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.

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

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.

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.

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?