The selfless cab driver who returns the valuables some schmo left in his car is an urban archetype that never seems to grow old. It’s the sort of embodiment of working-class dignity that civic and business leaders draw on to signify that for all the hubbub and ambient edginess of city life, everything (and everyone) is ultimately in its right place. And in a context where, as is the case in most large American cities, taxi workers tend to be immigrants, every instance when a cabbie can be celebrated for doing the right thing represents that much more balm with which to assuage not only class but also ethnic anxieties.

This week brought two such cases, spanning the North American continent from sea to shining sea, and the heroes in both cases are desi: Indian taxi driver Vinod Mago from Lynnwood, near Seattle, who returned a customer’s wallet with $5,950 in cash, and Bangladeshi driver Osman Chowdhury (pictured) here in New York, whose customer, a jeweler from Dallas, left a suitcase that was found to contain 31 diamond rings rings.

As you may have read, the Chowdhury story comes with the additional piquant detail that the Dallas lady had tipped him only 30 cents on a $10.70 fare. So in the end her misadventure only ended up costing her $100.30, as she gave Chowdhury a C-note as his reward. (Though he initially refused any reward at all, and it may be that he was only prepared to accept the equivalent of fares he lost while dealing with the situation, which of course would make her a bit less of a tightwad and him even more of a saint.)

Here’s a snapshot of Chowdhury’s life according to a BBC report: Continue reading →

If you watch a little kid with a pile of stuff, you’ll often see them sorting. They’re putting some things together and separating others. On Sesame Street they sing “Which of these things are not like the other … “, it’s the first step towards developing a sense of discrimination … and also the first step towards discriminating. Still, it seems like a fairly basic human activity, even when categories are contested. Therefore, I was amused to read two stories recently about eliminating these divisions:

In conservative Nepal, authorities recently granted an official citizenship document to 40-year-old Chanda Musalman which lists “him” as both male and female:

With elections approaching, government teams are currently touring the country issuing certificates of citizenship. One team came to Chanda’s village in western Nepal. Chanda, who has had no sex-change surgery, asked the officials to erase the words male and female, listed under gender. They obliged, and ascribed Chanda’s gender as “both”… It is unclear how this unique legal status will play out in practice – for instance, how it will affect Chanda’s marriage rights. [Link]

A similar desire to eliminate pigeonholes is sounded in the opinion column of the NYT today, by an author who calls for the abolition of racial categories on the census:

There seems to be an emerging consensus that the system of racial classification that has dominated national politics and the census for nearly two centuries is so fraught with imprecision — and so tainted by racist ideas that have been disproved by science — that it should eventually be dropped altogether.

This view has been percolating among census historians for years. But it has gained traction since the 1990s, when there was a pitched battle over a proposal that would have added a “multiracial” category to the 2000 census. A compromise allowed people to check more than one box for race. But that change only fueled the debate by revealing a conflict between the fixed racial categories that have long dominated American life and a different sense of identity that’s clearly on the rise among younger Americans. [Link]

My family has been caught betwixt and between racial categories before. Back in the early 1970s my mom cut her hand and had to go to the hospital. The two nurses there started to argue about whether to denote her as white or black on the intake form. The white nurse pointed out that my mom is light (she needs sunscreen, unlike me), while the black nurse argued that since she isn’t really white, she must be black. Finally my father demanded that they admit her right away, telling them that they could put her in whatever category they wanted once the doctor saw her. Still, this story doesn’t argue that there should be no categories at all, just that categories should be useful (and that classification should be secondary to medication). So personally, I don’t get the argument for the abolition of racial categories altogether as long as they remain socially relevant.

Continue reading →