Baby, Baby…

Posted on April 12, 2006 by Taz

In the realm of health policy, the low birth weight of babies is used as a primary measure in infant health as well as welfare in economic research.

Low birthweight affects about one in every 13 babies born each year in the United States. It is a factor in 65 percent of infant deaths. [link]

[R]esearch has found that [low birth weight] infants tend to have lower educational attainment, poorer self-reported health status, and reduced employment and earnings as adults, relative to their normal weight counterparts…[B]irth weight has been used to evaluate the effectiveness of social policy. Research on the benefits of largescale social programs–including welfare and health insurance for the poor–typically use birth weight as the primary indicator of infant welfare. [link]

I would like to point out at this moment that I was a healthy 9 pound baby when I was born, well above low birth weight levels, thank you very much. Unfortunately when the time comes for me to have a baby, as a ‘U.S.-born Asian Indian woman’, I run a high risk of having a low birth weight infant, according to recent research coming out of Stanford.

U.S.-born Asian-Indian women are more likely than their Mexican-American peers to deliver low birth weight infants, despite having fewer risk factors, say researchers at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital and Stanford’s School of Medicine. The finding confirms previous research that showed a similar pattern in more recent immigrants, and suggests that physicians should consider their patients’ ethnic backgrounds when planning their care…They found that Asian-Indian women were more than twice as likely to have low birth weight infants as were white women. These infants weigh 2,500 grams (about 5.5 pounds) or less at birth, either because they grew poorly in the womb or were born prematurely.[link]

These results are important in the realm of South Asian American health policy and are significant, at least should be significant, as to how prenatal care for desi women are implemented. As a desi woman, it is important to be informed of this issue and as a policy maker, it has inherent long term effect in our community.

“You might ask, ‘What’s so bad about being small?'” said Madan, who points out that the growth curves used for this and other similar studies are based on white infants. “Is this just normal for Asian Indians? But we’re concerned because we know that abnormally small babies run a higher risk of fetal distress and often require more intensive medical care and longer hospital stays after birth.”

In addition, unusually small babies are known to be at higher risk for a variety of medical problems in adulthood, including diabetes, hypertension and an increased risk of heart disease – conditions that some studies have reported to be higher in Asian Indians. [link]

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Sounds like a protest to me

Posted on April 12, 2006 by Abhi

Yesterday Taz brought you an account of desis representing at the immigration protests here on the West Coast. SM tipster “Mann” let’s us know about some desi representation on the East Coast in the form of some “rebel music.” The band Outernational was playing a protest in NYC. Sonny Suchdev (pictured right) plays the trumpet, vocals, dhol, and bongos for Outernational. I get the impression that conservative blogger Michelle Malkin wasn’t feelin’ the t-shirt that Sonny wore to the protest. According to her sources they “…provided music, including a song dedicated to the Muslims who rioted in France last year called ‘Riviera Uproar’.” Here is a clip which appears to be recorded from Monday’s concert. Alternet.org has a profile of the band who sat down to be interviewed by Naeem Mohaiemen in March:

Suchdev wearing a shirt on Monday that reads: “America is scary”

I’ve been following the band Outernational — with their fearless melange of punk, rap, ska, bhangra and afrobeat — since 2003. While still not a household name, the group began to make waves at 2004’s Republican National Convention protests in New York. That’s where they played (at the “Axis of Justice” concert organized by Tom Morello, formerly of Rage Against the Machine) to a large crowd of pissed-off activists, many of them Critical Mass bike riders who had just watched the NYPD target and arrest scores of their own (the Bloomberg administration claimed that “anarchists” had infiltrated the group bike ride). The repercussions of that day’s mass arrests and police mistreatment continue to reverberate in Outernational’s NYC home base.

Even before Outernational’s breakout performance at the RNC protests, they had fans — like me — regularly attending their shows for a political floor-stomping fix. In 2000, as the New York Times pondered the possible death of “protest music”, older anti-establishment voices like Consolidated, Public Enemy, Fugazi, and Negativland were dimming, and fans needed something new. Into the gap stepped Outernational, which came together in late 2003 with a heady mix of radical politics and furious beats. [Link]

Sonny describes how he got started with the band:

I had been an activist since I was a teenager and had been playing the trumpet since I was nine, but I had never found the right group of people to combine music and politics in a band. One day that fall, I was at dinner with some friends after a meeting (about post-9/11 detentions of immigrants), and Jesse [the bassist] was also there. He commented on the Skatalites T-shirt I was wearing, and we of course started talking about music. He told me about his friend Miles [vocals, lyrics] and how they were getting together and jamming with different people in the basement. I asked him what kind of music they were into, and he replied, “We’re on an outernationalist rebel music tip.” I had a good feeling about this. [Link]

Did anyone see them at the protest on Monday? The band’s website has both music and video clips you can check out, as does their MySpace page.

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The spices speak to me

Posted on April 12, 2006 by manish

Director Paul Mayeda Berges was quoted in DNA today about his new movie The Mistress of Spices:

The other key element was to… give each spice its own Indian instrument so you could know when they were calling out to Tilo. The chillies warn her with a tabla. Chandan, kala jeera, tulsi, hing and cinnamon each have their own sounds.

I’ll bet that what the spices are telling Tilo is, ‘Stop exoticizing us, wench!’ Spice-tabla-Chocolat-sex: Tilo Does Oakland

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Nabokov Ninnington

Posted on April 12, 2006 by manish

With apologies to The Namesake

2006

On a wet August monsoon evening two weeks before her due date, Jennifer Ninnington stands in the kitchen of a Pali Hill apartment, combining Bournvita and Horlicks and crumbled chocolate in a bowl. She adds sugar, flour, egg whites, wishing there were yeast to pour into the mix. Jennifer has been consuming this concoction throughout her pregnancy, a humble approximation of the brownies sold for two bucks in New York cafÃ©s and at large train stations throughout America, spilling from saran wrap. She wipes sweat from her face with the free end of her denim shirt. Her swollen feet ache against speckled white marble. She reaches for another chocolate bar, frowning again as she pulls at its crisp gold wrapper. A curious warmth floods her abdomen, followed by a tightening so severe she doubles over, gasping without sound, dropping the chocolate bar with a thud on the floor.

She calls out to her husband, Andy, an MBA candidate at IIM-Bombay, who is studying in the bedroom. He leans over a card table; the edge of their bed, a queen mattress under a pastel blue pinstriped twill spread, serves as his chair. Continue reading →

The Gangs of Vancouver

Posted on April 11, 2006 by Abhi

A recent poll in Vancouver suggests that many residents blame South Asians in general and Indo-Canadians specifically for the violence and crime in their city:

According to the Vancouver Sun, Nearly two-thirds of respondents to an Ipsos Reid poll believe some ethnic groups are more responsible for crime than others, and they put Indo-Canadian and Asians at the top of their lists.

Of those in the poll who held ethnic groups most responsible, 56 per cent specifically identified “Indian/East Indian” and 45 per cent listed “Asian/Oriental,” the newspaper reported March 16.
By comparison, five per cent of the same group singled out “Caucasian/white” and only one per cent were worried about “Afro-American/Black,” “Middle Eastern/Arabs/Muslims” and “Italians.”
An Ipsos Reid spokesman said people were allowed to give more than one racial group in their answers, and all the responses were gathered into groups that best reflected the responses. [Link]

The reality, as you will see below, is different from perceptions, but in issues such as crime it rarely matters. Indo-Canadians may cite this poll as evidence that they are the victims of a racist Canadian society. Playing the victim will of course help to delay the need to change their community from within and will leave many parents in their state of denial. On the other side you may see an increase in hate crimes against Indo-Canadians.

…in an interview, Vancouver Police Insp. Kash Heed, commanding officer of the department’s district 3 — southeast Vancouver — said actual statistics show the reverse of the poll findings.

“In the Lower Mainland, the majority of crimes are committed by Caucasians,” he said.

“That’s a true figure, it’s a reliable and valid figure based simply on arrest statistics.”

He said public perceptions are swayed by media coverage of criminal events, including the Air India bombing, which involve members of South Asian and Sikh communities. [Link]

Regardless of the accurate statistics, nobody can deny that many Indo-Canadian youths are out of control. Stories like the following seem to have become all too common in Canadian media and are disturbing even given the media bias:

Everyone was having a good time until the fight began and someone started shooting. When a 29-year-old Surrey man exchanged insults with four young Indo-Canadian men at Garry T’s pub at 72 Avenue and Scott Road, the confrontation escalated and one of the Indo-Canadians produced a handgun and started shooting, inflicting multiple wounds – one of them fatal. The Dec. 8, 2005 incident is just one of many in Surrey and other Lower Mainland communities where a gunfight has erupted in a public place, with bullets being sprayed indiscriminately with no concern for innocent bystanders.

According to police, the number of shooting incidents nearly doubled last year, fuelled by a “bad boy” mentality that sees young men with no criminal past packing handguns to bolster a tough-guy image.

As a result, disputes that would have ended in a fistfight or an exchange of insults are turning into potentially fatal encounters… Everyone was having a good time until the fight began and someone started shooting. [Link]

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Inqilab Zindabad, Si Se Puede!

Posted on April 11, 2006 by Taz

Inqilab Zindabad, Inqilab Zindabad! Si Se Puede, Si Se Puede!

My ears are still ringing from last night’s Los Angeles rally on immigration… Ghetto birds hovered over head as I walked through the barren streets of Chinatown (barren that is, except for the motorcycle cops that lined the perimeter) to head to where the rally was taking place. Two things struck me as I entered the mass of people listening to the speakers at Olvera Street; the first is the overwhelming amount of red, white and blue flags I saw being waved. There was a Mexican flag here and there, but overwhelmingly it was brown fists holding American flags. The second was the air of festivity- the ladies were selling bacon wrapped death dogs by the rally route, the cotton candy man was walking around, and everyone was whooping and hollering. It was a celebration of the diversity that is America.

South Asian Representin’

As I stood to the side, I saw every kind of ethnicity represented; Mexicans, Koreans, Filipinos. And then, I saw them. A group of the other brown immigrants, our brown immigrants marching down the street. South Asian Network, the premier organization serving the South Asian community of Southern California were the main organizers of this contingent of desis. On Sunday, they had organized a town hall meeting on the issue of immigration in ‘Little India’. About 300 people showed up with a diverse representation of age, class, nationalities, and races. The forum was broadcasted on a live feed on KPFK and everyone there was given a chance to speak on why this issue is important to them, leading to a dynamic far-ranging discussion. Last night at the Los Angeles rally, SAN was there marching the streets with a representation of South Asians Americans.

There’s always a thrill of excitement when marching in any rally, but there was the additional spark of walking with a group of people chanting in Bangla, Hindi, Urdu and Tamil in a sea of “Si se puede!” At one point, the two uncle-aged taxi workers started dancing around in circles in front of the Mexican-American teens drumming. No doubt it was great to walk in solidarity with every other immigrant out there, but to be able to chant “Inqilab Zindabad” finally made it feel like mine.

The immigrant issue is a South Asian issue, despite, as Abhi pointed out in the earlier post, the lack of framing in the media. We are after all, if not immigrants ourselves, the son or daughter of immigrants.

”All of what is happening around immigration reform in the country is not a Latino-originated movement at all,” said Deepa Iyer, executive director of the South Asian American Leaders of Tomorrow, based in Silver Spring, Md. ”There are also Asian and African groups working together. From where I stand, I feel that our community is greatly invested in the issue.” [link]

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Race ain’t First

Posted on April 11, 2006 by vinod

Every 6-8 months or so, I find myself in a certain, very frustrating conversation template with a random brown dude somewhere. The most recent was last Sunday night –

Him: “I can’t believe you think Social Security privitization is good? So how do you feel about the Iraq war?” (I forget exactly how the tide turned to politics but it was rather abrupt…)

Me: “Look, I don’t want to get into this conversation, we’re out, having drinks, and it’s not necessary” (FWIW, you can gleam some of my position here)

“No, we are going to have this conversation. I’m guessing that your position here is just not very bright”

“I resent you calling me stupid… I’m willing to blame it on the wine and drop this whole thing right here”

“I can’t believe that you, as a brown dude support this”

“I don’t see what being brown has to do with this”

“Dude, you’re brown. Grow up. How old are you? Do you want to be white or something?”

“No. Clearly I’m out tonight with a desi crew and no one’s forcing me to be here.”

It goes downhill from there but rest assured gentle readers that I was very restrained and calmly pointed out to my interlocutor how insulting he was being towards me while he stormed up and had to grab a cigarette. As they say, in San Francisco, there’s still one last, openly persecuted minority…

Now, in an earlier, heavily commented thread, Ennis mused that it’s the height of hypocrisy for ABCD’s to get riled up when white folk embrace their culture — afterall what should race have to do with it? The white dude / gal who partakes the unbridled fun that is Bhangra makes “us” stronger. Heck, it even provides a 3rd party validation of sorts that, in this grand world of cultural exchange, we’ve created something of value.

I hope we can accept the reverse when some desi dudes embrace Locke & Friedman a bit more than Hugo Chavez & Arundhati Roy.

Continue reading →

The fanny state

Posted on April 11, 2006 by manish

Every time someone claims that there are no communists left in China, or that the Chinese economy will surpass India’s in the long term, I point out the latest example of China micro-managing its most entrepreneurial sectors. (In contrast, India tends to overregulate old sectors and jumps into new ones, which government babus comprehend dimly, only when the moral police perceive political advantage.)

The Chinese government has now inserted itself into multiplayer game design. Gamers who spend more than three hours online will be stripped of points. Gamers who spend more than five hours online will be kicked off entirely:

The government in Beijing is reported to be introducing the controls to deter people from playing for longer than three consecutive hours… The new system will impose penalties on players who spend more than three hours playing a game by reducing the abilities of their characters. Gamers who spend more than five hours will have the abilities of their in-game character severely limited. Players will be forced to take a five-hour break before they can return to a game. [Link]

… there’s the [South Korean] couple whose infant expired as they played games in an Internet cafe; there is the [South Korean] death that occurred from exhaustion; and there are even murders that have resulted from feuds begun online… [Link]

Even the U.S. may succumb, though more to tax than to nag:

In the near future, the IRS could require game developers to keep records of all the transactions that take place in virtual economies and tax players on their gains before any game currency is converted into dollars. [Link]

I actually see the wisdom in this. Maybe they can implement a one-hour cutoff on bad first dates, a two-hour cutoff on crappy TV, and a six-month term limit on despotic nanny regimes.

Personally I spend too much time in front of my PC. I look forward to the day when they send my ass a parking ticket. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I’d have to park it on alternate sides of the apartment for seat-sweeping.