|
Brown v. The Board of African Americans
Dark skin without “roots” creates social paradox for young Indian woman
By Coonoor Behal
QCF Magazine staff writer
Being an Indian-American kid in the Midwest is not the worst that can happen. You are generally assumed to be class valedictorian even if you are not, your friends are amazed by the exotic smells in your house, and you are immune to those pesky high school romances because everyone thinks you have been betrothed to some jungle prince back in the mother country since birth. By and large it is a pretty cushy lifestyle and I floated on the same curried cloud that many other first generation Indian-Americans probably did.
At the same time I was always aware that I was still a minority in the end - still culturally and physically different. I experienced mild amounts of prejudice growing up just like many other minorities did, the worst instance being when two of my friends’ redneck boyfriends refused to hang out with me – I got the racial slurs through the grapevine. And sure, not having to experience the silliness of high school puppy love was great, but it was always touch and go when it came time to find dates to the dances.
My status as a non-white made me feel a certain connection to the black kids in my school, perhaps even more so because there were many of them and I was the sole Asian; the comparable lightness of my skin was compensated for by my numerical isolation. The camaraderie I felt existed because, though most of my close friends were white, there were always those reminders that I was indeed different in the same aesthetic way the black students were. This connection was only strengthened on the several occasions black children in my town approached me to inquire about my “weave.”
The identification I felt was especially strong because my dad, one half of my lineage, was African too. My father, though Indian ethnically, was born and raised in Kenya and his family had arrived there from India two generations earlier as indentured railway workers for the British. He was fluent in Swahili and carried a Kenyan passport. More revealingly, he also carried with him a benign disdain for the white Englishman equal to the scorn many African-Americans might still feel for the white descendants of their great-grandparents’ slave owners.
It is horrifically ironic then, that it has been the Indian communities in my life who have consistently exhibited the lackadaisical racial prejudice against blacks normally assumed to be an exclusively white American code of behavior. My aunt felt the need to cross to the other side of the street if a black person were approaching because “they just might snatch my purse.” If I were visiting a friend my mother knew to be black, her first instinct was to ask if they lived in that terrifying, two car garage-free area known simply as “downtown”. My father more than once expressed reservations about hiring a black doctor in his hospital department simply because he “might not fit in.” I knew enough about my family and their friends to never mention the huge crush I had on a black guy in high school. I found their mentality to be completely absurd – how could someone like my father, a man who had grown up around and lived with black people his entire childhood, a man who was himself denied a job at our local hospital due to a strict no non-white hiring policy so easily co-opt the passive prejudices and stereotypes of the white middle class upon his arrival in this country?
I cannot fairly speak only of the American Midwest as an adequate portrayal in my condemnation of minority-to-minority racism. I grew up familiar with the common assertion that a black man in New York City can’t get a cab; upon arriving in New York for college I was amazed to find that most of these negligent cabdrivers looked just like my father. Indian prejudice against blacks is not exclusive to one particular regional pocket of America , but rather appears to be entrenched within our ethnicity.
So now the question is simply why? Why are brown-skinned Indians in this country, especially those with recent roots in Africa , so quick to align themselves with whites rather than the minority group with which they seem to share the most similar experiences of diaspora and historical racial bigotry? Why is it so favorable to make nice with the race whose Supreme Court stripped our predecessors of their U.S. citizenship in 1923, declaring the Constitution was intended not just for Caucasians but specifically for “a class of persons called white” ( U.S. v. Bhagat Singh Thind)?
There is a cultural explanation: Indians have always been averse to black people out of pure aesthetic preferences for fair skin. The north of India had the good luck to be infiltrated by Alexander the Great in 327 BC and fertilized by his troops, thus creating a fairer population that lords its olive tones over the much darker southern states. Skin bleaching creams are still popular cosmetics for women in India today. I have grown up thinking that one of my most fortunate physical attributes is that I look jaundiced and have been repeatedly encouraged to stay out of the sun to preserve my anemic complexion. A schoolmate of my father’s was left entirely out of the family inheritance, all of which went to his comparably lighter younger brother.
There is also an historical explanation: though Indians in Kenya like my father had citizenship, they were never granted equal rights or equal protection under the law after Kenya ’s 1963 independence from Britain . Indians were not permitted to hold government jobs. My father was not allowed to go to medical school in Kenya because of an extreme affirmative action-like program that reserved admissions spots for black Africans who were in the lower tenth percentile of their classes. Aspiring professionals like my dad instead went west to Uganda to study, but were eventually forced out in 1971 by the military dictator Idi Amin who viewed Indians as a threat to the racial ‘purity’ he envisioned for Africa.
But I don’t think these explanations tell the whole story of what is happening in the minds of Indians in America today. Yes, Amin forcibly removed Indians from Uganda based on their race. But it wasn’t the color of my father’s skin that made him a threat or a physically repulsive human being – it was his education, his potential affluence, his economic power that the uneducated Amin wanted to expel. Amin was not called ‘The Butcher of Uganda’ because he slaughtered Indians; Indians were given the forewarning to leave the country voluntarily. He earned that name by executing nearly a half a million people who had the exact same skin tone as himself. Applying a totally racial bias to this particular event in my father’s life rings false to me. Just as Amin made his case against Indians in economic terms couched in racial ones, I believe it is primarily the economics of being Indian in America that is shaping our attitudes toward blacks today.
The United States ’ policy of reopening the borders to only well-educated Indians in 1966 has paid off. The Census Bureau estimates the median income in Indian-American families today is more than $60,000; almost double the national average and the highest among any minority group. More than half of the two million Indians here are college graduates. While 1970s Uganda saw our economic and professional viability as a threat, America has embraced it in predictably capitalistic form.
Our financial status makes us ideal consumers – specifically, consumers of the same things middle class whites desire: suburban homes, SUVs, Ivy-league educations for our children, and so on. In a nation whose Anglo-European culture has been diluted by time, ‘culture’ is increasingly determined by what you own. Because Indian immigrants can afford to own the same American Dream whites idealize, we have achieved a false cultural parallel with educated whites and have received the status of ‘model minority’ and ‘honorary white.’ But we have also acquired the cleverly-veiled wariness of blacks our white economic counterparts possess.
The issue of commodifying culture and ethnicity is also at issue here. It is no secret that white Americans have been co-opting black-American culture for decades; now, it is readily apparent that first generation Indian kids are following suit. I see packs of Indian-American boys thugged out in Fubu-wear and visors, ensconced in the rap and hip-hop culture that was never theirs, socializing with the white kids who stole it before them rather than with the black kids who began it all. Indians are beginning to make their mark in rap, hip-hop, and spinning, infusing bhangra beats and sitar music into all genres. I wonder why, despite our avowed socio-economic links to whites, we are more apt to subscribe to elements of black culture. And why have we not first sought to participate in white cultural touchstones – seriously, how many all-Indian indie rock or country bands do you know of? How many Indian Nascar fans have you met? There is clearly an inherent link between Indians and blacks that allows such co-option to go uncontested – it might just be that the color of our skins is close enough to grant more credible crossover allowances to us than to whites. Or maybe Indians are credible because with our general affluence we stand a greater chance of actually realizing the Escalade and Cristal dreams of black music culture.
Perhaps the common ground is that whites are now exploiting and commodifying Indian culture in the same way they have been black culture. Several years after Madonna first wore a sari in public, mallrats can buy fake henna tattoos and bindis at any number of chain stores. 20 th Century Fox co-financed and distributed the recent Bollywood-bred Bride and Prejudice. Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Bollywood Dreams recently enjoyed a year-long stint on Broadway. Because of our ability to purchase our own culture as co-opted and repackaged by white people, Indians have become the latest in a long line of designer ethnicities.
Being financially and professionally successful is a pathetic reason for Indians to form unwarranted prejudices. All minorities may not be created equal in the eyes of white Americans but it is imperative that economic successes do not alienate us from each other or make us forget the common struggles we have experienced. For now, Indians enjoy the positive stereotypes the immigrants in the 1960s helped form that make us attractive to the white majority. But with less specific immigration policies and the maturation of the first-generation, younger and less educated Indians will certainly come to dominate the Indian-American population. I wonder how long our provisional ‘whiteness’ can last before we are turned into yet another marginalized minority whose commercial profitability has petered out.
Contact
· podium@queencityforum.com
Links
· NRIOL – “Are Indians Racist?”
· Information and stats on demographics, ethnic makeup, professions, income, etc...on South Asians living in the US
· Rediff.com – “5 SA Indians Charged with Racism”
· Indian American Center for Political Awareness
· Times Watch – “Adam Cohen’s Charming Conservative Assumptions”
· Project Impact—“South Asian Indians and Race Relations”
· MIT report—“Seminar Seeks to Stamp Out Racism on Campus”
|
