistan has a large shia minority, but it is smaller in india, and nearly non-existence in bangladesh).
Having South Asian American friends = good. That is something both parties should be able to agree on.
the nature of south asian friends one has will skew one’s perspective of south asian-amerian relations, don’t you think? there’s a lot of diversity among 1.4 billion people and dozens of numerous ethnicities and several nations which have had…disagreements?
to clarify what i’m saying in my first comment, with people who have had close south asian friends (best friends even), i have noticed two countervailing tendencies
1) a savvy understanding of nuance
2) a tendency to over-project and over-predict from an N = 1 (or a bit more than 1)
that shouldn’t be surprising, one of the interesting things on SM is to see that the norms many bring to the table and assume are general for south asians/brownz as a whole based on their own familial/communal experience aren’t that general.
I’ll give you point 1. Point 2 I am not sure about because I think you are basing you conclusion on an N=1 set of data: SM 🙂
you’d think w/ that many foreign friends, he’d be more open to the benefits of global free trade….
Well, didn’t that recent Harvard study on diversity say that exposure to a small amount of diversity generally leaves people with good opinions of the other community, but too much diversity increases distrust? So maybe we should worry about BO’s opinion of desis…
(On a more serious note, there was a good (and depressing) analysis of the white vote for BO which I read somewhere – I forget now. Apparently, BO’s victory margins were greatest in states that were heavily black – understandably, or heavily white. But in states with a moderate black population, BO didn’t do so well, especially with the white vote. Now, maybe I shouldn’t make too much of this because I don’t know how rigorous the analysis was, but I found the phenomenon interesting in the light of the Putnam study.)
Abhi, I believe this is more of a dig at McCain, who either seems to have some trouble with the nuances of Shia/Sunni distinctions, or (if you want to be more cynical) is intentionally conflating Iran and al-Qaeda to scare people into voting for him.
Go Obama :)! I like the fact that he went there as a “nobody”, rather than as a “VIP”.
1 · razib said
Depends where in India your roots are. My Guju parents think “Smileys” and Vohras make up half the Muslims out there since those two sects are very large in Gujarat and even larger in the Gujarati diaspora.
BHO seems much more relaxed around minorities than the other 2. McCain’s wife, Cindy, adopted Briggite from a Bangladeshi orphanage without his permission. He said this in front of a camera. I noticed that they keep Briggie out of the camera and that she seems traumatized.
BHO probably enjoys tandoori chicken, and he probably eats rotis/naans with his hands. I’m sure that Hillary probably eats with a fork and knife. I have a feeling that McCain, if he were to ever have dinner with me, would say something culturally naive, like “You should feel happy that we liberated your countrymen in Iraq” or “the Arabic economy has done so well with all this IT outsourcing.”
I’ll give you point 1. Point 2 I am not sure about because I think you are basing you conclusion on an N=1 set of data: SM 🙂
no, white friends from cali too (grew up in bay area and had token-brown-friend, etc.).
Depends where in India your roots are.
that’s my point kind of. brownz are not interchangeable.
you’d think w/ that many foreign friends, he’d be more open to the benefits of global free trade….
he’s lying. just like republicans lie about abortion, dems like about trade. and just like “pro-life” republicans never seem to get anything done…”anti-trade” dems can’t seem to ever really rollback globalization. you have friends in DC, you have to know this….
BHO seems much more relaxed around minorities than the other 2. McCain’s wife, Cindy, adopted Briggite from a Bangladeshi orphanage without his permission. He said this in front of a camera. I noticed that they keep Briggie out of the camera and that she seems traumatized.
that’s a lot of psychoanalyzing, but remember that obama grew up in hawaii and indonesia. so no surprise. i doubt mccain and hillary are racist (hillary’s mentor was a black woman), but they grew up in a place and period where america was black & white, and they were raised in white america.
Actually this reminds me of an incident when one of my white female colleague once asked me ( during the height of post 9/11 debates and discussions of iraq, middle-east & south-asian politics ) whether majority of muslims in India/Pak are Sunnis or Shia ? I had to admit that I had no clue and later had to look up on the web for the answer.
Easy to understand why Bridget was traumatized after she learned about the ugliness of the conservative republicans in the 2000 elections when she became an issue and possibly cost her adoptive dad the election:
http://www.ultrabrown.com/posts/junior-mccain
“John and Cindy’s youngest daughter was adopted from an orphanage run by Mother Teresa. Bridget was 10 weeks old when Cindy first met her while doing humanitarian relief work in Bangladesh.”
“Karl Rove the consigliere stole her political innocence:… a whispering campaign [suggested] that he had fathered an illegitimate child… Just last year, Bridget, who was born in Bangladesh and is now 15, learned about the episode by chance while doing a Google search of her own name, and went to her mother in tears…“She wanted to know why President Bush hated her. And I had to explain to her that it wasn’t the president that hated her, that no one hates her. It was a very maturing process for her. I had to explain to her how nasty campaigns can be… if that were to even bubble its head up again, we’d knock that flat.â€
“Dadmag: During your campaign for the Republican Presidential nomination Bridget became something of an issue in South Carolina didn’t she?
McCain: Yeah. There were some pretty vile and hurtful things said during the South Carolina primary. It’s a really nasty side of politics. We tried to ignore it and I think we shielded her from it. It’s just unfortunate that that sort of thing still exists As you know she’s Bengali, and very dark skinned. A lot of phone calls were made by people who said we should be very ashamed about her, about the color of her skin. Thousands and thousands of calls from people to voters saying, “You know the McCains have a black baby.†I believe that there is a special place in hell for people like those.”
You have to admire McCain for saying that. Wonder why no desis say the same thing about all those prejudiced “aunties” they blame for the rampant colorism in the dark subcontinent of India?
Sure, It’s interesting to know the little things about the candidates.
Wow, 3 weeks in Pakistan during the Afghan war/jihad funded by the CIA. very interesting..
Ponniyin (of course!) hints at the reason BO probably hasn’t highlighted this trip to Pure-istan before — what’s the right analogue for Manchuria in the Muslim world?
Razib’ comment #2 applies to Desis as well as friends of desis. Many of us generalize about brown people based on our own personal experience and identity. We,re often wrong.
If McCain beleives a special place in Hell is reserved for the people that smeared his daughter — why did he hire them to work for his campaign?
It’s all well and good that Obama has such strong connections to desis but Pakistan is the only country that Obama has declared that he will invade if it doesn’t shape up. Couple this with his pastor’s anti-americanism and it looks like the more closely Obama is aligned with a place the more willing he is to throw it overboard.
Also — combining Karachi and Hyderabad (India) is a bit odd. Remeber, this was way before the tech boom — most Americans would go to Delhi or Bombay. On the other hand, visiting Karachi and Hyderabad (Sindh), the second city of Sindh, would be more plausible. Especially since Chandoo is (I think) a Sindhi name, and Hyderabad still has a lot of Sindhis.
Could the NYT have got it wrong?
Agreed, but having too many Muslim friends could turn out to be bad. As a recent poll suggests 1 in 10 believe Obama is a Muslim. I guess, it cuts both ways.
Perhaps the McCains are sheilding their daughter a bit because they don’t want her to be hurt by possibly negative attention? Perhaps she herself doesn’t want to be out in front – you don’t hear much about his son who is in the military, either. Not a pretty side of our politics, to be sure. I think his wife must be very kind to have adopted her.
I have to dig up this Clive Davis (I think) quote somewhere about a Japanese general who spent a lot of time in the States, admired the States, thought Japan was nuts to get into a confrontation with the US in WWII, and, of course, still went ahead with his orders. Makes sense, being a military guy and all, but I always think about that quote when people talk about exposure to other cultures and countries as somehow shielding us from all badness. I know, I know, N=1, but as stated above, their is data to show some exposures increase mistrust. Not that I think we shouldn’t interact more widely with others. Still. Something to think about.
Obama is pretty knowledgeable about the 3rd world. In his book he talks about Hanuman, eating goat curry in Kenya, chasing kites in Indonesia etc. Does that make him any more qualified for running the US Government with annual revenues of a trillion plus dollars? I dont know. I do know that there is something comforting in the fact that Obama knows the story of Hanuman and he considers goat curry normal. When he talks about the poverty in Indonesia and Kenya, he really gets it in a way which I dont believe Hillary or McCain ever can. He talks about Indonesia and the choice people there make between standing on principles or keeping your head down and trying to put food on the table. He talks about seeing people with missing limbs coming to his house in Indonesia begging for food dozens of times a day or how his relatives in Kenya would turn on each other for a few hundred dollars. Here is a great piece by Fareed on Obama’s foreign experience.
Was it a Matt Bai piece in the NYTimes Magazine? I remember reading the same thing somewhere and I also found it well done albeit not very encouraging.
Vundeep, Thrideep, Red Deep, Blue Deep
OMG, is this really Sepia Mutiny or has someone abducted Abhi?
So we’re now in the land where it is okay to say ‘hey, I’m not racist, I have a black friend’? I thought people now (rightly so) laughed at those lines.
And no, dude, I know lots of Americans who would think of me as a ‘friend’ here, and some of them have made a couple of business trips to India in the 90’s, but they still don’t know anything about India or desis or brown people and still ask some pretty random questions.
And hey, I went to Malaysia when I was twelve, so should I become the Malaysian prime minister now? Sheesh.
What is difference between dropping a bomb and dropping a bombshell?
12 · Vyasa said
Because they are not angling for black votes.
vyasa = prema/macaca roach (phoenix-like troll of ancient vintage).
Flash forward to 2008: McCain says he’s always admired Karl Rove as one of the smartest political minds in America, and would love to get this advice.
Ikram might be right. From Ben Smith’s blog,
[link]
There is no mention of India. Visiting Karachi and Hyderabad (India) and no other cities in either country is a little odd.
Not for a secret Muslim.
(Before I get flamed, let me add the mandatory disclaimer: some of my best friends are secret Muslims.)
27 · Rahul said
<
blockquote
(Before I get flamed, let me add the mandatory disclaimer: some of my best friends are secret Muslims.)
(groan). Well, maybe I should’ve added to #21, some of my best friends are abhi. And some best friends are Obama-supporters. Who travel to Pakistan. And eat goat-curry.
I think, you are a racist!…because you support Hillary
People are scrutinizing over whether or not Sen.BHO (PBUH) and his wordly curiosities should be considered for brownie points (figuartively – not lit.). Many of you go one step further and say that it shouldn’t.
Why not take the converse of this situation – that is, a candidate with an anti-curiosity and an insular view of worldly affairs. A person who can’t distinguish America from Canada. These attributes describe GW Bush.
I’m not saying that GW Bush’s anti-curiosity should count him as a bad candidate/president. But I am suggesting that we explore GW Bush’s badness as a president with his insular thinking. Perhaps the converse could be true and should be explored: that Sen. BHO’s (PBUH) eclectic nature could imply that he’d be a great maharaja/ayatollah.
Wasn’t this post labeled “humor?”
Chevalier sez:
Ummm, I have no idea what you’re trying to say here, but he is not running to be President of Pakistan.
24 · Gotta be said…. said
Pardesi Gori for President!
Or Hillary Clinton’s running mate 🙂
“Bottom line: Having South Asian American friends = good. That is something both parties should be able to agree on.”
Who cares if the president has brown friends or not.
This is one of the things that I will never reconcile myself with McCain’t. I don’t see how he could cozy up so much with Bush and Rove after what they did to him in ’00. McCain’t is a self-indulgent Republican who’s only interested in power, trophy wives, and inheritance of wealth.
12 · Vyasa said
27 Rahul
Wow Rahul, you have outdone yourself, Rove would be proud.
I do agree with you that Cindy McCain is a saint. It was Cindy’s decision to adopt Bridget, and Sen.McCain’t had nothing to do with it. In explaining her decision to adopt a baby from south Asia, he seemed irritated that he was kept out of the decision making process.
Regardless of how they adopted Bridget, I still find this admirable of both, Cindy and John – in that order.
One thing that we should step back and think about is: How many Indians adopt kids? I’ve only met one family that adopted a set of twins from Orissa.
18 · MD said
37 · Yogi said
I think the conventional resort of the hyperbolic humorless is Hitler. And it’s MC Rove to you, thank you very much.
It is you who invoked Hitler not me, so what does that make you? You have been using, what sound like typical Republican talking points against Obama for months now, hence the comparison.
PS. About the original comment: I was being a bit snarky not serious, I am sorry if I offended you.
Yeah, you should tell the NY Times, which I’ve quoted multiple times on this issue, that.
Don’t worry about it. You’ve insinuated in the past that Obama opposers must be racist, so what’s a little bigotry thrown in between friends?
Well let me be clear I don’t think that not supporting Obama makes any one racist. I don’t see much point in carrying on this conversation since you called me bigot, when I was trying to apologize.
Ooh, moral high ground after saying that I was just spouting Republican talking points, Rove style 🙂 Which is why I said that you were insinuating that I was a bigot.
Look, whatever I think of Obama, barring any major implosions (even the gaffes like he’s been making recently will probably not change the primary results, although they might hurt him badly in the generals), it looks like he’s nailed the Dem nomination. And he’s definitely a superior alternative to McCain, who’s both misguided and malicious, in his policies and opinions on the economy and foreign policy (for example, his conflations of Iran with Al Qaeda – although on the plus side, Bush has dug such a deep hole that there’s probably no wiggle room to start any new misadventures). Which is the only reason I’m holding my powder on Obama because he’d better win in November.
Ah Ha! Slyly bringing up his cocaine use, Rahul? Turd Blossom you are…or maybe Mark Penn.
43 · Rahul said
Obama is the next Carter or LBJ. Mr. Big Government. He’s going to outspend Bush, and it’ll be real bad.
Who should be depressed, or suprised? what should such people do, in the short term, as 3 generations of “breeding” hasn’t overcome it{{sarcasm}}
Somehow I doubt he would have the neccssary flag waving enablers to acccomplish such a humongous task
4 · vinod said
i suspect he’s very open (as is Hill, even more obviously). I guess this constitutes his true Manchurianism: stealth free-trade candidate.
Well, Dems are stealth free-traders and Republicans are stealth protectionists. – steel tariffs in W. Virginia weeks before a tight election, or all the conditions that Republican candidates put around disbursed aid, “sure, we’ll help you with AIDS provided you buy overpriced condoms from a factory built in my district.” Any examination of the facts makes it clear that all politicians jockey to impose barriers that help their constituents in the short term.
Except pack the Supreme Court with friendly justices, slow roll the okaying of Plan B, strongly skew funding towards abstinence-only education, and so on.
Okay, this post didn’t and doesn’t look non-serious to me but I will take your word for the humor part of it.
On Hillary’s Clinton one deep – Huma Abedin is not the only desi connection. Both the Clintons are known Indo-philes. Amongst their biggest fund-raisers and closest friends have been the Chatwals (they even went to the Vikram Chatwal’s OTT-but-kewl wedding), Neera Tanden (the Hillary Clinton campaign’s policy director), Arvind Raghunathan of DB, Indira Nooyi (maybe – she and her husband have donated to both Democrats, but I don’t know which has to which), Rajen Anand, and a lot, lot of others. And of course, one can simply not be a NY Senator without knowing (and being supported by) a good, good number of Indians/South-Asians.
Which is why I need to roll my eyes in wonder when anyone, especially a brown blog, says Obama or any other American politician knows Indians/desis better than the Clintons do – such inferences run contrary to every factoid and news item of the last two decades. Which is why the D-Punjab memo was released in the first place, by the Obama campaign – they saw that as a clear, provable association of the Clintons.
And the bigger worry is over at the Obama camp. Bill Richardson is notoriously anti-India ever since it was under his watch that the ‘Buddha smiled again’ in 1998, and he felt like a fool because the Indians tested a nuclear device despite intensive US satellite imagery and tracking. And these were the same US satellites which, if you stood in the street and read a newspaper, could read the headlines of your newspaper. It is a different story that apparently all it took to fool the US satellite was doing the on-ground preparation in the 12-hour period when the satellites were facing the other side :-). If I find some links I’ll paste them here sometime.
In those crazy times, ten years ago next month, when the whole world was baying for India’s blood, it was Bill Clinton who stood up and advocated calmness and a relative respect for India’s rights/security concerns and therefore negotiated down the intensity of the sanctions that were subsequently imposed. Whatever you p-o-v on whether India should’ve gone nuclear – and I’ve heard excellent arguments both ways by very rational people – the fact here is that the Clintons have been unprecedentedly genuine supporters of India. Bill’s administration was the first US Administration ever since India’s independence to spend time, money and diplomacy efforts, and make friendly overtures, to Indians and the Indian government, and move away from (a) the usual loud anti-India rhetoric (Nixon) and (b) condescending ‘we will rescue India from the USSR and China’ blather (JFK).
And Obama, the Golden One, slipped in a cruel reference to outsourcing and totally ignored non-black, non-white race dynamics even in his famous overarching race speech (which was no less, apparently, than the Sermon on the Mount but was a copy of Bill’s Million Man March speech in the 90’s).
If a politician has ever walked the walk and talked the talk on partnership with a nation, it is Bill and Hillary Clinton. It’s silly to assume that just because Obama’s dad was Kenyan, or that he spent a week in Pakistan a couple decades ago, that he’ll be a better friend of Indians & Pakistanis.
[I’m sorry that I cannot provide any arguments for their support to other South-Asian nations – I’m simply not well-informed enough about that. But I’m interested in reading anything that y’all might put up here].
49 · Chevalier said
Too bad JFK couldn’t save India from the evil empires. While India was engaging in fabian socialism, India’s growth was poor. When they promoted an economic liberalization plan in 91 under Singh, only did India’s growth skyrocket.
Well in terms of any of these president candidates, I’d say all of these would do great. Thanks to Bill, relations with India have been getting better every year (especially under this Bush). Congress passed the nuclear thing last year, which has things going in the right direction for India & the U.S. But obviously, these pres will have a tough time with the foreign policy going on right now (in other countries).