Category Archives: Identity

“We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus – and non-believers.”

Posted on by

Speech Wars.jpg
I woke up at 6:30 am today, after less than three hours of sleep, unsure of what to expect on Inauguration Day. Well, that isn’t entirely accurate– I knew to expect considerable delays in my adopted home city along with, and partly because of a guaranteed transit nightmare. But aside from that, I had some hazy sense that I’d be witnessing something important, something I’d regret missing since I live here.

I’ve never been to an inauguration, despite my decade in D.C. So, I set out on a special Presidential Inauguration bus route, via my special Presidential Inauguration Metro card, which took me to the security perimeter. From there I walked in frigid temperatures to get to the Presidential Inauguration Metro train which would, it turns out, NOT take me to my intended destination.

Due to crowd control concerns, WMATA quickly shut down two train stations while I was underground, in transit, and packed in so tightly with other would-be attendees, that I felt assaulted every time someone moved an elbow. Everyone was aware of a different station which had been closed earlier; they announced it was unexpectedly reopening just as we pulled away from it. Too late. At this point, they had closed the last three stations at which we could have exited and we were well past the stop we needed. I started to worry about logistics as previously cheery train inhabitants cursed under their breath.

I hastily exited the Metro the moment I was able to, and I still ended up on the wrong side of the Capitol building. I had just over an hour to trudge through brutal, 11 degree weather, while attempting to avoid idling charter buses spewing exhaust, forbidding barricades, chaotic Police checkpoints and of course, thousands of people who were alternately shivering in their Uggs or shouting “Woooo! Obama!”.

The only thing I could think about was how I was thisclose to missing the whole point of the day, the whole point of the last two years, and it was all because of my bad luck with Metro. I tried to be mindful and prepare myself for the worst; if I was too late to get through security or move through the sludge of confused people faster than one mile per hour, I could say that I tried. That I had experienced the cold and the crowds and the optimism which was muffled by scarves, earmuffs and gloves. Que sera, sera…

I barely expected to make it to my rooftop viewing party in time for pomp and circumstance. I certainly did not expect to see a copy of Obama’s speech before he delivered it. And I definitely did not expect to be in tears when our new President recognized a faith which I respect, but don’t practice.

One thing at a time.

Continue reading →

“…Stick around.”

Posted on by

The benediction at Barack Hussein Obama’s inauguration was given today by Rev. Joseph Lowery:

Joseph Echols Lowery (born October 6, 1921) is a minister in the United Methodist Church and leader in the American civil rights movement.

Lowery was pastor of the Warren Street United Methodist Church, in Mobile, Alabama from 1952 until 1961. His career in the civil rights movement began in the early 1950s in Mobile, Alabama. After Rosa Parks’ arrest in 1955, Lowery helped lead the Montgomery bus boycott. He headed the Alabama Civic Affairs Association, an organization devoted to the desegregation of buses and public places. In 1957, with Martin Luther King, Jr. Lowery founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and subsequently led the organization as its president from 1977 to 1997. [Link]

Without a doubt the most striking paragraph of the benediction (the full text of which can be found here) was the following:

Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around … when yellow will be mellow … when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right. That all those who do justice and love mercy say Amen. [Link]

Continue reading →

R.I.P. Whitey

Posted on by

The Atlantic has the absolute must read piece of the day (seriously) about the coming minority majority in America. In the rhetorically titled, “The End of White America?” Hua Hsu of Vassar College examines a basket of issues surrounding the idea that it is no longer even mildly desireable to be “white” in America. According to Hsu, white youth are trying desperately to mimic the cultures they see within minority groups as a means to escape the blandness of their “non-culture”:

Whether you describe it as the dawning of a post-racial age or just the end of white America, we’re approaching a profound demographic tipping point. According to an August 2008 report by the U.S. Census Bureau, those groups currently categorized as racial minorities–blacks and Hispanics, East Asians and South Asians–will account for a majority of the U.S. population by the year 2042. Among Americans under the age of 18, this shift is projected to take place in 2023, which means that every child born in the United States from here on out will belong to the first post-white generation.

Obviously, steadily ascending rates of interracial marriage complicate this picture, pointing toward what Michael Lind has described as the “beiging” of America. And it’s possible that “beige Americans” will self-identify as “white” in sufficient numbers to push the tipping point further into the future than the Census Bureau projects. But even if they do, whiteness will be a label adopted out of convenience and even indifference, rather than aspiration and necessity. For an earlier generation of minorities and immigrants, to be recognized as a “white American,” whether you were an Italian or a Pole or a Hungarian, was to enter the mainstream of American life; to be recognized as something else, as the Thind case suggests, was to be permanently excluded. As Bill Imada, head of the IW Group, a prominent Asian American communications and marketing company, puts it: “I think in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, [for] anyone who immigrated, the aspiration was to blend in and be as American as possible so that white America wouldn’t be intimidated by them. They wanted to imitate white America as much as possible: learn English, go to church, go to the same schools.”

Today, the picture is far more complex. To take the most obvious example, whiteness is no longer a precondition for entry into the highest levels of public office. The son of Indian immigrants doesn’t have to become “white” in order to be elected governor of Louisiana. A half-Kenyan, half-Kansan politician can self-identify as black and be elected president of the United States. [Link]

The case of The United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind mentioned in the article (someone we’ve blogged of before) refers to the 1923 case in which an Indian American veteran argued that he should be considered white (a precondition to becoming a naturalized citizen) because Indians were descended from Aryans:

Associate Justice George Sutherland found that, while Thind, an Asian Indian, may have had “purity of Aryan blood” due to being “born in Village Taragarh Talawa,near Jandiala Guru, Amritsar, Punjab” and having “high caste” status he was not Caucasian in the “common understanding”, so he could not be included in the “statutory category as white persons”.[1] George Sutherland wrote in his summary: [Link]

Continue reading →

Don’t Make me Take my Chappals off…

Posted on by

shoe at you.jpg The shoe-throwing incident. People love the shoe-throwing incident. Now, I’m blogging about it here, despite the fact that it was an Iraqi who did it to a non-Desi. I am doing this for three reasons:

1) It brought back bad memories of my last trip to Kerala (more on that, after the jump)

2) We think of shoes as dirty and thus, disrespectful as well (AFAIK)

3) The Lobb-ber has received a marriage proposal for his act of bravado:

An Egyptian man said on Wednesday he was offering his 20-year-old daughter in marriage to Iraqi journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi, who threw his shoes at U.S. President George W. Bush in Baghdad on Sunday
The daughter, Amal Saad Gumaa, said she agreed with the idea. “This is something that would honor me. I would like to live in Iraq, especially if I were attached to this hero,” she told Reuters by telephone.
Her father, Saad Gumaa, said he had called Dergham, Zaidi’s brother, to tell him of the offer. “I find nothing more valuable than my daughter to offer to him, and I am prepared to provide her with everything needed for marriage,” he added.
Zaidi’s gesture has struck a chord across the Arab world, where President Bush is widely despised for invading Iraq in 2003 and for his support for Israel. [link]

Disrespecting someone with a shoe AND a potential “alliance” of families? Oh, that’s so brown, even if it’s not technically brown. Whatever mang, I’m down with the spirit and the letter.

It didn’t just strike a chord across the Arab world. A Professor of Technocultural Studies at my alma mater, U.C. Davis (go ags!), published the following thoughts in the Huffington Post (via Sunaina Maira of ASATA, the Alliance of South Asians Taking Action, whose website seems to be down):

Know what Bush was saying when al-Zeidi threw his shoes? “The war is not over. But . . . it is decidedly on its way to being won.”
And Muntadhar al-Zeidi lost it. Threw both his shoes, yelling that shoe #1 was ” a goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people!” His second shoe was “for the widows and orphans and all those killed in Iraq!”
This was a gift to the entire world. We all owe a debt to this 28-year old journalist who, for one beautiful moment, letting go of all rational calculation of the possible consequences, stood up and spoke truth to power.
He is currently being held by Iraqi security forces and faces an unknown fate. I would not want to be in his shoes right now. [link]

I’m not sure any of us would want to be in his position, right now: Continue reading →

“Yankee Hindutva”: What is it?

Posted on by

Though I was an early and vocal participant in the Great Sonal Shah Internet Debate of 2008, I am done arguing about it. This post is not about that directly.

Instead, I’d like to focus on some of the bigger issues behind the controversy, specifically: 1) how South Asian religious youth camps work and what they do, and 2) whether Sikh, Muslim, and Hindu organizations in the U.S. send large amounts of money to South Asia to support communalist organizations over there.

As always, I would love to hear personal testimony from people who went to religious youth camps, or who have been involved in any of the organizations I’m going to be mentioning. An ounce of personal testimony is better than a pound of theorizing, generalizing, and blah blah blah argument.

1. What’s at issue

These two issues are the central themes of a chapter in Vijay Prashad’s book, The Karma of Brown Folk, called “Of Yankee Hindutva.” They also feature in Prashad’s essay in Sulekha, “Letter to a Young American Hindu.”

The reason Prashad is so focused on Sonal Shah is pretty clear: to him, she seems to represent exactly the “Yankee Hindutva” he has been talking about for years. As I see it, the major things Sonal Shah is accused of are 1) being a part of the leadership of an organization called the VHP-A, which has a clear communal bias (no one seriously disputes this), and 2) speaking at HSS-US youth camps like this one (from the website, HSS-US appears to be considerably less extreme than VHP-A, though they do prominently advertise a new book they’ve published on M.S. Golwalkar). Ennis has also suggested that what is really worse than this might be 3) the fact that she waited so long to clarify her former affiliation: the cover-up is worse than the crime. I do not agree with him on that, but I do agree with people like Mira Kamdar that (1) and (2) might be concerning.

But what exactly does an association with the American branch of a Hindu nationalist organization tell us about a person? How much do we really know about the American branches of these organizations? How bad are they really?

Below the fold, I’ll raise some questions about the accounts Vijay Prashad has given of VHPA and the Hindu Students Council in his book, The Karma of Brown Folk.

Before doing that, let’s start with a personal testimony, from a person who actually disagrees with me overall on this issue. As I was browsing people’s various blog posts relating to Sonal Shah, I came across a great post and discussion thread by a blogger named Anasuya. In the comments to Anasuya’s post is another person named Anasuya (Anasuya Sanyal), who attended VHP camps years ago, and had this to say about her experience of them:

I too remember attending VHP conferences as a teenager growing up in the US and I had no idea of the political affiliations until I lived for a bit in India around age 17. Naturally, I was not in any kind of agreement with the VHP platforms, philosophy or actions and I even wrote a small piece about the American “face” of the VHP for The Telegraph!

And as a second generation Indian American, Indian politics were not a topic in the home and VHP conferences were a parentally-approved weekend outing since we were with other Indian friends. The fun part was our more responsible friends would drive us all to the place and we’d take over a cheap motel and party. Otherwise at that age, a weekend away would have been strictly forbidden.

I don’t remember too much about the conferences themselves–there were a few interesting group discussions/breakout sessions. I didn’t see any political content. If anything, the parents saw it as a way to participate in a big somewhat religious gathering, seeing as how more established religions in the US had youth events, whereas Hindus did not. (link)

As I say, Anasuya Sanyal disagrees with me overall, so this account shouldn’t be taken as a tailor-made version of what happened to support the “pro Sonal Shah” side of things.

Anasuya (the blogger) also has a great string of questions that follow from this: Continue reading →

Panthers guard desi-owned businesses

Posted on by

Things in the Houston area are only partly starting to get back to normal in the wake of Ike’s destruction. Still only about 50% of the people here have their power back (I was luckily in the top 35%) and tensions are running high, especially as you get closer towards Galveston. Taz tipped me off yesterday that some nearby gas stations (specifically the ones with a small co-located convenience store) have been hiring Black Panther party members to secure the premises and prevent potential looting:

The Black Panther Party says it deployed 17 of its members to area gasoline station convenience stores to protect them from theft in the hours before and after Hurricane Ike makes landfall.

Owners asked the group to provide private security for their property, said Major Kenyha Shabazz, chairman of Peoples Party No. 3, the Houston affiliate of the Black Panther Party.

“These are the places that service our communities with food, water and fuel,” Shabazz said. “We don’t want these places torn up.”… [Link]

As you can imagine, many of these gas station/convenience stores are desi owned. I find this to be a rather interesting (and perhaps symbiotic) relationship. A party once thought of as extremist in the 60s is now being hired by South Asian business owners (not necessarily known for racial integration into the communities in which they reside). In return, the Panthers are given a new legitimacy and may even help improve race relations since the areas they are protecting also include large hispanic populations.

Once these owners and the community residents the Panthers sought to defend might have seen each other as adversaries, partners in a relationship filled with racial tension. The Panthers’ defense of these corner stores is a nice reminder of how times have changed to the benefit of the whole community.

“We hired these Black Panther people to take care of our two stores, one here on Dowling and the other one on Elgin,” said Nabi Chowdhury, manager of a Mobil station on Dowling Street.

“We have confidence in them because for a long time we have known them, and their attitude and everything, we like,” Chowdhury said. [Link]

Taz suggested I go conduct some interviews at one of these gas stations. However, I don’t want to get shot as a potential looter (I kind of have the avaricious eyes of one).

Continue reading →

Life is Stranger Than Fiction.

Posted on by

Twice a week, a very kind gentleman comes by with a nifty vacuum cleaner strapped to his back, to spruce up the floors. I say nifty because it looks more like a jet-pack or something a lot more fun than a mere appliance. Anyway, when he strolls in with his trademark, “Hell-oooooo!”, I know it is time to stand up and get out of his way. I usually just move to the other side of my desk and prepare myself for a minute or two of nothingness, but apparently, today will be…something. I hear a familiar voice, but I can’t make out the words above the din of the machine.

I turn around to see who is speaking to me. It is the one Pakistani man I work with, an uber-sweet coworker who likes to make halwa to bring to work, which he then guilts me in to eating—not the first portion, mind you; that goes to our other, “grown-up” coworkers. Oh, no—he comes by towards the end of mithai-madness and always authoritatively says, as he spoons at least three servings on to a paper plate he has helpfully brought with him, “I make you halwa. Eat.”

When I protest meekly, saying, “It’s too much!”, because I don’t want to waste food, he gives me the exact same look I get at home, from my Mom at the end of dinner.

“It’s so little. Why you make me put back in dish? If dish is empty, I can wash. Finish it. Be helpful. So I can wash. I not have all day.”

So, much in the same endearing, parental way he force-feeds me food which my tummy has no room for, he often comes by to “check on” me, the youngest brown member of the team (nine desis work here, total). To see, as he inimitably pronounces it, “how you arrrr DEW-wing!” When I moved away from my desk to facilitate vacuuming, he saw an opportunity and approached.

“Hallo En-ah!”

“Hi…Mm-…hi” I stammered, just barely resisting the urge to call him Uncle. I can’t bring myself to call him by his first name, which is Mohammad, so I just…well, call him nothing. Who cares if it’s a work environment? The man guilts and keeps tabs on me. Being on a first-name basis ain’t happenin’.

“How is your Mum? She in Kelly-for-nya? Or she visit home, maybe?”

I have always loved that: home. My heart immediately softens. No matter how many decades my late father lived in this country (three, if we’re counting), despite the American flag planted dramatically in our front yard, when he wasn’t communicating mindfully, he always said that about Kerala, too. Home.

“No, she is in California. She is well, thank you for asking.” Continue reading →

Barack Obama: “I’m a desi”

Posted on by

Recently Jeff Yang of the San Francisco Chronicle sent me an article he had just published in that newspaper. He wrote:

I wanted to share with you guys the most recent installment of “Asian Pop”–which some of you may be aware now appears in both the online and the reconstituted wood pulp edition of the San Francisco Chronicle. The response to it has been quite interesting and, er, high-volume, from black, white and Asian American readers alike. Anyway, if you’re getting this then you’re someone whose opinion I value and whom I think might be interested in the issues involved here, and I’m curious about your thoughts.

Here are some excerpts from Jeff’s article:

“White skin notwithstanding, this is our first black president. Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children’s lifetime. After all, he displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald’s-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas…”

With these words in the New Yorker in 1998, Toni Morrison granted our 42nd president, William Jefferson Clinton, a kind of cadet membership in the grand cultural narrative of black America…

…reading Obama’s absorbing 1995 memoir “Dreams from My Father,” it strikes me that the tropes that surround and define Obama can just as easily be read as those of another community entirely. Which raises the question: Could it be that our true first black president might also be our first Asian American president? [Link]

I will reserve my opinion of what I think of Jeff’s partially rhetorical question. Instead, I’d like to take you now to a fundraiser that happened Sunday in San Francisco (also reported in the SFChronicle):

The Illinois senator said it is “a testament to the American spirit that I’m even standing here before you” as the Democratic Party’s presumed nominee, because some Americans are “still getting past the name,” which he said some consider “funny.”

“Change is always tough, and electing me is change … and it means that people are going to hesitate a little bit,” Obama told a crowd of about 200 deep-pocketed supporters at a VIP reception for South Asian and Pacific Islander supporters at the Fairmont Hotel.

“Barack Obama – they’re still getting past that name,” he said. “…

Obama told the group – many of them Indian and Pakistani immigrants – that he is not only familiar with their cultures – but also proud of his lifelong associations with them. [Link]

And now for the money shot:

“Not only do I think I’m a desi, but I’m a desi,” he said, using a colloquial term that describes South Asian immigrants. The remark was greeted with laughs. “I’m a homeboy…” [Link]

Continue reading →

Someone Named Dan Cox Chokes on his Foot

Posted on by

…instead of having the humility and decency to remove it. He must really like the taste of toe jam (or not have anyone around who can administer the Heimlich). To each their ignorant own (thanks, anonymous tipster).

Who is Dan Cox, you are surely muttering? He’s the writer and producer of a documentary on the Governator, but no one here at the bunker cares about that– what’s more mutinous is his eyebrow-raising post over at Mediabistro’s “Fishbowl LA” blog, which one of you was sharp enough to catch and release our way. The title of his post is “Spielberg wants Bollywood“, and its relevant text is below:

Steven Spielberg, ever the iconoclast, is just saying NO to the studios these days. As has been reported over and over, he’s doing a deal with India’s Reliance ADA Group.
The India contingent is putting up a billion bucks to give Spielberg carte blanche (or however that translates to Indian) to make and distribute whatever he wants.

(snip!)

Regardless, Speilberg’s looking and the majors are all considering (but not relying on, ho ho) his Reliance cash, but invariably it’s likely that Spielberg will be back in bed with Universal, where all of his filmic links have been in the past, whether DreamWorks SKG or Amblin.

No, it is not to be made fun of, you asshole

The India Reliance deal is supposed to be completed this week. We’ll see if Spielberg starts wearing a Sari or has a red dot implanted on his forehead. [link to stupidity]

Classy. Now I’m no big-shot, one documentary-creatin’ Hollywood insider, but I do understand “American” words loud and clear; I mean…the American language surely exists, because such a successful person would only conjure a tongue called “Indian” if it were true, no? He wouldn’t be THAT lazy or willfully ignorant? Oh, wait…

I’m not going to back down from anything I posted.There was nothing negative intentionally spoken or implied about Indian or Pakistani of Hindi or Bengalese culture. There was simply an amusing look at why and how Steven Spielberg is more interested in $1 billion from an Indian contingent than he is in finding it on Wall Street or from the studios or from his backyard. [link to stupidity]

THAT is from a comment he posted, in response to outraged readers who called him out for his inexcusable kundi-holery. He says his piece was “simply an amusing look at…”, I say “you know exactly what you were doing and for that, YOU SUCK”. Tomato, thekkalikya.

But wait! THERE ARE MORE CRINGE-INDUCING WORDS WHERE THAT CAME FROM!

Now, maybe it wasn’t all that amusing.Maybe I come off as a club-footed xenophobe. [link to stupidity]

Remove two “maybes” from that quote and lo! It’s suddenly, magically accurate.

But hello India, what I wrote also wasn’t a diatribe about the sub-continent.
I’m fully aware that a sari is a female garment as well as the fact that a red dot on the forehead is not there to be made fun of. It may have cultural or religious relevance. But what should be made fun of is the fact that Spielberg is taking his money from whichever provider that he can find, whether his head is adorned with pink polka dots. [link to stupidity]

Oh, honey…I’m so sorry to break this news, but…India ain’t reading you. India (unlike me) has better things to do with her time, than read you. Also, if you are fully aware of who wears saris and what red dots might signify, then Dan, you have no excuse for what you wrote. Continue reading →

The Birth of the Indian-American “Celebrity?”

Posted on by

My friend Reshma recently emailed me to ask if I could highlight a fundraising event in NYC she was holding for Obama. Reshma, formerly of South Asians for Hillary and South Asians for Kerry, is one of the members of Barack Obama’s new Asian American Finance Committee (other members mentioned here). Normally I would have just placed the event info on our “Events Tab,” where you can highlight just about any desi-related event. There was something about this event that was different though and I couldn’t put my finger on it until I re-read her email again. Then it struck me that the event itself represents a political first…as far as I know. This is the first time that such a large group of Indian American “celebrities” is being deployed in favor of a Presidential candidate. I am putting quotes around the word celebrities not to minimize the successes of some of these individuals but rather to contrast their pull to what we traditionally think of as Hollywood political celebrities (e.g., George Clooney, Ben Affleck, Angelina Jolie, Jane Fonda, etc.). In the past, both parties have relied on wealthy DBDs such as Sant Chatwal or various tech entrepreneurs or medical doctors for their campaign donations (from mostly first generation Indian Americans). Obama and his committee are taking a different approach, perhaps because he doesn’t want McCain to call him D-Punjab.

In all the loud talk of unity amongst the campaigns there is at least one tear jerker, or sort of – a controversial Indian American supporter of Hillary Clinton, appears to have not found favour with the Illinois Senator Barack Obama in the post-union phase of the Democratic party for 2008 presidential elections.

Sant Chatwal, known as one of the most effective fund raiser among the Indian American money bags, is not in the list of Asian Americans Finance Committee officials announced by the Obama campaign. [Link]

Instead of enlisting only rich “uncles” to help bring in the cash from our community, Obama picked a much younger group and that younger group in turn thinks young desi celebs may be the way to bring in the cash for their candidate (although this is probably just one of many ways they are considering). Their target demographic appears to be very similar to the type that reads SM:

Continue reading →