S. Mitra Kalita’s Wall Street Journal article, “Desi vs. Desi” frames the news of the largest hedge fund insider trading case in history as part of a broader story of desis immigrating to the United States, developing networks with other desis, and their progress in the technology and financial industries (desis might have found hedge funds to be more of a meritocracy than the “cozy world of investment banking”). Those industries are at the center of the allegations that billionaire founder of Galleon Group Raj Rajaratnam, conspired with director of consulting firm McKinsey & Co. Anil Kumar and Intel Capital’s Rajiv Goel, among other executives and hedge fund managers.
Media reports included coverage of the downward effect of Rajaratnam’s recent arrest on the Colombo Stock Exchange in Sri Lanka, where “even rumors of his trades can send the stock market up or down” and transcripts from wiretaps of the illegal conversations at issue. But “Desi vs. Desi” brings up another interesting angle on the story about the case’s prosecution. The recently appointed U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York who will be prosecuting the case against Rajaratnam is also desi. Preet Bharara, formerly the chief counsel to Senator Chuck Schumer, oversees hundreds of lawyers and high-profile cases, including the ongoing fraud case against Bernie Madoff. He’s been billed as The New Wall Street Nightmare.
Does Bharara being brown like the defendants complicate matters? Before you dismiss the question as silly or irrelevant, consider the comments from a couple of legal experts.
Sonjui L. Kumar, president of the North American South Asian Bar Assocation, says that Bharara “has to walk as fine a line as there is.” “White prosecutors arrest people all the time, but here you have this financial mogul who happens to be South Asian and then you have a South Asian attorney.” (WSJ)
New York-based defense attorney Ravi Batra was a bit more explicit.
“When you are rising in the mainstream, you have to prove that you’re not parochial or ethnic.” He drew a comparison to another instance of a top prosecutor leading the charge against criminal activity by individuals of the same ethnic background. “What former Manhattan U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani did to the mob is what Preet Bharara will do to Wall Street.” (WSJ)
The implication appears to be that Bharara should guard against any perception that he’s going easy on another desi. On the flip side, I wonder if guarding against that perception might lead him to move more aggressively against the desis faced with insider trading charges. Given popular support for tackling this kind of white collar crime I guess the latter possibility isn’t one that many of us would be too concerned about, but the issue of whether/how perceived bias becomes an issue in brown-on-brown courtroom dramas is intriguing and I don’t recall any episodes of Law & Order exploring this!
What do you think, readers and legal eagles? Does Bharara have something extra to prove in this high-profile case given the desi defendants? Or will this commonality be a non-issue as he pursues charges against all the defendants, desi and otherwise?
i found this statement annoying and unnecessary. he doesnt have to walk a fine line, he just has to do his job. the statement almost seems to insinuate that bharara can’t help but be biased in a situation like this.
I remember reading something about the 1950s Rosenberg spying case…http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_and_Ethel_Rosenberg The judge was Jewish and the accused spys were Jewish and the Rosenberg’s received the death sentence. There was some analysis that the judge and I believe some in the prosecution who were Jewish, were more severe to make a point, that their shared religion did not prevent them from doing their job. I guess it’ll enter into anyone’s mind, if there’s shared ethnicity or religion, these type of situations, when the people involved are minorities.
i don’t think there’s much of a perception that desis stick together, probably reflecting the fact that we don’t and that we’ve come of age as a critical mass here in the usa during the post civil rights era. jews in contrast came of age on wall street when discrimination was off the charts. for most of american history, jews were prevented form rising to the top of the major white shoe firms, morgarn stanley and its predessor firm jpmoragan in particular. firms such as goldman, lehman, and bear were founded in part as a reaction against this discrimination, as i’ve Britten about here in some detail in the past.
there’s really no desi equivalent to what goldman used to be, or what the mafia was to italian Americans. hedge funds look like the mit campus, basically.
It depends on how much political pull the defendants have, but Bharara will probably just do his job, no bias, no bs. He definitely can’t go easy on them, but he might be tougher to make a point. How does a guy who’s already worth 1.3 billion (I think) take such a huge risk for 25 million in profits –> greed, and that is something anyone will be tough on. I also feel that Indians that work in the public legal sector usually carry a decent amount of passion for their job and pride in their commitment to justice, or they just want to pump up their political resume. Either way…crush the bad guys is what it comes down to.
We followed Satyam’s B. Ramalinga Raju’s securities fraud case in my securities law class this past spring, and I’m sure my professor is going to use this awesome new case for next spring’s class, unless something else more sheisty takes place between now and then in the world of securities fraud. Anyway it appears to me that brown professionals are definitely getting a bad rep now because of all the fraud being associated with them in reputable companies in India and here in America.
I’m glad I learned my lesson earlier on in life: follow the rules or get caught and deal with the consequences.
there’s really no desi equivalent to what goldman used to be, or what the mafia was to italian Americans I don’t know.
I don’t think there’s much of a perception that desis stick together, probably reflecting the fact that we don’t and that we’ve come of age as a critical mass here in the usa during the post civil rights era. I don’t know about this; My parents invested in hotels/motels and in two of them they are incredibly happy to have fellow desis, and they went along with the Gujarati stereotype of great business people, manage them; They go out of their way to make sure the relationship works and they trust their Indian partners in a way that they didn’t trust other groups of people. There still isn’t a critical mass of Desis outside of research triangle park in NC, so meeting a fellow a Indian, whether from Gujarat or Kerala, made a world of difference in who my parents felt comfortable partnering with and helping, business-wise, in a way they wouldn’t feel if these business partners weren’t Indian. I dont’ know if these people were Pakistani or Sri Lankan what would happen lol.
And desis have to like other desis just because they are desis, nice
The more I think about the madder I get about the article, as Bias pointed out preet only has to job, there is no fine line he has to tread.
this is true. ibanking is sales, ie relationship management. sales is cultural. so for most of american history ibankers reflected wasp hegemony. there was no point in hiring someone who didn’t go to prep school with the son of the ford ceo since he, and its was only he’s (and more or less still is), didn’t have access to spaces, like the harvard club or palm beach social circle, where deals were made and relationships cemented. the one area where minorities tended to dominate was muni bond underwriting since they would have access to the client… mayors and trhe democratic machine. hedge funds (quants in particular) are not about who you know, with some exceptions.
one exception is insider trading. raj’s arrest reflects an ethnic shift in finance. no big bankers are particularly worried about getting ford’s next offering, companies coming out of silicon valley or India and china are where the big bucks are and the ethnic makeup of corporate finance department are beginning to reflect that.
that a desi-Americans been arrested for insider trading demonstrates that we are getting closer to mlks dream. proud day for all Americans.
Also, the main stories are how he has been pronounced guilty without a trial, his fund may cease to exist by this Friday. How some of the other people who may be prosecuted in addition to Kumar and Goyal are not desi, how some of Raja’s donations were used and how this is not the only hedge fund that drives its analysts to get information.
Anyway it appears to me that brown professionals are definitely getting a bad rep now because of all the fraud being associated with them in reputable companies in India and here in America.
Why does it appear this way to you? Out of millions of successful desis this man and a few others come up against the law. How many white collar desi professionals have broken the law (if this man has broken the law) compared to other ethinicities or religious groups for that matter? When Madoff was indicted, I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear about backlash against Jews b/c of ignorance. If someone perceives desis as “bad” b/c of a few bad apples, then I’ll feel sorry for a person that ignorant and narrow-minded. I don’t think just b/c of a confused Korean boy went on a shooting rampage at a college or that a white male pervert kidnapped a child, raped and held her captive for 18 years, that that is supposed to reflect badly on the white male community or the Korean-Am community – so I’d find it highly ignorant if someone placed that same equation onto desis, when anyways I have yet to see evidence if the numbers are overwhelmingly show desi white collar criminal activity. Don’t let the rubbish thoughts of others effect how you view your community.
o yeah, thats true. i guess the immigrant small biz owner model has an aspect of sticktogetherness.
PS: Don’t let the rubbish thoughts of others effect how you view your community. I personally had a trust-no-one-until-you-check-them-out upbringing, but managed to put up with a lot of shady people. I also personally do not feel that Indians in the U.S. are bad people because of a “few bad apples.” I do however make observations of people I am surrounded by in the different environments that I’m in. I went to law school in the midwest, and there is a general ignorance in the air even among young people so that is where and what I observe. My understanding was that Desis are generally perceived as honest and hardworking people that thrive on meritocracy. I’m sure employers will be more skeptical of quickly progressing desi securities professionals more than they used to be…I don’t actually believe other non wall street professionals will be impacted. But in the great midwest, who knows, they think all new yorkers are bad news.
What happened to that rob character who used to carry on about the Yale Club? I’d like to hear his views on this.
Uh-oh
Desis love each other so much that I hear the police in India just walk around giving flowers to the people and telling jokes to people who look sad.
We sure do love each other.
no, not as reaction to discrimination, jews are just absorbed with collecting pennies.
I think this is crap and the prosecutor probably won’t be affected by this, largely because of something similar to Manju’s comment and the perception of desis. It’s the same reason the Guiliani analogy is flawed. Guilani was combatting a very present, topical and real threat to the city that was steeped in an ethnic perception. I just don’t think desi insider trading has been such a scourge that the general public will be concerned about desi prosecutors being in the pockets of the moguls, so I don’t think Bharara probably feels any additinal pressure. From a legal perspective, I think he probably agrees with the commenters here – he’s just doing his job and must approach every case and defendant without personal bias.
I dont’ know if these people were Pakistani or Sri Lankan what would happen lol.
exactly. i think gujaratis in the USA who come to run businesses are the better analogs for ashkenazi jews, or sicilian & south italians who dominate the italian-american community. i also think it matters where you are. if you run into a brown dude in boise, idaho, you might feel more kinship than if you run into them in santa clara, california.
also, re: law & order, only white people are perps & vics on that show. white crime sells.
I hope more white collar criminals of all ethnic backgrounds are held accountable.
i was to understand that the only reason this guy was bagged was because of the tamil tigers association. the white collar crime which he committed is ubiquitous, right?
It’s like this article was written by white people for white people. What does a Rajaratnam from Sri Lanka have to do with a Behara from North India? From a ‘brown perspective’ there’s an entire world between these two, it’s only from a non-brown perspective that they could be seen as part of a single mass.
Even using the term ‘desi’ on Rajaratnam seems ill-fitting. Brown people are a bit more nuanced than this post makes us seem.
vandy, well, if you’re an american-born/raised brown then it may be natural way to look at things, because you live in a white world. i think different people will have different reaction, and yours is as valid as pavani’s. my own position is actually closer to yours, but there are lots of brown people in the states who have created a pan-brown identity, and a disproportionate number of those people read this blog, and contribute to this blog.
the same could be said about “asian american” identity, but american-born chinese, japanese and koreans have created a pan-east asian identity which is real.
Actually I have read rumors about several such indictments coming in the new effort of re-fanging of SEC. This investigation was massive, that started before Bharara was appointed.
The East Asians have much more in common and less not in common in comparison to the subcons who have significant variations genetically, and culturally. Any attempt to create a pan-brown identity will only somewhat work when the subcons are swamped by whites, yet will completely fail amongst subcons.
Most of the people who read this blog live in a liberal politically correct lala land where the serious differences between subcons and the resulting issues are all mispainted rosy or just brushed under the rug.
As a Tamil I have never felt ‘desi’ my whole life amongst ‘whites’. Anecdotally I’ve noticed this amongst all kinds of Tamils I have met the world over.
Same here, and that goes to my point. Even within the ‘pan-desi’ community in the states you don’t see a deep connection between the various component communities. If any connection does exist, in practice, it’s very superficial. Even for those who believe the pan-desi thing, the idea that the connection is so abiding that there would be a bias issue for the prosecutor based on ethnicity is sort of absurd. You would have to have grown up as one of two brown families in a hundred-mile radius to buy into the idea of that.
I believe quite strongly in the “pan-desi” thing; I helped found this blog because of it. I also grew up in an environment so pale, I was part of one of two brown families in a hundred-mile radius and I do not buy in to anything like what you mentioned. 🙂 Not all of us “pan-Desi” types who lived in far-from-diverse places are brainless morons who see color and nothing else.
Did I have to respond to that bit of your comment, which was probably written for effect? Probably not, but it always surprises me that people who don’t believe in “the pan-Desi thing” come to the most pan-Desi blog of all to insist that they aren’t buying what we’re selling.
Wrong. Plenty of “East Asians” have issues with the all-encompassing “Asian American” label, just like certain brown folk hate the term “South Asian”. All are not same. My Yonsei friends in high school had almost nothing in common with our Hmong counterparts at other schools. They, too, have “significant variations”.
Fascinating. And yet, your anecdotal evidence is as useless as mine– which happens to contradict yours entirely. 🙂 What’s valid for you is different for me, and the Tamil people I know who happily self-identify as “desi” or South Asian.
Finally, for everyone’s information, the readers of this blog do not have a monopoly on rose-colored paint, lumpy rugs or residences in Los Angeles. If you honestly think that way about our mutinous little community (and it’s a pretty insulting way to characterize us), why would you waste your time here?
. Even within the ‘pan-desi’ community in the states you don’t see a deep connection between the various component communities. If any connection does exist, in practice, it’s very superficial.
Perhaps amongst 1gens, but among 2gens pan-desiness is real – just look at the number of pan-desi marriages, more the rule than the exception.
The East Asians have much more in common and less not in common in comparison to the subcons who have significant variations genetically, and culturally. Any attempt to create a pan-brown identity will only somewhat work when the subcons are swamped by whites, yet will completely fail amongst subcons.
how’d you feel if a japanese person said something totally inverted? i.e., “south asians have much more in common and less not in common in comparison to the east asians,” etc.? i’m not sure what the “objective” assessment of within group difference as defined here might be (though i think you are right genetically, but not necessarily culturally).
As a Tamil I have never felt ‘desi’ my whole life amongst ‘whites’. Anecdotally I’ve noticed this amongst all kinds of Tamils I have met the world over.
substitute whatever you want want for “tamil.” that doesn’t mean that some people, and a significant chunk at that, feel totally differently (significant at say 1/3 of american born south asians if you want me to give a number). from what i have read in places like mauritius and south africa tamils do separate themselves out from the rest of the south asian community, with is north indian dominated. but the generalization isn’t true enough that you really have a leg to stand on in dismissing those who don’t fall into your experience.
just look at the number of pan-desi marriages, more the rule than the exception.
bingo.
Among that post-1965 wave of first gen immigrants, “pan-Desi” feelings were often a very real and powerful force. We didn’t have the critical mass to break up in to regionally or religiously-specific groups 25 years ago. Where I grew up, the only other Desi family in town was Sikh. I saw them more than I saw my own Malayalee relatives and we immediately bonded because we were the only brown among a sea of white. Did we share language, cuisine, dance or a common faith? Not at all, but all we had was each other, and in the early-to-mid 80s, that obliterated all that difference.
I think your point about pan-Desi marriages among second-gens is also an important one. The odds of my marrying another Malayalee Christian? Slim-to-none. The odds of my marrying someone Desi? Almost 100%. Pan-Desi, indeed.
numbers matter. the rough estimate, perhaps a little out of date now, is that among indian americans ~50% are gujarati, and ~25% punjabi. if i had to bet the proportion of pan-desi among the remainder is going to be higher because if they want a desi communal identity they don’t have the numbers to chill with other “group X.”
re: differences. i was curious about the genetic distance assertions made above in relation to east asians vs. south asians. this we can kind of ascertain objectively, though genetic distance measures need to take taken with a grain of salt. but i am now willing to say that different american south asian groups, specifically south indians and north indians, are genetically closer to each other than japanese and chinese are, though the difference may not be great enough to state with confidence. for the technically inclined, i just looked at Fst values.
I guess we have a natural talent to do white collor crimes, we can’t mug someone atleast we will do this (In my university, muggers used to target Indians the most)
who is this “we” you speak of akash? i’d invite you to meet a friend of mine who had a rough experience while getting her masters at university of british columbia….
fine fine, can we all agree that i invented ‘pan-desi’? it’s really taking off.
“just look at the number of pan-desi marriages, more the rule than the exception.”
I would say most of these are for American born or raised subcons who are likely to come from regions where brown people are very few and far in between. The number of subcons in the states is low enough that not looking outside your specific ethnolinguistic group would leave you empty handed, while it is high enough that you can find another subcon instead of attempting to marry into the mainstream.
“What’s valid for you is different for me, and the Tamil people I know who happily self-identify as “desi” or South Asian.”
I’m just curious do these Tamil people you know speak Tamil? Were they predominantly American born/raised most of their life?
In regards to the genetics I would think the South Asians are much more heterogenous than East Asians, although I will agree that they are probably more culturally different than I made it seem in my earlier post.
“Finally, for everyone’s information, the readers of this blog do not have a monopoly on rose-colored paint, lumpy rugs or residences in Los Angeles. If you honestly think that way about our mutinous little community (and it’s a pretty insulting way to characterize us), why would you waste your time here?”
I didn’t in any way intend to insult you guys. I read SM because it gives me a window into the views of other subcons. And some of the articles/posts here, however framed, aren’t aggregated anywhere else on one site.
In regards to the genetics I would think the South Asians are much more heterogenous than East Asians, although I will agree that they are probably more culturally different than I made it seem in my earlier post.
for the record, i think it is fair to say that south asia is the most genetically diverse place outside of africa excluding africa which hasn’t had a lot of recent admixture (e.g., brazil might come out higher on indices like heterozygosity). but that diversity is predicated on looking at the total sample space of “south asians,” i.e., going from the northwest frontier province to sri lanka. the people of south asian ancestry who are represented in the united states are not totally representative, so the genetic diversity here is going to be lower (in fact, when you sample from a larger population to create a smaller one, you almost always lose diversity). though a few people from dalit backgrounds have left comments here, no one from the ~10% of indians who are adivasi have to my knowledge (i’d be curious).
Razib I doubt there are any comments from people of dalit background. The subcon diaspora tends to be skewered towards higher caste and greater wealth.
‘We’ – The geeks from south asia (in most of the case ‘Indians’), who have the stamina to do back to back all nighters studying but cannot mountain bike for 10 minutes :-). My Master’s experience was similar to your friend’s, at night we had police escorts to take us back to our house from the library.
Razib I doubt there are any comments from people of dalit background.
several have left comments. at least 2 that i can think of have “outed” themselves. this over the 5 years that i’ve read this weblog. though it’s not like i read every thread.
Hmm. I’m glad we went through the usual South-Asian/pan-desi identity thing. Again. In this case, the very fact that a person of SriLankan/Tamil background had business associates who were of Punjabi/’North Indian’ origin illustrates the point that at some unconscious level, this identity is felt to exist even among first-generation South Asians. Admittedly, they were also business school pals, but then the question is still why they became business school buddies in the first place – a Wharton MBA class has about a thousand people!
However, I still feel the Kalita article painted too broad a brush. Of course, there’s no such thing as ‘absolute truth’ or ‘facts only’ even in articles such as hers that run in the WSJ – they all spin off some ‘narrative’. Some facts and interpretations become ‘privileged’ over others. By emphasizing the Ivy leaguers and MBAs and Wall Streeters among the desis, she ignores the narratives of poorer desis, even the desi entrepreneurs like the small store owners and small motel owners and the ‘ordinary’ professionals. Not all the 2.5 million desis are running hedge funds on Wall Street!
And the Bharara/Giulani comparison is way over the top – as other people have noted.The Rosenberg comparison is also a bit over the top. It had many complications beyond the Jewishness of the defendants and the prosecutor – the Cold War for one. Similarly, in this case, it is not the shared ethnicity but the overall tenor of these post-Madoff, post-financial meltdown, near-depression time that is more relevant – it is very very anti financial speculators, and hedge fund are very high on the list of ‘heartily detested entities’. Mix that up with insider trading, and there is a combination that the zeitgeist today absolutely ‘loves to loathe’. So the challenge is not so much that Bharara will feel the need to appear ‘fair and impartial’ to his co-ethnic defendants – it is rather that he will also have to withstand the enormous pressure he will be under to really come down very very hard on this group, to serve ‘as an example and deterrent to others’. On a personal level, I hope they do just that, but I do not bear the burden of having to restrain my zeal as a prosecutor!
In the same week a tamil-american won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and a tamil-american billionaire got busted for insider trading. I think the good and the bad balance out. Seems like tamils are reaching the top levels in America at a greater rate than other desis. BTW there was also that Sri Lankan CEO of a giant software company (founded by a chinese-amercan) who also got arrested (for unscrupulous accounting).
I’m a 2nd gen (pops came here when he was 8) punjabi sikh guy living in the bay area and i’m a proponent of the pan-desi thing. If i see an aunti or uncle on the side of the road, i’m most definitely going to stop and see if they need help. If its anybody else, if i have time i’ll stop. At school there was a brown guy who needed to know where to park. Since he was a guest he had to park where you could pay for day parking. They only took cash and he didn’t have any so i kicked him down a few bucks to cover it without hesitation. Had it been a white guy, i probably wouldn’t have.
sanjay kumar. computer associates.
moni, i will help anyone that asks, and will help those that don’t ask if i can (or i try). but operationally something of the same thing happens to me i think, as i think brown people, especially DBD, will ask me for directions when they have an option of people to ask from. probably they think, honestly, that i’m more like you and less likely to brush them off 😉
a white nationalist sociologist, frank salter, has done a lot of work on ethnic affinities. he has shown, for example that people tend to give more to panhandlers of the same ethnicity. these sorts of ethnic ties have served many groups, from ashkenazi jews to gujaratis in east africa, very well. but there’s a downside to their behaviors, insofar as they also put up walls between these groups and their “host” societies.
i have no issue with people wanting to date, and socialize, marry, do business with, etc., within their own group (however they define it). but moni’s comment in regards to helping out strangers discomfited me a bit. the reason is my own family background, as like many of you my parents were strangers in a strange land (so to speak 😉 many years ago. and many people helped them out, and showed them the ropes. some of these people were brown, but most were not. on the other hand, they did face discrimination and prejudice from others. the point is that the lesson i learned from that is to emulate the former, and be opened-handed and generous when possible to those in need. not only does it seem the empathically right thing, you never known when you’ll be the stranger (in fact, many brown folk are still outliers in their communities).
anyway, when it comes old people or those in need, i think it might be prudent (if you don’t think it’s just the right thing) to not see color when possible. human nature is what it is, and that’ll never happen perfectly. i admire many religious people who refer to each other as “brothers” and “sisters,” but i don’t really appreciate how they exclude others from the circle of concern and affinity. in a pluralist republic i think it’s really not healthy for us to divide in this way.
in any broadly spanning identity class, i think it is natural for groups at the margins to question their inclusion. the tamils, situated at a geographic extremity, are an example. having developed a somewhat indigenous literary culture quite early, their folk culture is much less sanskritized than their southern neighbors. that it still bears much evidence, even within the context of the non-brahminic tamils, of continuous cultural interaction with sanskritic culture is another matter. In many ways tamils won’t even feel at home amongst kannada and telegu speaking populations. perhaps it has an analogy with the “is england a part of europe?” debate. from a perspective far removed it seems that they do, but not among the natives. the peoples of the vast deccan plateau tend not to question their “desiness” as much, perhaps because, although dravidian languages, they have a significant prakritic substrate. a significant lexical overlap of cognate terms with the indo-aryan language group exists. as well as from the later turko-persian cultural encounter. There are many binding forces bringing the subcontinent peoples together. old and new migration routes, caste distributions, places of pilgrimage, religions, sects. the pan-subcontinental and the local running in parallel.
I’m a 2nd gen (pops came here when he was 8) punjabi sikh guy living in the bay area and i’m a proponent of the pan-desi thing. If i see an aunti or uncle on the side of the road, i’m most definitely going to stop and see if they need help. If its anybody else, if i have time i’ll stop. At school there was a brown guy who needed to know where to park. Since he was a guest he had to park where you could pay for day parking. They only took cash and he didn’t have any so i kicked him down a few bucks to cover it without hesitation. Had it been a white guy, i probably wouldn’t have.
Moni I’m with you here – I’m the same way. For some reason I feel more sense of obligation when its an Indian/South Asian looking person who’s seeking help. And it’s not like I tell where a desi is from how they look. Anybody that “looks” desi gets my radar up a little more than others.
I can walk into the liquor store near my workplace, owned by Sikhs, and they give me a discount b/c “we’re both Indians”; I run into the reporter, who’s Indian near my workplace and he and I exchange pleasantries purely on the basis of our desiness. The sikh clothing store owner near my workplace, even though he and I did not know each other, started saying hello to me and another indian girl; We recognized each other’s “desiness”. And more so among Indians b/c well India, though not as “modern” in citizen identity as the US, is country that formed out of various cultures and languages, thru a shared identity; I think we would have broken up long ago, in the way of other european states, or african states, if there wasn’t a relatively strong sense of shared Indianness and that identity has been seen for centuries.
Akash wrote: The geeks from south asia (in most of the case ‘Indians’), who have the stamina to do back to back all nighters studying but cannot mountain bike for 10 minutes :-).
I think Razib is talking about desi gang violence and drug dealing in BC’s lower mainland (Vancouver, surrey, etc). We’ve talked about desi gangs in BC to death here.
Brut wrote: In the same week a tamil-american won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and a tamil-american billionaire got busted for insider trading. I think the good and the bad balance out
Then what is going to balance out the 76 Tamil boat people who washed up in BC last week? A few good jokes from Aziz Ansari? (The Tamil boat people are currently in detention while the Canadian and Sri Lankan governments work out who their identities.)
Anyway, with the whole Tamil Tigers thing, Tamils are certainly the most high profile desi community these days. The demonstrations in Toronto and Ottawa last year got a lot of (non-desi) attention.
Where the hell is your workplace? Edison, New Jersey?
Where the hell is your workplace? Edison, New Jersey?
lol – K Street, DC
Also, while Indians in general tend to be nicer to me on account of us both being brown, I have found that I tend to reap a dividend from other people from poor countries too. I live in a predominantly Ethiopian/Eritrean neighborhood and most of the store owners have usually been pretty nice to me. I used to volunteer at a refugee center to help prep. immigrants to take their citizenship exams too and we noticed that the Burmese, Cambodian, and African students all preferred to work with me if they could. Even over the one other non-White in our group who was African American.
I’d like to think it was a result of my good looks and charm, but really I think it’s just the power of Bollywood.