Warning: Brown Anger Ahead
Hot Topics — By browngirlmag on July 20, 2010 at 10:05 amby Devika Bakshi – University of Oregon
It was the fourth of July, and I was prepared for the annual wave of patriotism that washes over even the most self-critical corners of the United States. I was unperturbed, my affection for America ripe, the smell of fireworks in the air. But I woke up the next morning, and it got ugly. Time magazine published an opinion (humor?) piece by Joel Stein about Indian immigration in his hometown of Edison, New Jersey. Full of nostalgia and recycled clichés, there isn’t much in it worth talking about. Except that it unveils in spectacular fashion the rhetoric and logic that still lies beneath the sexy, suit-jacketed face of Post-Racial America. (“Post” in the sense that it exists beyond any awareness of what it is to be “racial”.)
Four sips into my free world coffee, and I’m pissed.
As though it weren’t enough to dislodge yourself from the familiar for the promise of something the world insists is “the good life”. As though it weren’t enough to scrounge together an identity and carry it with you in a suitcase ten thousand miles to a place where you must remake home from fragments, against an entirely unfamiliar backdrop. As though it weren’t enough to have no idea who you are and where you fit and how to BE in the world. As though it weren’t enough to deal with the dissolution of self and dreams. Let’s also take on the responsibility of ruining the landscape of American nostalgia.
Sorry, Joel. We totally disturbed your past in pursuit of our futures.
The malls in India really are “that bad”.
Alanis Morissette may have thanked us, but we never got a chance to thank YOU, America. Thank you. Thank you for all that you have allowed us. Thank you for your jobs at desks or in cabs or behind counters, slingin’ donuts or ringing up Slurpees. Thank you for trying so hard to decipher our accents when you’re trying to get your laptop fixed, and for putting up with the overwhelming curry smell we bring with us everywhere we go. Thank you for the eight Oscars, for the occasional pop-culture nod, and for waving a literary hand in the general direction of our experience. Thank you for recognizing our skills, and for telling us what we lack. Thank you for advertising yourself to us, and then withholding. Thank you for luring us away from ourselves, and relocating us in a nowhere. Thank you for letting us lose ourselves trying to be good enough for your left-overs.
So Joel, please let me know the next time you need to watch soft-core porn or steal and I’ll get my shit out of your way. It’s the least I can do for someone who has figured out “why India is so damn poor.” And do accept my apologies on behalf of my fellow countrymen who have flooded you with violent emails. It seems we can’t even be relied on to play Gandhi anymore. What ever happened to bending over and turning the other cheek? Tch.
Tags: issues, politics, race relations
Tweet This
Digg This
Save to delicious
Stumble it
7 Comments
Awesome response! You might want to include a link to his article, though.
you can read Joel’s article here: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1999416,00.html
I agree with you on many of the points you made. Yes, Joel’s position is poorly argued. And he knows why India is so darn poor? Wow. Stupidest statement ever.
But he is NOT a spokesman for America as a whole. Also, WE CHOSE TO COME HERE. America did not ‘choose’ to lure us. Anyone who thinks that… I think they’re deluded by a sense of their country’s own superiority. This is what always pissed me off about NRIs: why ‘uproot yourselves’ and come all the way here when all you do is complain that things are so much better at home?
Let’s face it, we are taking jobs away from Americans. We do change the landscape of American culture. Some will be open-minded enough to embrace that. Some will not. Here’s a shocker: some will be far worse than Joel. Some will display racism flagrantly, some will commit crimes of hate in return for us ‘stealing their jobs’. The curry stereotype prevails. So what? Have you heard black/Irish/Jew jokes these days?
These are things that we may not accept, but they are things that we cannot entirely do away with. They are part and parcel of the immigrant experience anywhere (try being black in India, then talk about racism). You don’t like it? Okay then. Maybe don’t move to the US. But you can’t deny that Americans as a whole are far more liberal and accepting of our presence in their country than some others. And the whole cabdriver rant is dated: the job market for Indians has expanded beyond the IT/shopkeeper days of the 90s.
But really, there are so many more things to be angry about. Just because this poor man said something foolish (he has apologized, BTW) doesn’t mean we should all attack him and all his fellow Americans with so much hate. Don’t you think?
@alokm
Your argument is entirely valid. The landscape of cultures will necessarily change in a global climate, and there will be new, uncomfortable economic realities that won’t really pay heed to national boundaries and such. That is precisely my point. And it also why I think that people, American or otherwise, can no longer elide their own complicity in this process.
If we subscribe to or participate in a certain kind of globalized system (which allows for much of our cosmopolitan lifestyles), we must also accept discomforts like economic competition and cultural transfusion. Sure, jobs will be stolen or outsourced (and conversely unappetizing jobs will get done, and perhaps for lesser wages), but just calling them “stolen” or “outsourced” implies a national ownership of those jobs, which is no longer really a valid claim. Businesses and markets are globalized. And there are far worse consequences than stolen jobs.
But there are many routine injustices in the world that we don’t stop, either because of ignorance or laziness or a lack of empowerment. This could be just another one of those things. Except that there’s such hypocrisy around it. On the one hand there’s this sense of generosity, and on the other an incredible resentment toward those who so eagerly take what is given. There’s an underlying sense of entitlement (betrayed beautifully by Stein’s rhetoric): OUR jobs, OUR towns, OUR culture, OUR terms.
America is most certainly the land of opportunity, there’s no denying that. My own ability to write this speaks to that fact. But there’s no denying either that America has for decades (centuries!) been marketed as the land of immigrants–”give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses…” In a historic sense, legions have come to this country believing in the freedom and acceptance promised by the statue of liberty. (This is old stuff, but it still persists.) Some got what they were looking for but many didn’t, and instead found themselves being constantly chastised for retaining vestiges of their “outside” identity. Just because one is being offered the (much appreciated) opportunity of prosperity, must one suffer constant censure for one’s own heritage?
To be clear, this is not to say “India’s so much better”. It’s just that people will inevitably carry with them their cultural baggage. And in this transfused world, where everyone is displaced and carrying their shit around, it would be nice not to have to be mocked or singled out or security searched all the time.
We are all going to be around people who look different, act weird, speak funny. That’s just part and parcel of the globalized experience. Don’t like it? Maybe get ready to pay up the wazoo for telephone tech support, or cheap fruit, or cute cotton summer dresses from the mall.
You’re exactly right about the cab driver rant–and the curry cliche, the shopkeeper stereotype, the IT stuff. They’re all dated. Just like the images that furnish Joel Stein’s piece. My intention in using them so excessively and facetiously was precisely to demonstrate their staleness. That such notions persevere is a testament to the way we deal with difference, still. At an arm’s length, uncomfortable, and with an insuppressible expression of mistrust.
the best is when he tries to excuse himself after times apologizes…
TIME responds: We sincerely regret that any of our readers were upset by this humor column of Joel Stein’s. It was in no way intended to cause offense.
Joel Stein responds: I truly feel stomach-sick that I hurt so many people. I was trying to explain how, as someone who believes that immigration has enriched American life and my hometown in particular, I was shocked that I could feel a tiny bit uncomfortable with my changing town when I went to visit it. If we could understand that reaction, we’d be better equipped to debate people on the other side of the immigration issue.
I think Mr. Stein needs to reconsider why he felt uncomfortable and needs to take his racism in America 101 class again.
Devika,
You’d be shocked to know that sadly, for many Indians (NRI and Indian-rooted) think if it’s someone else’s problem, it must be their fault. [[This is the root of the poverty in India.. but that's another story.]].
(blame the victim mentality). many ‘high-&-mighty’ Indians who never faced racism blame the victim (it must have been their fault.. the place was a ‘ghetto’… they did not integrate.. they are ashamed of themselves.. etc. etc.).
Here is a rather shocking one coming from a lovely artist, Mona Vijaykar, who does make strong valid points that the Indian-Amerian community is silently ashamed of their heritage and never exposed mainstream Americana with their heritage, thus resulting in the ‘well deserved humiliation’. Now before we get ready to toss tomatoes on her, she is a person of remarkable action– dedicating many years in classrooms to break sterotypes of Indians:
http://www.indiacurrents.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=4d1b94538f54ee327c0a3a7588d6fe7b
Devika,
good points. one comment on the photo of the ‘brown girl’ kid you selected looking angry and pointing. is she (and many others on this blog) supposed to represent a ‘brown’ girl (i.e dark girl). because she will be considered quite fair by India’s (non-Caucasision) standards. of course, she will be person of color in the Caucasision world. it’s fine to select her, she is lovely model of a brown girl.
however, the brunt of racism being ‘kaali’ is often felt by pure dark lovely deep ‘brown girl’ who are taunted sadly as kalis in India. so we must all remember to represent them as well.