Category Archives: Politics

The Ghosts of Mutiny Past

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In 2006 I wrote the first of many posts here on SM about then would-be Virginia Senator George Allen and his use of the term “Macaca” to describe S.R. Sidarth, a young volunteer for the current Senator Webb’s campaign who followed and documented his opponent’s public gatherings (a very common practice now). All the main players involved are probably happy to bury the Macaca Incident. Allen certainly wants to forget about it given that he running again. The “macaca moment” is widely credited for sinking his first political career and haunts him in every article about him still. When I met S.R. Sidarth at the Democratic National Convention in 2008 I was told by others that he doesn’t like talking about the incident either and wanted to move on. Given that Webb is not running for re-election it doesn’t hurt him to move on either.

But George Allen is working hard to resurrect his career and win office again. We pick up the story at the annual Shad Planking in the Real Virginia:

As the front-runner in the GOP nominating contest to succeed retiring Sen. James Webb (D), former senator George Allen swamped his opponents at the annual Shad Planking festival, offering more of everything: signs, stickers, hats, volunteers and — crucially, given the hot, sticky weather — cold beer.

Jamie Radtke, Allen’s best-known foe and former head of the Virginia Federation of Tea Party Patriots, went to the Wakefield Ruritan Club southeast of Richmond with a smaller financial war chest but armed with an argument — that Allen isn’t conservative enough to deserve the Republican nomination — that she hopes will be enough to fuel an upset.

“People are looking for an alternative. They really are,” Radtke said.

Radtke’s booth at the gathering featured a large sign contrasting her views with Allen’s record in the Senate — including votes to raise the debt ceiling and for the No Child Left Behind law. [Link]

The winner will meet Kaine. I still believe that if not for the Macaca moment the 2008 election would have been Allen vs. Obama and that contest would have been much closer. I also believe that times have changed and Allen might not be nutty enough for the Republican base this time around. But I also want to go back to the title of my post from five years ago. What did Allen think “macaca” meant when he used the term? We may never know for sure but Slate’s Chris Wilson pointed out on Tuesday that what we think he meant was largely influenced by Wikipedia: Continue reading →

Ruby, Parm or Manjit? — updated

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Dhalla Gill Grewal.jpgCanadians vote in a federal election on May 2 and one of the most interesting races is in Brampton-Springdale, just outside Toronto. One out of three people in Brampton is South Asian, the highest proportion among all municipalities in Canada, and residents are not asking whether a South Asian will represent them in Parliament — they are asking which South Asian will represent them in Parliament. Will it be Ruby, Parm or Manjit?

All three of the major party candidates are Punjabi (just as in the neighboring riding of Bramalea-Gore-Malton). Ruby Dhalla, the Liberal incumbent, a former actress and chiropractor, has held the seat since 2004. She and Nina Grewal, a Conservative from British Columbia, were the first Sikh women to serve in the Canadian House of Commons and have twice defended their seats.

Dhalla’s chief rival is Parm Gill, the Conservative candidate, whom she defeated by less than 800 votes in 2008, and whom she accuses of inappropriate access to Immigration Minister Jason Kenney.

The third major candidate is Manjit Grewal, nominee of the New Democratic Party (NDP). He doesn’t appear to have much of a chance, aside from the fact that he co-owns a taxi company and will have no trouble giving voters free rides to the polls.

Continue reading →

Brawl breaks out at Queens gurdwara

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A brawl broke out at a Queens, NY gurdwara Sunday after a dispute about membership rolls turned violent.

The New York Daily News reports:

Seven people were arraigned on riot and assault charges Monday for their roles in a vicious turf battle at a Sikh temple in Queens.

Assailants wielding cricket bats and small swords disrupted prayer services Sunday morning at the Baba Makhan Shah Lubana Sikh Center in Richmond Hill, police and witnesses said.

“I’m going to kill you,” defendant Harinder Singh, 47, screamed before punching Joginder Singh in the face, says a criminal complaint filed in Queens Supreme Court.

Gurnam Singh, 47, rushed into the temple swinging a stick and lunging at others while religious ceremonies were underway, the complaint says.

The NY Post adds a bit more detail:

The attackers brought the long sword and at least one other blade, as well as a hammer, mallet and cricket bats to the temple at 101st Avenue and 114th Street at around 11 a.m., witnesses and police said.

As you can imagine, New York City’s tabloids (which include the Post and the Daily News) have had a field day with this story. Be sure to read the Langer Hall’s analysis of the coverage. Continue reading →

Summer of Solidarity

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final1.jpgDClogo.jpgWhen I was a teen, I knew that I wanted to make a difference in the world. I just didn’t know how. I was lucky enough to attend a week long summer campaign training when I was in college which catapulted me into the world of advocacy and organizing in the environmental movement. It wasn’t until years later that similarly themed advocacy camps for the South Asian American youth community started popping up. I was grateful for my journey, but always wish I could have had access to more at a younger age.

This July there are two 4-day camps for Desi teens, both camps taking youth through a curriculum around identity, social advocacy and connecting with local activists. The first one is DC Desi Summer, based in Washington DC. The second is one I’ve been volunteering with, the Bay Area Solidarity Summer (BASS) which is a project of the Alliance of South Asians Taking Action (ASATA).

On July 22nd, South Asian American teenagers from across the San Francisco Bay Area will convene for a life-changing experience. The youth will be attending the first ever Bay Area Solidarity Summer (BASS), a four-day leadership camp for youth of South Asian heritage seeking to learn about progressive issues, gain organizing skills, connect with other South Asian activists, and develop themselves into leaders. The all-inclusive camp will provide space for young people to learn skills on how to be a social activist, as well as learn about issues affecting the South Asian community both locally and globally.

BASS is open to youth of South Asian heritage ranging in age from 14 to 19 years old. The camp costs only $50, which covers all housing and food expenses for four days and three nights. Held in the beautiful Center for Third World Organizing Training and Retreat Center (often described as the “CTWO Mansion”), the intense camp will cover a wide range of issues such as Creative Arts and Action, Racial Profiling, Hip Hop Revolutionaries, and Environmental Justice. An important component of the curriculum will be a look back at the 100 years of history of South Asian Bay Area student activism.[bass] Continue reading →

A statistical snapshot of North American brown folk

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I’m really excited by the releases of 2010 Census. We’ll finally get some really fine-grained data. For example, we know from the American Community Survey that the Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan, and Nepali, communities have grown a great deal over the past 10 years. But I’m curious about more than these sample based estimates, I want fine-grained stuff which the decennial Census provides. We’ll know for example whether the endogamy rate for marriages where individuals are Indian Americans who were born or raised in the USA remains ~55%. That means in a little over half of the marriages between an ABD and someone else, that someone else was also an Indian American (whether foreign born and raised, or American born or raised). One model might be that with the growth in the community you’ll see the outmarriage rate drop. Some social science has seen this tendency among Asian Americans in general. I’m probably leaning in that direction myself (as a descriptive matter of the population wide movement. I am not personally part of that trend).

But before we get to the point where we get lots of 2010 data releases, I thought I’d “dump” a statistical snapshot of sorts of South Asians in North America. I wanted to include the UK and other communities of the Diaspora, but labor hours are finite. Feel free to offer links/data in the comments. The data below are from the US Census, the 2001 Census of Canada, and Pew’s Religious Landscape Survey. It is interesting that even across the two North American South Asian communities there are large differences. In particular it struck me how much more nationally diverse Canadian South Asians are, while the American South Asian community is numerically dominated by people whose national or family origin is in India. Continue reading →

Brown on “The Street”

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The Raj Trial and Wall Street’s South Asian Elite:

This new South Asian Wall Street elite includes the CEO of Citigroup, Indian-born Vikram Pandit; Ajit Jain, also from India, a money manager emerging as the likely successor to investment guru Warren Buffett; and a half-dozen hedge-fund managers who use strategies based on mathematical algorithms to routinely rake in $50 million or more per year in income. Chief among the latter group is the Sri Lankan-born Rajaratnam, who ran a $7 billion hedge fund, Galleon Group, and largely to the disgust of this justifiably proud community, has emerged as the face of this new ethnic order.

In much the same way that the upwardly mobile Jewish community of the 1930s viewed Jewish gangsters as a “shanda fur die goyim” (shame before the gentiles), the “Raj trial” has put the South Asian financial clique on full display, for all its success–and insularity.

I actually had some media inquiries in relation to the Galleon trial in terms of how I thought it impacted the South Asian American community. Since I’m primarily a science blogger who isn’t even part of the South Asian American community, even the Bangaldeshi community, I just passed the inquiries on.

Those “in the know” can comment further, but my impression is that an analogy between a South Asian clique on Wall Street and a Jewish clique is weakened by the fact that brown folk are much more diverse. There’s a commonality in the U.S.A. due to how we’re perceived by others, but it isn’t as if a Sri Lankan quant is going to arrange a marriage with Neel Kashkari’s future children. More pointedly I think many of us perceive brown bankers and hedge fund guys and gals as bankers and hedge fund guys and gals first and foremost. Or at least that’s how the rest of America should view them.

In fact the journalist who contacted me admitted that they were having a hard time fleshing out the South Asian angle, since so few people in “the community” seemed interested or concerned about the Galleon trial. It was a different matter apparently when it came to management consultants and people on Wall Street, who thought their image was being tarnished further (yes, it is being tarnished further, but you’ll keep your bonuses, so I hope that’s just compensation for your reduced esteem!). Continue reading →

~1 in 5 Indian Families…

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…receive some sort of state assistance / welfare today. That surprisingly high number (well, to me anyway) is from a recently published report by the Center for Immigration Studies that’s sure to generate some interesting (and perhaps heated) discussion.

Households with children with the highest welfare use rates are those headed by immigrants from the Dominican Republic (82 percent), Mexico and Guatemala (75 percent), and Ecuador (70 percent). Those with the lowest use rates are from the United Kingdom (7 percent), India (19 percent), Canada (23 percent), and Korea (25 percent).

While 19% “feels” higher than I’d expect, it’s still a little less than half the rate of “native households with children” (39%). And, the Indian number is positive relative to those hordes of poor, illiterate, malnourished, Americans-of-Canadian-descent (23%) and is the lowest rate of use of any of the Asian communities identified. A model minority?

Interestingly, I’ve always generally assumed that immigration patterns from India vs. Pakistan into the US were basically the same. However, the Pakistani-household rate of assistance – 32.8% – is substantially higher than the Indian one and on par with the rate for Chinese families – 32.7%.

CIS’s intro to their study notes the issues being raised and points out that the data collected is primarily self-reported (with all the issues/concerns entailed) –

Concern that immigrants may become a burden on society has been a long-standing issue in the United States. As far back as colonial times there were restrictions on the arrival of people who might become a burden on the community. This report analyzes survey data collected by the Census Bureau from 2002 to 2009 to examine use of welfare programs by immigrant and native households, particularly those with children. The Current Population Survey (CPS) asks respondents about their use of welfare programs in the year prior to the survey,1 so we are examining self-reported welfare use rates from 2001 to 2009.

Any mutineers have insight into these differences?

Continue reading →

Kumaré. Believe.

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As Razib pointed out in the post immediately preceding, Sathya Sai Baba is dead. Who will stand up now to replace him? May I offer a humble suggestion? Kumaré:

What? Ok yes, I did just go there.

Kumaré is an enlightened guru from the East who builds a following of disciples in the West. But Kumaré is not real. He is an American filmmaker named Vikram Gandhi, who has transformed himself into Kumaré as the centerpiece of a social experiment designed to explore and test one of the world’s most sacred taboos. Concealing his true identity from all he meets, Kumaré forges profound, spiritual connections with real people from all walks of life. At the same time, in the absurdity of living as an entirely different person, Vikram the filmmaker is forced to confront difficult questions about his own identity. At the height of his popularity he reveals his greatest teaching: his true self. A playful yet genuine and insightful look at belief and spirituality, the film crosses a line few have dared to cross, all to discover: from illusion comes truth. [Link]

Check a review from SXSW.

Continue reading →

Sai Baba, 1926-2011

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Sathya Sai Baba, Hindu Holy Man, Dies at 86:

Indian television ran nonstop news coverage on Sunday of the guru’s death, while officials and celebrities expressed sadness over an “irreparable loss.”

“Sri Satya Sai Baba was a spiritual leader who inspired millions to lead a moral and meaningful life, even as they followed the religion of their choice,” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in a statement. “The nation deeply mourns his passing away.”

Andhra Pradesh state, where Puttaparti is located, declared four days of mourning, with its top official calling Sai Baba “a symbol of love, affection and passion.”

“Sri Satya Sai Baba has given his great self to the service of humanity,” Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy said. “He will be remembered for ages to come by all sections of people all over the world.”

Prediction: as the Indian middle class waxes Sai Baba will be viewed as a trailblazing religious entrepreneur. There will be many more in his mold. Continue reading →

Ravi Singh’s CV

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Ben Smith of Politico reports:

In capitals across the globe in recent months, the face of Barack Obama’s groundbreaking 2008 online campaign has been one Ravi Singh, a self-styled “campaign guru” with a colorful turban, a reassuring smile and a killer sales pitch.

He has been called the man “responsible for the Internet campaign of Barack Obama,” in Poland, the “election guru” of Obama and Clinton” in India, “el guru tecnologico de Obama” in Colombia, and “homme qui a géré la campagne d’Obama sur Internet” in France.

There’s just one major thing wrong with this international portrait of Web wizardry —Singh never worked for Obama. [link]

I don’t know, I think he is kind of brilliant. He is using an error made by some lazy journalist and letting others feed off the initial error sans fact-checking. His legend has been growing and he remains silent. That is quite a public relations strategy.

…his appearances in a half-dozen countries have been accompanied by remarkably similar publicity campaigns announcing the arrival of “Obama’s guru,” even if Singh himself is not quoted directly in local media accounts claiming the role.

“What do U.S. President Barack Obama and Euro politician Antonio López Isturiz have in common? Their common denominator is Ravi Singh,” wrote the European social media blog Sociable. “The self-acclaimed Campaign Guru was credited with the overwhelming success of Obama’s online electoral campaign. But now he is turning his sight to Europe.”

Maybe I can claim that I was once Obama’s ghost-Blogger or Twitterer?

Continue reading →