India’s top court is urging that the government make male new hires who are married disclose whether they accepted dowry and threaten gaol time if they did:

… a candidate aspiring for a government job, and those already in service, would have to provide information about any dowry taken by them. Under the anti-dowry law, the custom is punishable by a jail term.

This is another example of governments influencing markets through their own purchasing power, e.g. 55 mph speed limits, education testing, minority set-asides, open source software and so on. The public University of California system even forced a rewrite of the venerable SAT test. To the poor kids struggling through the new essay section this spring, y’all can thank Berkeley and UCLA for that.

It’s not clear to me how the anti-dowry plan would be enforceable. Ideally, it would work better than mandatory drug testing, which created a cottage industry in fake urine samples. At its best, it could save future Nisha Sharmas from dowry plight by changing what’s socially acceptable and giving grooms a legitimate excuse to turn aside demands by their families.

I approve of government using market incentives in addition to blunt, sometimes ineffective legislation. Maybe they can issue tax credits for Bollywood Costume Design That’s Not Blindingly Tacky. Or the Padmashree for Novels Without Saris or Mehndi on the Cover.

Now that’s government to be proud of.

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I’ve been reading this interesting new blog the last few days. Its called Discrimination & National Security Initiative (which in my opinion is a very un-bloggy name). One of the bloggers, Dave Sidhu, writes,

The focus of the research is the mistreatment of minority communities during times of war (e.g., the post-9/11 backlash against Sikhs, South Asians, Arabs, and Muslims). The project will gather information (like cases, articles, statutes, reports, etc.) and also perform original research on the human consequences of this mistreatment (like Muslim families not traveling or flying, Sikh males cutting their hair, etc.).

One story that they reported on last week was this one on CNN about discrimination at Denny’s:

Seven Arab American men filed a $28 million lawsuit against a Denny’s restaurant in Florida saying the manager kicked them out and told them, “We don’t serve bin Ladens here,” their lawyer said on Thursday.

They sued the restaurant owner, Restaurant Collection Inc., and former manager, Eduardo Ascano, saying they were harassed, humiliated and refused service at the Denny’s in Florida City, southwest of Miami, in January 2004.

Lawyer Rod Hannah said the men had not ruled out an additional lawsuit against the Denny’s chain, which paid about $54 million in 1994 to settle a discrimination suit filed by black customers.

The Florida lawsuit said the men visited the restaurant early in the morning of January 11, 2004, and, after long delays, were seated, given menus and served drinks.

After waiting more than an hour for their food while later customers were served, they asked twice about their order. The lawsuit said Ascano told them “Bin Laden is in charge of the kitchen.” Asked about the reference to the al Qaeda leader, he swore and told them, “We don’t serve bin Ladens here” and ordered them to leave, the lawsuit said.

This morning a Sepia Mutiny reader, who I will call “S,” sent us an email asking us for a sanity check. We get tips all the time but nobody asks us for advice. Suddenly I felt the need to step into a phone booth, transform, and fly forth from our North Dakota headquarters and into the “real world.”

How do you KNOW that you have been the victim of discrimination and that it’s not just your “overly-sensitive” perspective skewing things, was her general query? I think most of us who grew up in the U.S. tend see the glass half full in instances of possible discrimination. I know I do. I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt even in instances where a neutral third party would clearly label it as bigotry. Let’s look at her situation and see what we think.

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Consider if you will some of the following quotes:

“There are Koreans, Chinese, and Hindoos numbering over one billion. Allow them to secure a foothold in the United States, and they will, within a few generations, sweep like an avalanche of death from the Himalayas around the globe”

or

“It is essential that the blood of the American-Europeans of this country, who together with their ancestors developed civilization to its present state, should be kept pure and free from the taint of the decadent Orientalism of China, Japan and India. We have no quarrel with those people. We wish them well in their own countries, but we do not want them in ours.”

or

“[Indian religions are] debauched with deeds of lust and blood…Many of the Indian deities, given to lustful amours, are especially worshipped by the people….It is not surprising that religion in India is not only divorced from morality but married to vice…much indecency exists in India under the guise of religion, many of the temple dancing girls are merely consecrated prostitutes, and in many cases respectable women are led to lives of shame.”

Do you get angry when you read this? Or perhaps it sounds vaguely familiar to you? When compared to the transcript of the Jersey Guys radio show that I posted a few days ago the above quotes aren’t that radically different. Well what if I told you the quotes above are all about a century old? Indolink.com has a very educational article titled, Fear and Loathing: Hinduphobia in America .

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Honestly I’m soooo tired of the following topic. I know that I should be completely jaded by such things already, but I like to think that they can still bring out the fight in me. The same mob mentality over the radiowaves that we have seen in the past has happened once again. SM tipster “Ayyner” alerts us to yet another racist outburst by some East Coast on-air personalities. The following is a partial transcript (a longer transcript here) of the Jersey Guys Radio Show on NJ 105.1 FM. The Jersey Guys are Craig Carton and Ray Rossi.

[Caller]: You just said it all, the last couple of Â… callers, I guess they donÂ’t know that they live in America and weÂ’re being overrun. I had just moved out of Edison because of what has happened in the past 10 yearsÂ… Orientals are all along, the whole complete route 27. And Indians have taken over Edison in north and all over.

[Carton]: Damn Orientals and Indians.

[Caller]: I..i moved out..36 years IÂ’ve lived in Edison

[Carton]: And what was the biggest problem you had with the Orientals and the Indians ?

[Caller]: I canÂ’t handle them! ThereÂ’s no American people anymore.

[Carton]: Eh..

[Caller]: There shoving us the hell out!

[Carton]: ItÂ’s like youÂ’re a foreigner in your own country isnÂ’t it?

In my opinion the above excerpt is rather tame compared to the rest. Their ignorant invective seems to be particularly focused on East Asians. Unlike previous on-air incidents, this seems to have occurred in the middle of a “political discussion” instead of one meant to be funny. Specifically, the conversation centered around the upcoming race for mayor of Edison, NJ. The discussion basically degenerated into Carton bashing liberals who he thinks care too much about getting minority votes. You should be concerned with the majority (“me”) to paraphrase Carton. According to an article from a few weeks ago this duo has a large audience.

Touted as the most listened to FM talk show, the afternoon program commands nearly 1 million listeners a week, said Ray Handel, director of marketing and promotions for the station.

Of course this is really nothing new. Limbaugh gets away with this kind of crap all the time but is clever enough to not be so blatant. If you can’t even be clever enough to veil your racism [sarcasm] you deserve to be smacked off the airways. In any case, we’ve been informed that “South Asian legal organizations are coming together again to craft a concerted response.”

Update (4/27/05): The reaction. Continue reading →