Naeem Mohaiemen, one of the organizers behind Disappeared in America, wrote an interesting essay last summer about how some British Asians are flipping around the ethnic slur ‘Paki’:
About a decade back, Bangladeshi and Pakistani teenagers in England began re-appropriating the dreaded “Paki” word. Once a vicious epithet flung on London streets by white skinheads, the word was now a symbol of an assertive brown community. “Paki Power” graffiti appeared, a clothing label called “Pak1” did the rounds…and Aki Nawaz of punk-asian band Fun^Da^Men^Tal told the press, “We’re not Pacifists, we’re Pakifists!”“Taking back” racist epithets has long been a cultural touchstone, and a touchy one at that. I took to greeting my British Asian friends with “Paki”, but only when we were alone, never in front of white Brits. One day, I called my friend Usman and his father answered the phone. Mistaking his voice for his son, I launched into “Oii Paki, it’s Naeem!” The long, pained silence on the other end spoke volumes about how the older generation viewed this act of re-appropriation. He was horrified and disappointed in our lack of “historical context…”
Besides the use of “Paki” by British South Asian youth, Australian immigrants have started a gleeful website called “WogLife” and for the Jewish community there’s the in-your-face magazine “Heeb.”
Earlier, Abhi posted about the N word. Mohaiemen riffed:
… Chris Rock explains the ongoing fascination: “This word, it’s . . . the only thing white people can’t do. That’s the only reason . . . anybody writes about it. It’s like white people can’t believe there’s a thing that exists (that) they can’t do…”
Afternoon TV is so funky sometimes. Today, the Christian channel was not showing a silver-haired white guy with expansive hand gestures, clad in a shiny double-breasted suit. Instead, it was showing a desi couple, the guy with those huge uncle glasses, singing a ghazal in Hindi, interleaved with clips of folk dancing.
Pardon my parochialness, but I’ve never seen this before. Fusion? Talvin and Karsh got nothin’ on the church. Similarly, I’ve always been fascinated by how omnivorously religious many Hindus are. They practice it like metareligion where other ‘one-and-only’ deities are merely slotted into the pantheon. I often see Bollywood philms where a Hindu protagonist’s idea of the holy trinity is to pray at a temple, a church and a gurudwara all in the same day. And many Punjabi Hindus attend their local gurudwara instead of temple. I’d imagine it all drives hardcore monotheists crazy.
