A story about Northern Ireland must deal with the IRA or Protestant/Catholic violence right? That was the old Northern Ireland. Is this indicative of the new? From Scotsman.com:

Politicians today slammed thugs who targeted members of the Turkish and Indian communities in the latest act of racial violence in Northern Ireland.

Police were trying to hunt down those responsible for damaging cars and daubing racist slogans such as “Turks Out” on their victims’ homes in Comber, Co Down.

The ironic part is that it seems from this article that many of the Indian and Turkish immigrants in this community work in the medical services industry. Thus, these criminals are committing violence against a people that can be of aid after the fallout of a Protestant vs. Catholic clash.

“This sort of activity is reprehensible and it is seemingly happening everywhere in Northern Ireland.

“Many people from abroad are living in the Province and working in vital jobs like medicine. I am confident the Health Service couldn’t cope without them.

“This is supposed to be a free society and everybody ought to be free to live where they want no matter where in the world they’re from,” he said.

The New York Daily News runs a story on the success of immigrant children. This sounds all well and good but I personally was left with a sense of glass-half-full dismay. Here is how the story starts:

Ask 13-year-old Amarnath Kuppannan and his 10-year-old sister, Aarthi, what they want to be when they grow up and they respond in unison: “A doctor.” Both youngsters, the New York-born children of Indian immigrants, spent their summer at the Elite Academy on 39th Ave. in Flushing.

I fought back nausea at the fact that yet another generation of immigrant kids would be brainwashed down certain paths, and I continued to read trying to focus on the overall positive message in the article.

Starting at 8:30 a.m. and some days finishing as late as 2:30 p.m., the youngsters were drilled and quizzed four days a week in higher mathematics and the complexities of English grammar and composition.

But who am I to judge these parents’ ambitions for their children? As the article points out the father is from a rural Indian village and didn’t get educational opportunities. The article lauds the success of New York’s immigrant children:

A dramatic 62.4% of New Yorkers younger than 18 are foreign-born – the so-called 1.5 generation who come here as children and are reared and educated here.

“These immigrants and their children are the future,” said Prof. John Mollenkopf, director of City University’s Center for Urban Research. “How well they do is critical.”

It seems that the future is in good hands.

“Foreign-born students outperform native-born students on traditional measures of academic achievement,” according to a 2003 study by New York University’s Taub Urban Research Center. “Immigrants have higher reading and math scores … despite their higher poverty rates, limited English skills and newness to the U.S. schooling system.”

All those years, that all those teachers mispronounced my exotic name by accident has irrevocably scarred my delicate psyche. However, apparently that isn’t as important as what employers think of my name. Before working for Sepia Mutiny I applied to several other blog jobs and they all rejected me. I always thought it was due to my inferior blogging skills, never suspecting something more sinister was afoot. Finally, upon joining Sepia Mutiny I was among my own kind. Names like Vallloooopillliillli and Peedidiliakalli and…Vij, are common around this outfit. Now, at last, the plot that held back one with my talents has been revealed. As exposed in the San Jose Mercury News today:

Asian women are near the bottom of the heap when it comes to responses to résumés sent to California temporary agencies, according to a new study.

One Cal student was so disturbed by the data, “I called my father and asked if I should change my name?”

“It really bummed me out,” the unidentified Chinese-American student wrote in e-mail feedback to her professor. She would be graduating in a few months and heading into the job market.

The study, released last week by the Berkeley-based Discrimination Research Center, found that having an Arab or South Asian name — like “Mohammed Ahmed” — in California meant having fewer responses than whites, blacks, Latinos and Asians when it came to seeking a job at temporary employment agencies.

Continue reading →

Are Chicago nursing homes actually grouping residents by ethnicity? I shudder to think of what could happen if segregation in nursing homes mimics segregation in prisons. We might have different ethnicities forming gangs on the “inside.” From the AP wire at ABCnews:

Mid America Convalescent Center is one of a growing number of Chicago-area nursing homes that assemble residents by ethnicity. Asians live on one floor, Hispanics are on another.

Each group has its own traditional food, activities and a staff that speaks its language. Within a few miles are other facilities doing the same for Poles, Russians, Indians and Koreans.

There have long been nursing homes that cater to certain nationalities and religions, or become popular with different ethnic groups. But in Chicago, with the third largest number of foreign-born residents in the United States, that sort of specialization is becoming increasingly common and formalized, said Kevin Kavanaugh, spokesman for the Illinois Council on Long Term Care.

At first this sounds kind of bad. Segregation is something you must always remain vigilant against. But…when you are that old you may want to revert to what you are most familiar with. I can’t fault that logic. All the different groups have their own customs and quirks.

Specialized ethnic care can be helpful, advocates argue. Nursing homes must be aware, for example, of elderly Jewish residents for whom a trip to the shower may trigger memories of the Holocaust.

They also must be aware of customs and rituals, said Rosemary Gemperle, executive director of the Coalition of Limited English Speaking Elderly, an organization of community-based ethnic agencies in Chicago.

“Indian people, Hindus, won’t eat before they are bathed,” Gemperle said, offering an example. “They will starve first.”

Some Koreans won’t drink cold water, believing it can cause disease. A nursing home that doesn’t understand that can create a life-threatening situation if residents refuse to take medications because they are given only cold water, said Susan Duda Gardiner, director of clinical services with the Illinois Council on Long Term Care.

The French have been bitter ever since English replaced French as the must-know language for anyone wanting to do business abroad or have an easier time while traveling. Have the winds of fate turned again, though? Might English soon be replaced by something…else? From the Washington Times:

A British language expert predicts that “Hinglish,” or Indian English, will overtake standard English as the most common spoken form of the language globally.

Already one-third of Indians, over 300 million, are speaking the language, according to linguist David Crystal. With the Internet spreading English more rapidly than ever, and Indians at the forefront of the IT revolution, Indian English is spanning the globe and taking over from British and American forms, Crystal told a lecture audience at the British Council in New Delhi Saturday.

This is most disconcerting. I hardly know any Hindi and my English is not the greatest either. Will there be a place for me in the new world order?

There is a new sergeant with the Chicago Police Department now making sure nobody sleeps on trains. From NewKerala.com:

Tomi Methipara, the first Indian American to join the Chicago Police and also be promoted to the rank of sergeant, does not let racial epithets flung at him get in the way of his job.

Methipara, who grew up in Kerala, India, and worked in a bank in Alwaye in that state and in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, before immigrating to the US and joining the 14,000-strong Chicago Police in 1990, said he has had quite a few culture shocks as a new recruit.

“Initially, I was shocked at how they treated dead bodies. We (Indians) give a lot of respect to the dead. But in the police, you realise that a dead body is like a log – it has no feelings.”

“We (Indians) give a lot of respect to the dead.” Are you joking? I can think of at least one religious Indian city where dead bodies lie here and there. I don’t think Indian culture gives any more respect to the dead than any other culture. That’s not really the point of this story but it caught my attention so I thought I’d call it out.

So Tomi, run into any discrimination?

As a rookie, Methipara would also be upset by racial epithets flung at him when he went to investigate a crime, or make an arrest.

“Over time, you learn not to take it personally. Even back in Agra, there were people calling me a ‘stupid Madrasi’. You learn to put it in perspective.”

This story has given me an idea for a television pilot about an Inspector Sahib, recently having come from India, who will show up to work for the NYPD. Hilarity ensues.

Not so long ago I brought you the story of Gaurav Bhatia, a graduate student at the Illinois Institute of Technology, who fell asleep on a Chicago Transit Authority train and was given a ticket for sleeping dangerously. Seems that our hero has beaten the odds and gotten the ticket overturned. From the Washington Times:

Bhatia was interviewed by a number of local television and radio stations, and his story appeared in newspapers from Chicago to Europe and Asia.

“At this time, the city makes a motion to nonsuit this matter,” Senior Counsel James McIsaac of the city’s Law Department told the administrative hearing officer. The hearing itself lasted less than 45 seconds.

THE SLEEPERS–UNITED–SHALL NEVER BE DEFEATED!