A bit of an oldie (forgive me, work’s been a beeyatch). Economist Robert Samuelson writing for MSNBC, hits an issue recently discussed on Sepia Mutiny – the much feared Science & Engineering gap with India & China.

Samuelson’s retort is multi-pronged. First, the gap with India/China isn’t as crazy as the numbers might suggest it to be –

Judged realistically, China and India aren’t yet out-producing the United States in engineers. Widely publicized figures have them graduating 600,000 and 350,000 engineers a year respectively, from six to 10 times the U.S. level. But researchers at Duke University found the Chinese and Indian figures misleading. They include graduates with two- or three-year degrees–similar to “associate degrees” from U.S. community colleges. And the American figures excluded computer science graduates. Adjusted for these differences, the U.S. degrees jump to 222,335. Per million people, the United States graduates slightly more engineers with four-year degrees than China and three times as many as India.

…Only about 4 percent of the U.S. workforce consists of scientists and engineers.

Secondly, even if the gap is real, econ 101 would dictate that the “shortage” should reveal itself in engineering salaries (on average). And yet….

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Believe it or not, the word most frequently heard in cricketing circles today is a perfectly normal English word – not chucking, sledging, googly, fine-leg or doosra. Racism has always been lurking around the fringes of the game – when unapologetically segregationist South Africa was kept away from cricket, several (mostly) white players from Australia and England would sneak in to play a game or two, lured by the money; risking lifetime bans. Each quaintly labeled rebel tour would inspire a few articles condemning apartheid, and (predictably enough) British newspapers would write muted articles about why things weren’t really that bad, and why people shouldn’t get their undergarments into intricate knots over a mere game.

Neighboring Zimbabwe had an all-white cricket team as well, but that didn’t raise too many eyebrows because the team hardly won anything, but mostly because they played for a country ruled by a benign black dictator.

But today, things have changed. The benign dictator is not so benign anymore, and of late, he has been maintaining a punishing schedule – creating food shortages in his country by taking away farms from white farmers. But Robert loves playing games, and he is going to make time for cricket, punishing schedule or not. And how well he plays. First, he cleanses his team of all white players – using other people of course, why would a powerful man get his hands dirty? – and then obviously pleased with how clean the team looked, he is now on another cleaning spree – this time to get rid of all the good players, especially the pesky ones that want to get paid for their services.

Several interesting strategies have been employed in this round, including but not limited to robbing players of their money, death threats, divide and conquer. Meanwhile, the standard of cricket has dipped alarmingly in the country, and most games involving them bear a more than passing resemblance to games involving the Atlanta Hawks. But Mugabe doesn’t know that because he has no time for the NBA. Plus now his team is all black, and isn’t that good enough?

Meanwhile, events in Australia are ensuring that things stay balanced on the racism front. Crowds at cricket matches in Australia are always a bit more, um… boisterous than crowds elsewhere, possibly due to a lot of beer and not too many bathrooms on the grounds, but this year they’ve taken their bad behavior to new depths. People have learnt new words, and are not hesitant to try them out on visiting cricket teams.

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What exactly is the price we pay for being brown in America? Is it just the stares? Is it the acceptance that after 9/11, and the July bombings in London, that we are automatically suspicious because of our skin color? That notion of presumed innocent, it seems, has been thrown out the door, and the idea that its ok to treat people who have a brown-ish tint with a bit of suspect has slowly become common practice.

Thanks to tipster Simran, we have learned that there were more than incidents involving t-shirts at last weeks’s State of the Union Address (SOTU). This other incident involves an anonymous Indian-American, invited by Florida Congressman Alcee Hastings to be his guest at the SOTU, who was at the end of the address, surrounded by about ten law enforcement officers in the Capitol gallery, taken to a mysterious room in the Capitol, and questioned for an hour. Why, you ask? Not because he was wearing a t-shirt with a political statement, but according to Capitol Police chief Terrance W. Gainer, because police thought the man resembled someone on a Secret Service photo watch list. It took Capitol Police an entire hour to figure it out. I wonder if that isn’t excessively long. Shouldn’t security officials be able to identify an SOTU guest’s identity in less than an hour? After all, the man works with the Department of Defense and has a security clearance. On the other hand, we all do look the same anyway.

From the Time Magazine Article: But on the same evening that President Bush was lauding democracy and freedom, there was one other person in attendance whose rights were infringed upon. The man, who did not want his identity revealed after the disturbing incident, was a personal guest of Florida Democrat Alcee Hastings. He is a prominent businessman from Broward County, Florida who works with the Department of Defense-and has a security clearance. After sitting in the gallery for the entire speech, he was surrounded by about ten law enforcement officers as he exited the chamber and whisked away to a room in the Capitol. For close to an hour the man, who was born in India but is an American citizen, was questioned by the Police, who thought he resembled someone on a Secret Service photo watch list, according to Capitol Police Chief Terrance Gainer. Eventually, the police realized it was a case of mistaken identity and let him go. Gainer has assured Hastings that the Capitol Police, Secret Service and FBI will investigate why the man was detained for so long, and try to “sharpen our procedures.” But the man was “very, very scared” by the incident, says Fred Turner, a spokesperson for Hastings. On Tuesday night, he told the congressman that the experience was “maybe just the price of being brown in America,” Turner says.

It saddens me to think that at this point the positive in this story is, at least it was only an hour, and at least he was actually let go. Is it ok that this HAS BECOME the price of being brown in America?

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I once dated for a few months a desi sister who remained my friend. She had separated from her longtime boyfriend, who was African-American. Her familyÂ’s disapproval was one of the big stresses on their relationship. So it was quite a step when they got back in touch and rekindled. I was honored to be privy to this, and with it, to R.Â’s management of her parentsÂ’ anxieties.

The next year they married, in her familyÂ’s backyard in Orange County. The aunties were in full effect, all gossip and jewels and rolls of flesh. They inquired hungrily as to my status. The uncles were hanging out. R. and W. sat before the pandit, soaked in sweat from their garments, the fire and the summer heat. No one was paying any attention. Except, that is, for W.Â’s family, a cortege of beautifully turned out Black folks from Arkansas and Texas. They sat for hours in the sun, sole occupants of the front row, wearing looks of deep confusion. I believe I was the only guest to attempt to explain the proceedings. The aunties looked right through them.

The wedding was a triumph for R.; her parents, lovely people, had come around. But it said little for the community’s readiness to miscegenate in the blackward direction. That pesky little problem, which many mutineers will be at least anecdotally familiar with, is not one of the themes of Lavina Melwani’s article “The Color of Desi” in the January 2006 edition of Little India (shout-out to Cinnamon Rani).

The article is a positively giddy celebration of desi mixitude: Continue reading →