Author Archives: Ennis Singh Mutinywale

Left vs. White

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Watching the Republican National Convention was a little like being lost in an Alaskan snowstorm: I was blinded by the unbearable whiteness of being a Republican delegate. It was surprising, therefore, to find out that the delegates were even whiter than they appeared on TV. It seems the camera not only adds ten pounds, it also increases the amount of melanin in the room.

cite: 1, 2, 3 Democrats Republicans National Average
White 57% 93% 74%
Black 25% 2% 13%
Latino 12% 5% 15%
Asian 5% ~0% ? 4%
Male 50% 68% ~50%

While 44% of all delegates at the DNC were minorities, this was true for only 7% of RNC delegates. In fact, this was one of the whitest RNC conventions in decades, pretty much since Black Americans effectively regained the franchise:

Only 36 of the 2,380 delegates seated on the convention floor are black, the lowest number since the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies began tracking diversity at political conventions 40 years ago [Link]

This was a big shift from 2000 and 2004, when the Bush campaign successfully reached out strongly to Black and Latino voters. The absence of Latino voters was particularly striking, probably because Latino activists have been driven out of the party grassroots that constitute the delegates by the rancor over immigration.

The party has also made a concerted effort to court Hispanics, but its electoral gains have been diminished by the hard-line stance many Republicans have taken on immigration… 5 percent of delegates are Hispanic, the lowest percentage at a Republican convention since 1996 [Link]

McCain’s own campaign manager said:

“We have to make a better case to the Hispanic voter that the Republican Party has something to offer other than a deportation slip,” [Link]

And while I was unable to find any figures on Asians at the Republican convention, the numbers leave little room for Asian delegates unless in very small number.

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Collecting Tinsel

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Every few years we’ve asked why India’s performance at international sporting events is so poor (1, 2 for example).

Since independence in 1947, India has won 12 Olympic medals in 14 Summer Games – three fewer than Belarus won in 2004 alone. [Link]

Diagnosing India’s athletic failings seems to be India’s favorite sport:

Many theories have been proposed to account for India’s failure. Some experts say India has not much in the way of sports culture and few heroes; others blame a “corrupt sporting bureaucracy”. Things have got so bad that in the past, Indian sports ministers have suggested a moratorium on international competition to train athletes who will not be a national embarrassment. [Link]

Recently, two economists argued that a lack of social mobility is the key culprit:

Anirudh Krishna and Eric Haglund… said that the problem for India is … the number of people who can “effectively participate in sports”.

“Ill health and poor nutrition can hamper early childhood development. In addition, lack of information and lack of access can effectively exclude larges swaths of a country’s population. The resulting small percentage of effective participants helps explain more fully why despite such a large population and a large potential talent pool, a country ends up winning very few Olympic medals,” …

Controversially, the paper contends that social mobility is the key to countries’ success at the Olympics. Populations that are better informed and better connected to opportunities, in societies where information and access are widespread “tend to win a higher share of Olympic medals”, they said. [Link]

While they accept that low GDP has something to do with India’s performance, they point out that India underperforms even amongst its peers, arguing that Cuba, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, Kenya and Uzbekistan have each done far better than India.

Over at Marginal Revolution, Libertarian economist Tyler Cowen places the blame on … a lack of government subsidy. If Tyler’s right, then we should see some changes in the short term, now that Mittal is putting his money behind athletes training for the 2012 Olympics.

The goal is to “put India on the medals grid” in the 2012 London Games by identifying India’s best young athletes and giving them the money to travel the world in search of the best competition and coaches. [Link]

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Three Kumars, how many medals?

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Right now, three of India’s five boxers are advancing to the quarter-finals in Beijing, putting them each just one win away from a medal: Akhil Kumar (bantamweight), his cousin Jitender Kumar (flyweight), and Vijender Kumar (middleweight).

Part time model, police inspector, and possibly India’s first professional boxer.

Given India’s poor showing in track and field, where all the athletes were eliminated in the qualification rounds, and the decision to pull India’s sole weightlifter after (what turned out to be a false) positive on a doping test, there is a lot riding on the performance of the three Kumars.

On the positive side, it’s a historic opportunity for India. Abinav Bindra’s gold medal was India’s first ever individual gold at the Olympics, if any of these three make it to the top, the country will celebrate as if Michael Phelps was their very own.

The fights promise to be exciting as well. Jitender, who is the only novice Olympian of the three, will next face off against three-time European champion Russian Georgy Balakshin in a rematch of their 2007 World Championship fight, where Balakshin prevailed by a single point. (clips from first round, via UB)

All three boxers (plus teamate Dinesh Kumar who got lost in the first round) come from a single boxing club – the Bhiwani Boxing Club in the village city of Bhiwani, Haryana, a place known as India’s “little Cuba”. This is the heartland of Indian boxing:

The place spawns hundreds of young fighters who spar every evening at the five local boxing schools. Here, learning to box is a passport to a secure government job and an opportunity to do something meaningful in life. [Link]

Up till now, boxing has received little popular recognition in India, something that might change after this Olympics:

It is not easy becoming a boxer in a cricket-crazy country. “People here think boxers are violent or mad” … “My blood boils when everybody goes gaga over cricket” says Vijender. [Link]

As a result, Vijender (the middleweight and possibly the most promising of the three) supplements the money that the government awarded him for victories in the Commonwealth and Asian Games with part time work modelling, and a job as a police inspector, all the time dreaming of becoming India’s first professional boxer:

“A promoter like Don King, a ring inside Madison Square Garden, and millions of dollars per bout. That is my dream, that is where I want to be,” [Link]

Who knows, he might just be a contender.

Update: And then there were two. Akhil Kumar lost to Veaceslav Gojan in the quarter-finals of the men’s 54 kg bantamweight category. Given that he narrowly defeated current world champion Sergey Vodopyanov on Indian independence day, this is must be a disappointment. (Video) (HT: Dhoni)

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Plushy Kali

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Remember Ghee Happy? This was Pixar illustrator Sanjay Patel’s take on the Hindu Pantheon, done in a drawing style that was hipster crossed with the Powerpuff girls.

At the time, Manish observed that

… any kid-safe interpretation of Kali is bound to cross the line into kitsch. [Link]

Sanjay is now going from 2-D to 3-D. He has a mockup of a plush Kali doll [via BB], and is in the process of looking for a manufacturer. Presumably, he’s looking to market this as a children’s toy, although somehow I suspect it will end up in more hipster cribs than kiddy cribs.

This is where my intuitions fail me. The book and prints and apparel all seemed like things that might be purchased by (some) ABD Hindus. Certainly the remarks in the comments of the original post were pretty positive about Sanjay’s renderings.

Would the same be true about the plushy doll? If not, why not? Here, the fact that I’m not a Hindu gets in the way of my ability to imagine people’s reactions. Is there a difference between a children’s t-shirt and a doll? Hindu iconography has long been used for commercial purposes, is this any different? Is this something that you would buy?

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Dude, where’s my car?

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Just when former Senator Allen thought it was safe to leave the house, Wonkette reports a sighting of a car with a VA license plate reading MCACAS [HT: Blue].

Of course, a photo like this is just begging for a caption.

Also, feel free to speculate as to whose car this is and how it ended up with such a vanity license plate. Do you think this is the Macamobile of S.R. Sidhartha himself, with its patriotic bumper sticker? I mean, hopefully he does satire. Or is it a tone deaf racist exclamation by a die-hard Allen supporter? Or perhaps it belongs to an aspiring DJ, an MC Acas? What say you, intrepid Macacans?

Related posts: One Macaca, two macacas, three cute ‘lil macacas

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Riddikulus! (updated)

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Last night, the interwebs were all abuzz with news of the most recent New Yorker cover. Generally, left-wing bloggers appear pretty outraged:

There’s no other ulterior motive to publish cartoons like this right? …This is disgusting. Might be worth canceling a subscription or two. [Daily Kos]

… so singularly out of touch … It may not be unusual for Upper East-Side liberals that a half-black man with an African father and Hussein for a middle name … might ascend to the presidency, but to some Americans IT IS EVERYTHING. [TPM]

While I was alarmed at first, the image grew on me as satire. It’s a veritable Where’s Waldo compendium of right-wing fears about the Obama candidacy:

  • Michelle Obama as old American black nationalism allied with …
  • Barack Obama as the purported American who is still loyal to his immigrant roots
  • The alliance between them represented by the “terrorist fist-jab”
  • Washington’s replacement by Osama Bin Laden in the painting over the mantel (OMG OBL Booga Booga!)
  • Patriotism discarded, as shown by the flag in the fireplace

As I see it, the cartoon intends to show just how absurd people’s fears are: fears of foreigners as fifth columnists, fears that men who wear turbans (even if once, for a foreign photo-op) must be Muslims, and therefore unpatriotic. The cartoon makes these images concrete and then laughs at them, like a riddikulus spell against a boggart.

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A mother’s work is never done

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For one women it seems, the biological work of mothering continues even well after menopause:

A woman said to be 70 years of age has given birth to twins in India’s northern Uttar Pradesh state after taking IVF treatment… The couple were so desperate for a male heir that they spent their life savings and took out a bank loan for IVF.

Omkari Panwar already has two daughters and is a grandmother to five children. “We already have two girls but we wanted a boy so that he could have taken care of our property. This boy and girl are God’s greatest gift to us,” Omkari said. [Link]

That’s right – she got pregnant at age 70 so she could produce a male heir! This boy isn’t even going to be able to take care of its parents in their old age, they’re already there. The sole reason for his conception was so that he could inherit the property.

While I shake my head in confusion at this (why do you care who inherits after you’re dead – you’re dead, right?), is the average American any better? It turns out that they have a strong preference for female children when they adopt:

… there are about 105 boys for every 100 girls in the general population of biological children under the age of 18. Adopted children … [however, have] 89 boys for every 100 girls. What’s more, adopted children under the age of 6 constitute a group where there only are 85 boys for every 100 girls…. the sex ratio of adopted children goes still further off-kilter if you look only at international adoptions… Girls make up about 64 percent of all children adopted by Americans outside the United States. That’s a mere 56 boys for every hundred girls. [Link]

When adopting abroad, Americans have a 2:1 preference for girls over boys. And that’s not a matter of supply, it’s purely demand:

It doesn’t matter if they’re adopting from China, where girls far outnumber boys; from Russia, where the numbers are about even; or from Cambodia, where there is typically a glut of orphan boys and a paucity of girls. Everywhere, demand tends to favor the feminine. [Link]

There are good reasons to tsk over the desi preference for boy children. Should we do the same when it comes to the American preference for girl children when adopting?

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Tagore as dance music, ‘round the world

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By now, almost all of you will have seen the video below, the third in a series where Matt Harding does a peculiar little jig in 69 scenic locations around the world. It’s one of the web’s most popular videos and for good reason; it’s both incredibly catchy and deeply moving. One friend I sent this to burst out crying, another decided to plan a 3 week trip to Latin America as a result.

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

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p>What you probably didn’t know is that the music being played is a poem by Tagore, set to music by Garry Schyman, and sung in sung in Bengali by 17 year old Palbasha Siddique (originally from Bangladesh, now living in MN). The music is a key part of the appeal of the videos, tying together the vignettes as neatly as the visual editing does. This is funny because the music was applied after the fact; at the time Matt was just dancing to the snapping of his own fingers.

The music has catapulted Siddique, who is still a senior in high school, into the spotlight:

At the moment, she is one of the most heard singers in the world…”It’s crazy,” said Siddique, who lives in Northeast Minneapolis with her mother and brother. “Right now it’s number one on amazon.com in the soundtrack [category], and number six overall, so that’s a really big accomplishment, because even ‘American Idol’ is number nine right now. I just never knew this would turn out so incredible. People are making ring tones out of it. Everyone on Facebook is adding me, and I had no idea there are so many Bengalis in our community, and they have all heard the song…” [Link]

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Izzat? It isn’t

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I’ve never quite understood what “Izzat” means, since it covers behavior I think of as thoroughly dishonorable and fails to cover other things that I think of as being quite honorable. But now, thanks to two tragedies in Georgia that have recently been in the news, I think I understand. Izzat means kill the bride.

Exhibit A: Chaudhry Rashid and his daughter Sandeela Kanwal

Rashid is accused of having killed his daughter because she wanted to get out of her arranged marriage:

Authorities allege that Rashid killed his daughter because he feared that her resistance to a recently arranged marriage would disgrace the Pakistani-American family… “She was very unhappy with the marriage, had not seen the husband in three months and was seeking a divorce,” … “The father felt like the he had to uphold his family’s honor…” [Link]

Let’s ignore for a second the fact that in Islam marriage is a civil affair and divorce is allowed. And let’s ignore the fact that if the marriage broke down, some responsibility must reasonably lay with the person responsible for choosing the groom. And let’s ignore the fact that the father was married to an American, so he clearly had not had an arranged marriage himself.

If the police account is correct (and Rashid has been charged but not yet tried, so the facts are not all out and there is no verdict), Rashid saw his daughter’s behavior as bringing disgrace to the family, and believed that the only way to set things right was to kill his daughter.

Exhibit B: Chiman Rai and his daughter-in-law Sparkle Michelle Rai

In this case, it’s Chiman Rai’s son, Ricky, who the father feels has stained the escutcheon by marrying a black woman, Sparkle Reid. The son is the one who has dishonored the family here, right? So what does the father do? Disinherit him? Kill his son? Nope – he hires hitmen to kill his daughter-in-law: Continue reading →

Where’s the brownz?

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Recently, Fuerza Dulce buzzed me on IM to ask me if I was going to the conference on “Blogging while Brown.” A BwB conference? I’d not heard of such a thing, but website masthead was promising, claiming that this was a conference “for, by and about bloggers of color.”

I eagerly looked to see who they had invited as panelists, expecting to see some of my favorite desi bloggers mentioned, and perhaps some new ones I had not yet encountered. But there was not a single desi name listed of any sort, neither ABD, DBD, IBD, PBD, BBD, SLBD, NBD nor BVD.

Nor were there any Arab or Latino bloggers, another possibility for a conference on “brown bloggers.”

In fact, every single blogger listed was African-American. Blogging while brown may well have been true in terms of skin color, since “black” is a misnomer when describing the hue of African-Americans, but in all colloquial meanings of the word, the conference would better have been described as “Blogging while Black.” And while the bloggers on the panel were all bloggers of color, they represented only one slice of the “of color” spectrum.

What puzzles me is why the promoters of the conference aren’t be honest about what they’re doing. Why not just call themselves Blogging While Black? Are we so cool now that even black folks want to be brown?

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