Let’s Help Juan Williams Identify More “Muslim Garb”…

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Hi, my name is Anna, often spelled “A N N A”. You might remember me from my past roles as “Mutineer # 3”, “Only Vagina in the Bunker”, “Over-dressed-brown-girl-at-Bhangra-Blowout”, “The abnormal, Vegetarian Mallu” and “Token”.

These days, I am consumed with my nifty new job as a reporter with D.C. NPR-affiliate, WAMU, 88.5 FM, where I write and curate the DCentric blog. Precisely because of my dream job, I have received emails from some of you asking me to opine about Juan Williams, who was recently let go from NPR because of comments he made on FOX’s “The O’Reilly Factor” about Muslim people and their garb freaking him out. To those readers who have reached out to me, I would like to say two things:

1) Aw, thanks! I’m flattered you care what I think…

2) ARE YOU INSANE? If I get fired, I ain’t gettin’ $2 Million from FOX.

Instead of wading in to this controversy, I will point you towards this HILARIOUS Tumblr called, “Pictures of Muslims Wearing Things”. And if you insist on a Desi connection, check this out:

This unfortunate Muslim is wearing Ed Hardy. He is called Salman Khan.

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I will also add that this wasn’t the first time NPR had issues with Juan (he did, after all, call the First Lady “Stokely Carmichael in a designer dress“). Hey…is it just me, or does Juan Williams seem really preoccupied with what people wear… Continue reading →

Original copy

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Hello and welcome to another episode of Original Copy, the show that Aroon-Purie.jpgteaches you how to make your mark in the competitive world of journalism. Today we bring you a lesson on what to do if you’re caught lifting another writer’s work. As you may have heard, Aroon Purie, editor-in-chief of India Today, had to apologize for a recent “From the Editor-in-Chief” column that included lines like this: “If a tiger had sex with a tornado and then their tiger-nado baby got married to an earthquake, their offspring would be Rajinikanth.”

As it turns out, that sentence and nine others originally appeared in Slate writer Grady Hendrix’s article on Rajinikanth. Purie sent apologies to Hendrix and Slate editor David Plotz, which Hendrix included in a piece called “Great Writers Steal.”

It’s my normal practice in my letter from the editor to enumerate why we carry a particular cover story. In the regional edition of our weekly newsmagazine India Today issue dated Oct 18th 2010 we carried a cover story on the film star Rajinikant.

I normally ask for inputs on subjects that are specialized , as for instance a superhit filmstar from the south, from those in charge of editing the copy. Some of the inputs which were sent to me on Rajinikant were unfortunately taken from an article authored by Mr. G Hendrix in your magazine. This was not known to me. I believed it to be original copy and a portion of it got included as inputs in my longer letter from the editor which got published. I greatly regret this error.

Rajinikanth is indeed a very specialized subject, one that’s studied diligently at many Tamil Nadu theaters. So it’s no surprise that Purie asked for inputs, and believed them to be “original copy.”

Purie: “Original copy?”

Assistant: “Yes, sir, we are the first ones to copy it.”

Continue reading →

Getting Gully w/ Ras Ceylon, Mandeep Sethi & Humble the Poet

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I was hesitant to make the two hour drive from Oakland to Sacramento on a late night after working a full day of campaigning. But when I stepped into Sol Collective in Sacramento and was embraced by a sea of brown faces, mainly Sikh kids from the local UC Davis campus, I knew I was stepping into something special and it was well worth the drive. Mandeep Sethi had put this show on, pulling together a gully line up of South Asian hip hop heads from Los Angeles based Hoodini, to Oakland based Ras Ceylon, to Toronto based Humble the Poet to Bay based Mandeep Sethi himself.

The highlight of the evening was by far when Humble the Poet, Ras Ceylon and Mandeep Sethi took the stage together to spit a song that they had just created that week with a beat produced by Sikh Knowledge. You can peep my live recording of the song Gutter right here, but Ras Ceylon just tweeted at me that the official music video was up. Live and direct, here you go – Gutter.

I’ve written about Humble the Poet and Mandeep Sethi in the past, but who is Ras Ceylon? I connected with him through Sri Lankan friends and when I moved to Oakland a couple months ago, I knew I had to connect. From L.A. to the Bay, Ras Ceylon has been a hip-hop reggae artist representing Oakland for the past ten years. I sat down with Ras Ceylon for a quick Q&A before he headed out to Jamaica on tour. It was a windy day by Lake Merritt in Oakland, so I had to edit the clip just a bit because of the sound – I transcribed some of it though which you can read after the jump.

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Where Nikki Haley’s money comes from

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A few weeks ago I cited the ridiculous assertion by Republican Congressman Jim Gerlach that it was somehow wrong for his Democratic opponent Manan Trivedi to accept money from…Indian Americans. Well, a noteworthy portion of Republican Nikki Haley’s haul in South Carolina may be coming the same way:

More than 30 percent of Nikki Haley’s campaign cash came from outside South Carolina, more than three times what her opponent Vincent Sheheen has raised out of state in their race for governor.

Sheheen’s campaign quickly seized on the news.

“The truth is Nikki Haley claims to be an outsider, but more than 100 PACs have bought and paid for her vote,” Sheheen campaign manager Trav Robertson said of the Republican state representative. “No other candidate who has run in South Carolina history, to my knowledge, has ever gotten as much money from outside the state as Nikki Haley has…”

Among donors who listed their occupation in Haley’s most recent campaign finance filing, about 6 percent were attorneys.

Lakhwinder Singh, who lives in Jamaica, N.Y., was one of several Indian-Americans across the country to send a check to Haley, whose parents emigrated from India to build a new life in South Carolina. Singh contributed $1,000 after he met Haley at fundraiser in his state.

He said he has friends in South Carolina, but Haley’s campaign is most important to him because of their shared heritage. He said Indian-Americans also rallied around Bobby Jindal in his successful run for governor of Louisiana…

An article in the Hindustan Times noted Haley has attended at least half a dozen galas organized by the Indian-American community and estimated she may have raised $250,000 at them. At one event in New Jersey, Haley told the audience that she wanted to open up avenues for business ties between South Carolina and India.

Sheheen, whose ancestors emigrated from Lebanon in the late 19th century, has experienced similar support on a smaller scale, receiving contributions from both the Arab-American Leadership PAC and Dr. James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute.

 [link]

That’s great. Apparently all you have to do is tell some uncles that you want to “open up avenues for business ties between South Carolina and India” and that is good enough to fill ’em coffers. All you aspiring politicians take note. Do you think Haley admitted to them that she does occasionally go to gurdwara? Maybe if she becomes governor on Nov. 2nd she can accompany President Obama to Amritsar? I am just putting that out there for the internet to pick up. It would make for good symbolism (but would cause some tea baggers to suffer a stroke).

Continue reading →

Air Pollution: Is Not Flying a Solution?

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Thumbnail image for globe_west_172.jpgTech geek Anirvan Chatterjee and landscape architect Barnali Ghosh were surprised to learn that their carbon footprint was bigger than 90 percent of Americans, despite their green efforts which included living without a car. They found that air travel was to blame and challenged themselves to spend a year without flying. In words that might resonate with many desis, Chatterjee wrote about why it would be hard to give up flying, just before embarking upon the Year of No Flying project.

Growing up in a family of post-1965 transnational immigrants, our history is deeply connected with the democratization of air travel — countless flights to and from India, Canada, Nigeria, and the United States. Our stories begin and end in airports. (Last flight) Continue reading →

Musings on Mistaken Identity

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kalyan.penn.jpg Actor Adhir Kalyan was on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson and shared a story of being mistaken for Kal Penn when he was visiting a beach in California. I don’t feel there’s too much similarity in their looks, and they sound completely different because Kalyan has a British accent. But hey, I know being mistaken for another desi happens from time to time, even to us non-celebrities who aren’t getting screen time during prime time or in theaters across America.

Example #1: At one summer job, I was one of four interns in a small office with less than ten staff members. Occasionally, throughout the summer the Executive Director and one or two other staff members would call me Ritu, the name of another intern. She was desi, had straight hair (of a different length) and wore glasses like me, but that’s where the similarities ended. Continue reading →

Small Minds Judge Kiwis by Their Color

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Desi roots in New Zealand go back to the late 18th century when some lascars and sepoys on British East India ships stopping in New Zealand jumped ship to settle there and marry Māori women. In the first part of this century, the community grew to over 100,000 with a 68 percent growth rate. When Kiwis got their first desi Governor-General Sir Anand Satyanand in 2006, Sepia Mutiny blogged about it and the presumably inclusive nature of the symbolic appointment.

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But recently that gesture has been overshadowed by a TV host who insisted that Satyanand doesn’t look much like a New Zealander. Add to the mix this week’s media focus on the story of a blue-eyed, blonde Miss IndiaNZ pageant entrant being booed for not “looking Indian” enough, and we have a very Kiwi-flavored reminder about the harms of judging people by their color. I know, I know, it’s 2010 and you thought this was covered on a Wednesday in 1963, but all kinds of people around the world seem to forget. Continue reading →

Deported and Denied

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It’s absurd really how the immigration debate has been commandeered by people who have messaged this issue as though “brown” is only Mexican, and “the border” is the only way people cross into the U.S. Evidence of this can clearly be seen in dirty political ads that are coming out as the countdown to Election Day approaches November 2nd.

The truth is, the history of immigration in the U.S. is complicated. And the current history of undocumented immigrants as well as deportation of immigrants is just as complicated. For Congress to pass a comprehensive immigration reform package, many different issues should be addressed besides just building a wall. Colorlines Magazine put out a fascinating and well-made report this week about a Bangladeshi youth that was deported out of the U.S. after authorities were not satisfied with how he responded to the question, “Are you a citizen?”

Shahed Hossain was a Texan to the core. He spent most of his childhood and adolescence just outside of Fort Worth, dated a young women whose mother worked as an accountant for a military contractor, went fishing on the river with his best friend and held a weekend high school job scooping ice cream at a breakthrough near his family’s house.

The young man had a green card and was soon to be a citizen, but he was removed from his home over a trifle: He accidentally told a border guard he was a citizen rather than a permanent resident, thus triggering automatic deportation….In the three years since Hossain was deported, over one million others have been removed from their homes as well. [colorlines]

Happy Columbus Day, y’all. Continue reading →

Happy 70th Birthday, John Lennon!

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Like many of you, I spent part of today blasting my favorite John Lennon songs in commemoration of what would have been his 70th birthday.

The official John Lennon YouTube channel has been collecting tributes from fans around the world for the past couple of days. Here’s one submitted by Bollywood playback singer Suraj Jagan. (He’s best known for the song Give Me Some Sunshine from the 3 Idiots soundtrack.):

And because I strongly believe that no South Asian-themed John Lennon tribute would be complete without a link to the Bollywood version of “I Want to Hold Your Hand”, here’s that as well:

What are your favorite John Lennon songs? And have you noticed any other South Asian tributes to the Beatles? Continue reading →

What Happened to All the South Asians in Hollywood?

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Last Friday my boyfriend and I went to the theater to watch The Social Network, a movie that tells the story of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s creation of the ubiquitous social media site. The film itself was fantastic – cleverly told, with fast-paced, witty dialogue and a group of young, talented actors. To nobody’s surprise, it garnered excellent reviews and made a respectful first-place opening at the box-office. But one detail did bother me – and many others that I spoke with – the fact that the only major minority character in the film, Indian-American Divya Narendra, was played by Italian-American Max Minghella. Continue reading →