A desi Lt. Colonel was detained for 4 hours because air marshals didn’t “like the way he looked” When I was a little boy, I believed in an America where all men were equal before the law, and due process was paramount. However, when I grew up, I put away childish things and saw that this was not true. Therefore, I put on my best Stepin Fetchit imitation when flying, grinning broadly, shucking and jiving. I call somebody at each leg of my journey, so that there is a paper trail just in case somebody decides that I look “wrong” and I get stopped for flying while brown. [Why not drive? You should see how highway patrolmen react to the sight of a turban and beard passing through middle America. Flying is also far safer.]

Is this paranoia or simple prudence? If you think I’m overly cautious, consider the case of Bob Rajcoomar, a U.S. citizen and Lt. Colonel in the United States Army Reserve who was detained on a flight in August 2002 because federal air marshals did not “like the way he looked.” [Hat Tip: RC]

Dr. Rajcoomar’s disturbing ordeal began shortly after take off during a flight from Atlanta to Philadelphia on August 31, 2002, when U.S. Air Marshals were called to subdue an apparently disoriented man seated in the coach section. The air marshals rushed at the unstable individual, handcuffed him, and then dragged him to the first-class section, where they placed him in the seat next to Dr. Rajcoomar, a U.S. citizen and Lt. Colonel in the United States Army Reserve and is of Indian descent. Dr. Rajcoomar asked to have his seat changed and the flight attendant obliged. [Link]

Dr. Rajcoomar’s seat change made the air marshals suspicious:

… after the flight landed … air marshals handcuffed Dr. Rajcoomar without explanation and took him into the custody of Philadelphia police. His wife Dorothy, who was also on the flight, was given no information on what had happened to her husband. Because the authorities confiscated Dr. Rajcoomar’s cellular phone, she had no way to contact him.

After four tense hours in detention, Dr. Rajcoomar was released. TSA personnel told him that he had been detained because air marshals on board the flight did not “like the way he looked.” [Link]

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The previously blogged Desi-opoly is finally available in the UK, just in time for the holidays. With this board game, the desi diaspora has just joined the ranks of Nascar, Garfield, the Powerpuff Girls, Star Wars (both old and new), as well as towns like Swansea and Wigan as official monopoly themes.

The Desi Monopoly website toots its own horn louder than the Bollywood Brass Band:

It is very exciting news that the South Asian community is Passing GO. It is widely acknowledged that the South Asian community have played a significant role in contributing to the recent success and culture of the UK and the new Monopoly UK Desi Edition celebrates this. [Link]

But the game hardly celebrates the contributions of BritAsians to the UK. It’s basically the same game with a bit of mirch-masala mixed in:

the properties are a mix of Indian icons (famous train stations, the Taj) and Asian neigbourhoods in Britain. [Link]

… along with a ton of hackneyed desi cliches for good measure. The images in the strip on the right are just some of the pictures used on the box. They include a brocaded sari, a woman meditating, a woman doing classical dance, a tiger, a rickshaw wallah and yes … the Taj Mahal. This from the same country that brought us “Goodness Gracious Me“, “The Kumars At No 42” and the “Funjabis?”

Who needs white people when we exoticize ourselves so thoroughly, for so little. At least the monopoly guy wasn’t morphed into the Air India man …

Related posts: I want to be the three-wheeled scooter, M-m-me so hungry, Buzzword bingo

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In the post below, Manish introduces us to young actor Neil Patil. I went through the images he has posted on IMDb, and was dismayed to find the photo below of Patil with what looks like a sweater tied around his head.

Let’s deconstruct this image, shall we? Photos on IMDb are carefully selected for the consumption of casting agents. It is unlikely that this is simply a snapshot of Patil clowning around with his buddies that got accidentally posted; it is one of only five photos deliberately chosen for display.

Why would he want to show this to casting agents? I’m trying to be as sympathetic to his aims as possible, but the only thing I can think of is that he wants to show people both that he’s willing to wear any type of silly headgear and that he’s capable of looking debonair doing so.

I have a lot of sympathy for young desi actors. The American film industry is a hard one to break into, and he’s just starting out. Nor am I offended by the picture – he’s not claiming to be a Sikh or anything else. He’s just a guy with a sweater around his head.

I’m simply confused. As somebody who has been called “raghead” more times than I can count, I don’t understand why he would want to put this picture up. Black actors don’t put up minstrel photos in their IMDb profiles, why would Patil choose to portray himself in this way?

p.s. Also – what’s up with the whip?

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 Like a lot of Americans, I’ve been keeping an astonished eye on the car-burning in Paris and France that is approaching the fortnight mark. Saurabh at Rhinocrisy has noted that a certain segment of the blogosphere, headed by Internment-Cheerleader-In-Chief Michelle Malkin, is having a field day.  What an opportunity to clumsily conflate France’s antipathy towards  certain war policies with imagined Gallic championship of any and every liberal cause as articulated in America. Just because the French have embraced the same notions of universal health care that some American liberals have, obviously they epitomize the multicultural state American liberals champion. Since Democrats like French bread and wine they must love French cultural policies.  /sarcasm.  But as those of us who actually pay attention to identity politics in France know, the French model is not quite the California-cuisine tossed diversity salad that American cultural purists love to hate on. Saurabh and the Francophilic Phoebe Maltz call a spade a spade:

I hate to be trite, but this picture is simply at odds with reality. France has been anything but multiculturalist, and in fact has been quite uniform in demanding that its Muslim minority conform, damnit, to the standards of French culture.(Link.)

Despite its shunning of hyphenated identity and insistence that all of its citizens are equally–and nothing but—French, France has a problem: whenever a minority group in country is involved in a conflict–one its members started, of which its members are victims, or a combination–the possibility of that group up and leaving is immediately brought up.(Link)

(It is, of course, as absurd to lump together all of France as to lump together all of India–the land that gives us LePen also gave us Zola.) Many observers  warn that it is a mistake to view these (so far relatively non-injurious) rioters as Islamic or Arab or Brown or Immigrant so much as poor  and unemployed. But I have to wonder if, by shunning the hyphen, France has forced the French children of immigrants to make an overly stressful choice. We affiliates of Sepia Industries might be considered connoisseurs of the hyphenated life-style. A hyphen is a useful prop, like a towel, that you can move about and rework as the situation demands. Sometimes you want it out, front and center, and sometimes it can stay in your purse. Immigration is hard, and tools can help. It was Hyphen Magazine’s blog which reminded me of the South Asian connection to the Parisian riots.

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