As the comments section of Ennis’ post on the GOP’s efforts to reach out to minorities indicates, many of us saw the video below on ABC News last night. I know I wasn’t the only one who immediately hit rewind, out of a combination of incredulity and astonishment.
Natural disasters are awful and over-worked, frazzled law enforcement officials are under much strain, but that still doesn’t justify ignorant reactions like the one captured above. I wonder if that same cop instructed other drivers who annoyed him or “talked back” to perhaps return to Africa or England? I’m thinking not.
Reader Suede wrote in to the tip line, with this update:
3:40am PST.
World News Now on ABC 7
Vinita Nair and her co-host are covering a story about the devastation in Texas, and they show a clip about how cops are turning people back and not letting them return.
The clip begins with a guy (desi) in a car arguing with the cop who is not letting him go through. The cop finally tells him “go back to India”. After the clip, Vinita didn’t just shove the comment under the rug, but instead, she was shocked and raised her concern about the trooper’s comments.
Go Vinita! As a massive insomniac (who grew up in a home with no cable), I have always loved WNN— I even list it under my favorite TV shows, on my facebook profile ;). Now that the beautiful and brainy Ms. Nair is co-anchoring it, consider me a rabid fan. Yay for calling out stupidity and not glossing over the truth.
I saw this last night as well, and I’m glad they didn’t edit that comment out. The announcer said something like “Some times things get ugly”. Someone should find out who that cop works for and make sure he’s disciplined. We all know times of disaster can bring underlying prejudices to the forefront.
sure, we can blame it on stress, but all that stress does is remove the normal filters that might have made this guy more wary of expressing his true opinions like this. and plenty of people do it in the absence of stress too.
Anna,
Why did you write this?:
I wonder if that same cop instructed other drivers who annoyed him or “talked back†to perhaps return to Africa or England? I’m thinking not.
Are you saying that it’s “more acceptable” to be prejudiced against south asians?
What an ignorant bastard that cop is. There are great cops and there are assholes, but since they are in a position of authority, a position that’s supposed to uphold law and order, and you need their help, when they are assholes and racist or sexist assholes it makes it all the more daunting. I don’t excuse his “stress” as an excuse for his racist, ignorant rude remarks. Who are you going to complain to when a cop is racist? I’m so glad that those words were aired.
What is also pretty disgusting is the comments were written in the link spottie posted.
3 · PS said
Uh…I didn’t say that at all. Other drivers of other backgrounds surely talked back to him, I doubt he made the same retort to them. That was my point.
It doesn’t occur to anyone to tell black or white people to go back to where they came from…not sure how you interpreted my words to mean that it might be more acceptable to be prejudiced, period, but I’m disturbed enough that I want to clarify that, immediately.
Hello, earth to PS. The whole point of the post is that it’s not acceptable to say this stuff, regardless of who it’s from. I think she was just pointing out that such a response would never happen to a white or black person, because they are somehow viewed as more American.
Also, since you’re unaware, SM usually highlights prejudice against South Asian Americans. I’ve never seen them condone it or deem it “more acceptable” Plus, the blogger is South Asian herself. Why would she think it’s more acceptable to discriminate against people who look like her?
He doesn’t even sound angry, it’s like a matter-of-fact “ok now immigrant, you know my sentiments on this thorny 800-pound gorilla-bush that’s flooding into my country unchecked and stinking hugely of pungent foreign poisons over yonder.”
not sure how you interpreted my words to mean that it might be more acceptable to be prejudiced
I think you misunderstood me -I’m not saying that you personally take that view. I’m saying, do you think society at large finds it easier to be prejudiced against South Asians Americans, as far as “go back to ____” comments, which I think is true.
When you state: Other drivers of other backgrounds surely talked back to him, I doubt he made the same retort to them. That was my point. that seems to say to me that you do agree that society at large finds it more acceptable to be prejudiced against S.Asians.
And I do think it’s more acceptable in society to make jarring, ignorant “go back to india” comments b/c of our accents, our apparent success socioeconomically (b/c it seems it’s fine to put down groups that seem to do well), and the fact that many of us come from nonchristian faiths and our the fact that we’re still “new” immigrants, still considered “foreign”- among numerous other things. I’m sure though for many people that speak noneuropean accents these type of statements will be thrown their way as well.
6 · Nayagan said
okay, maybe more like “mildly annoyed” but I get a strong whiff of Hank from King of the Hill.
Why would she think it’s more acceptable to discriminate against people who look like her?
I don’t – hopefully I clarified my statement better – read my comment to Anna.
Take that back dude. Hank is down.
Hmmm, as someone who has refused to take crap from cops in the past who have mistreated me based on my skin color, I would normally be in Mr India man’s corner. But I wish we saw more of the encounter. The DEsi guy(he could have just as easily been Bangladeshi) seemed a tad obnoxious. He is not American. So the analogy to an African American wont hold. I do think the officer would have similar sentiment if the driver was a combative African, and probably even if he was French with a heavy French accent. While I definitely do not like what the cop said, this is low on my outrage level.
Cops under the gun (no pun intended) who expose racism are examples that underscore a fact that civil rights laws do not change the way people think. Racism is suppressed during times of comfort simply because it’s noble and politically correct. Being told to go back home is a reminder not to ignore my skeptical, cynical, and jaded nature that I’ve grown so comfortable with during peace and war.
It’s still not to be tolerated. This exposure is awesome. To me, it’s reinforcing armor.
11 · Pravin said
I’m trying to figure out if you actually said something here. Some immediate questions pop into my mind: If he was Bangladeshi, that makes a difference in terms of your solidarity? Anti-foreigner bigotry is okay, as long as it’s not restricted to South Asians? What exactly did you learn from your mistreatment by cops? I learned that New York cops are, frequently, assholes – though the ones you don’t notice are probably the exception, and they’re not the ones giving the orders in any case.
The DEsi guy(he could have just as easily been Bangladeshi) seemed a tad obnoxious.
He is probably just as stressed and tired as the police officer; I’ve also had to deal with police officer more for sexist innuendos, though that can intersect with my color as well.
He is not American. So the analogy to an African American wont hold
Okay, are you saying YOU don’t think he’s American or he’s not viewed as “american” by the cop? B/c he can very well be American – my dad and so many uncles I know speak like that and they have been citizens for decades. And even if he was a tourist, a person who came here for work – so what? in my book – the cop has no right to say such an insulting comments to a visitor in this country. It’s an ignorant, racist comment – American citizens do speak with “accents”, and have brown/black skin and they are just as American as an African American or and Irish/Italian descent American that speaks with a boston accent.
Vinita is hot.
13 · Dr Amonymous said
No, that wasn’t my point. I was just speculating if he was Bangladeshi or not. Sloppy writing on my part where I conflated two separate thoughts.
I wasn’t condoning what the cop said. I have seen worse, that is all.
14 · PS said
That is a technicality, in my view. I do know a lot of those aunties and uncles. If you pressed them in times of war(or marriage!), their true allegiance comes out.
Pravin,
I don’t know about all that. My dad was born in India but his allegiance is undoubtedly to America. The same is true for many desis I know. Just because someone has ties to another country, it doesn’t make them incapable of being American or feeling like they are American before anything else. This is a land of immigrants, after all.
I hate it when people use the economy or bad times to condone racism. A racist is a racist, don’t give them a free pass.
Its disheartening to read the comments on the site where the above video is taken from. Supposedly its ok to tell us to go back home, cuz “we smell like curry or shit.” I just luv being treated as subhuman… but hey the times are rough so i should just get over it…
If you pressed them in times of war(or marriage!), their true allegiance comes out.
As an American citizen I’m allowed to marry who I want to, have my preferences, side with a country that is fighting against the U.S. (I am allowed to protest wars I find ignoble), route for an Indian against an American in the Olympics, etc.
It doesn’t matter what my preferences are in war (of course unless I’m doing anything traitorous – legally) and marriage – I’m a citizen or visitor to this country, and a police officer using racist, ignorant statements to me, is a police officer not doing his job. I just don’t get why my preferences in anything should mitigate a slur by a police officer that targets my race or national origin.
Texas likes to pride itself that the things that happened here in southeastern Louisiana in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the Federal Flood would never occur to them because they are above it all, in terms of infrastructure and “being civilized.” Only now is it becoming apparent that Galveston’s evacuation was a hot mess, shelters in Austin were horribly under-prepared and ill-equipped and that bigotry is alive and well even in self-proclaimed well-heeled communtiies. As a local friend says, “Stories this week out of Texas show the same things we saw in Katrina.”
On a positive note, more people can and do come together when disaster strikes. Katrina introduced people to one another who wouldn’t have met under other circumstances, forced them to re-examine their social and cultural views and made great friends and bonds, ones that transcend miles, race and class. Texas helped Louisiana after Katrina and we offer the same help now with aid dispatches and highlighting their rebuilding through our blogs and emails. Building bridges, despite the odds, is how we combat the divisive shits of the world.
As an immigrant, I find his comment highly offensive and ignorant. Immigrating to another country, half a world away, is no joyride.
Cops are supposed to remain composed under stress. Their job demands it. Remember, he’s carrying a gun. I don’t want to see a cop lose his cool and shoot someone in the face just because they were arguing, and the guy at the other end happened to be a brown man with an irritating accent.
If you see the rest of the clip, the cops were selectively marking cars with an “X”, and were only blocking a select bunch of people. Some people drove 5 hours only to be turned away, while they saw other cars being let through.
To see all the television newscasts of the devastation and not know if your house still remained standing or if your belongings were strewn across the streets, is stressful. To have life interrupted, and everything you’ve owned be taken away, is stressful. And you’re telling me that the “cop” was under stress ?
from the abc new site
Someone there was kind enough to get the link to
File a complaint with the Galveston Police Department: Complain here
reminds me of this post secret. The driver didn’t deserve the blatant racist, disrespectful remark. If he’s living here, accent or no, he’s paying taxes thus for services like law enforcement.
Your hick speak is so spot on it’s scares me. The “yonder” clinched it.
15 · lion said
Totally. She deserves a post all for herself. Or be part of a post about all the Brown women newscasters : Vinita, Beejal, Sandhya etc. I’ve been watching WNN lately and I love all the non-news bits of playful camaraderie between her and her co-host (that guy has a thing for her, methinks). Also, she did a “librarian with glasses” look recently (Sarah Palin like), and that was interesting. She still looked just as good.
This brings back a host of memories from childhood in the Houston burbs, and as much as I like to believe that this is not that common in Texas, a disaster like Ike can really show some people’s true colors. I hope there are repercussions for this horrendous comment, but realistically I doubt that there will be.
This cop seems oblivious to the fact that he’s being filmed like that Baltimore cop roughing up the teenage skateboarder. Or maybe he just arrogantly believes that nothing can be done to him.
The driver didn’t deserve the blatant racist, disrespectful remark
Of course not, in fact the driver should have said to the cop, go back to england oh and while you’re at it, stop and apologize to every native american and african american person you see on the way back
Someone should find out who that cop works for and make sure he’s disciplined.
Unless who he works for is even more of a racist than he is, which is entirely possible.
I wsa playing devils advocate with the whole as american as the other guy point. But anyway, that is tangential to the central point and I am guilty of moving the discussion that way.
I am curious about one thing. What happened prior to that clip that made the cop threaten to arrest the Indian guy? The question marks signify confusion on my part while transcribing. Cop: I am going to have to arrest you. Would you please….(??) Indian guy: What is the problem with that one, dammit(?). Cop: There ar eemergency vehicles Indian guy: There is none , ..there is no emergency vehicle. Cop: GO back to india
24 · bess said
I wasn’t trying for that so the sarcasm is unecessary. You are familiar with “800-pound gorilla in the room,” “thorny issue” and so on, correct? He wasn’t shouting himself hoarse or losing control; what emerged was most likely a spontaneous distillation of his own politics which I tried to reproduce.
damn. now I have that scorpions song in my head except it sounds more like “raunching like a slur-ricane” …masturbatory guitar solos et al.
Seriously? Back to England? That will be pointless if his name is Officer Wojohowitz.
Oh!oh!can I make my non relevant, observation that Peggy Hill looks like Sarah Palin, another “down home” American?
I’m in Houston. I haven’t had power for a week. People are frazzled. Some cop is annoyed and makes a racist comment. I agree with Pravin. This is bad, but low on my outrage scale. Here are some events that I feel outraged about: auntie detained for three months after 9/11 for no reason, different auntie and uncle jailed and tried for assaulting a police officer twice their size after a verbal argument with an airline agent, every deportation based on some minor issue I hear about, absence of news coverage about Bihar flooding,…
I think what happened is that the Desi guy tried to park or keep his car standing in an area where that wasn’t allowed, except for emergency vehicles. He should have been polite to the cop.
I grew up with this kind of crap in Alabama and Kentucky, and as I get older I’m drawing distinction between the trivial and the horrid stuff. Houston is the most cosmopolitan, diverse place I’ve ever lived. It’s easy being comfortable in brown skin down here. Pretty soon there won’t be many white cops left. And nearly everyone will have a immigrant relative or be an immigrant in Houston. In the meantime, India will export its culture like America does now and we’ll have less and less insecurity. We’ll laugh at the go back to India comment.
The guy is an idiot and we should move on. I sometimes think making huge issues out things like this just makes things worse.
34 · GreenDaddy said
and…
35 · ShallowThinker said
Is mentioning it here and collectively shaking our heads “making huge issues out” of this? I agree, it may not rank as high on the outrage-meter as other incidents, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t discuss it. Besides, if we don’t post about it then we suck. If we do post about it, we’re whiners making a mountain out of a molehill…I’m ready for happy hour, how about you?
25 · suede said
The sexy librarian with glasses look always been a favorite of mine. Unfortunately this stereotype has been receiving some unfair press with Sarah Palin.
Why can we have a post on the new Desi media?
For the record, I willingly acknowledge that my comments in this thread are a tangent. My only defense is that it’s Friday late afternoon and something in the air today feels light and the fall has been uncharacteristically fall-like this year.
Unfortunately, dealing with comments like “go back to India” is part of the price you have to pay as an immigrant or child of an immigrant. I’m not trying to justify it, but we really can’t do too much about it. There are always going to be ignorant people around. At least in America you are less of an outsider than if you emigrated to many (not all) other countries. I mean, how Indian is Jaime Alter made to feel?
In the grand scheme of things, “go back to India” is a pretty mild offense, even coming from a cop. Just ask Rodney King.
Just to be clear, I’m not in the “don’t post about this” camp; I’m in the “post about this, but keep it in perspective” camp.
Sorry, that should be Jamie Alter.
I by no means am saying you shouldnt post this. You should just for the entertainment value, which has been lacking with all of the politics going on. A video of a cranky Indian and a cranky hillbilly yelling at each should always be posted, but I am just hoping some massive outcry is made out of this. That is all.
what is that perspective?
Correction: …but I am just hoping some massive outcry isnt made out of this.
For a desi uncle to get so worked up means one or more of: 1. pent-up anger against prolonged discrimination 2. he needs to know the condition of his store/motel/home/other business 3. pent-up anger due to nagging aunty
35 · ShallowThinker said
Macaca-gate was just this : A slur. A loose comment from a high and mighty person, on record, making a racist comment. The only difference is perhaps that one was “welcoming” the Indian, and the other one was telling him to go back.
I’m not saying this should be as big a deal as that was, but, if you don’t correct an ignorant person, or don’t raise your voice against racial degradation, the problem isn’t going to go away or be resolved. I can live with one less ignorant racist in the world.
Seriously, screw you people who say this is a non-issue or that we keep it in perspective. I was ejected from my home and my city for six months because of Katrina, forget losing power for one week, and it’s all because of apathy and disrespect on the part of the federal government towards where I live. And ever since Katrina, New Orleans has been nothing but the target of hard bigotry from the “go back to [wherever],” “maybe you should have drowned” and “Katrina was ethnic cleansing” types. We can do something about it. We can highlight it, discuss it and not move on with our antiseptic lives because it wasn’t reported on CNN or FoxNews. Indian-Americans are Americans, Galvestonians are Americans, New Orleanians are Americans and I am so tired of othering in order to make yourself feel better or more superior in comparison. Somebody demand the elevation of the quality of discourse and interaction in this “melting pot” already!
37 · lion said
The straight male attraction to sexy librarians and lesbian sex is something I will never understand.
We all know that what the cop said was racist. If stress (and drunkenness) shows a person’s true colours (no pun intended), wouldn’t this also be an indication of the underlying opinion of the cop. I mean wouldn’t this be reflected in the stuff they do in a position of authority? Suppose a desi gets robbed by a white guy, would the same cop not do a decent job and maybe even try to convince the desi that they’d talk to the offender so don’t press charges based purely on skin colour? There’s a lot of stuff that goes on where theres a suspicion of racism but which you can’t point and say that’s racist but this ain’t one of them.
Seriously? Back to England? That will be pointless if his name is Officer Wojohowitz.
it was not meant to be taken literally, rather figuratively. No one here is native (aside from native americans) , even if descendants of Europe like to pretend to be.
This is disgusting, I guess stress brings out the racist in some.
And what is CNN doing with Zain Verjee?
36 · A N N A said
Anna, no worries. I actually think the clip is newsworthy. It is equal parts outrageous and amusing to some of us. It may not be as outrageous to me, but i got no problem with the article itself being on this blog.