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ARE INDIANS BLACKS?
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Egmond Codfried: [QB] tHIS THREAD IS INSPIRED BY PARTS OF THIS THREAD:http://www.egyptsearch.com/forums/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=15;t=005215 ================================================= [b]The Indian as "Black White" and as "Nigger"[/b] By Francis C. Assisi on Indolink, Feb. 1, 2006 There is this essential contradiction in being a South Asian, or a person of Indian origin, in America: on one hand the South Asian is perceived as being black by the majority white population, and on the other the South Asian is eager to be categorized alongside whites, as Caucasians. Brown on the outside, "white" on the inside, South Asians are mostly perceived in America as being too white to be black, and too black to be white. But with the increase in post 9/11 attacks against South Asians, at least some are being forced to come to grips with the myth that equates Indo-Aryan with Caucasian and with being white. But for a hundred years South Asians have been harassed, intimidated, assaulted, humiliated, abused, and even killed because of what they represent through their color, their religion, their language, and their culture. And it continues to this day. Take for example an incident from 1929: as a result of the humiliation that he received from U.S. immigration officials, the poet Rabindranath Tagore was forced to cancel his fourth lecture tour. That incident prompted the Nobel laureate to remark that if Jesus Christ himself were to come to America, he would be kicked out of the country - because he was an Asiatic. Tagore explained his sentiments later by stating, "I arrived at Los Angeles, and I felt something in the air - a cultivated air of suspicion and general incivility towards Asiatics… I felt that I should not stay in a country on sufferance. It was not a question of personal grievance or of ill-treatment from some particular officer. I felt the insult was directed towards all Asiatics, and I made up my mind to leave a country where there was no welcome for ourselves… I have great regard for your people. But I have also my responsibility towards those whom you classify as colored people of whom I am one. I am a representative of Asiatic peoples and I could not remain in a country where Asiatics are not wanted." Another Nobel laureate, astrophysicist Dr. S.Chandrashekar of the University of Chicago, confessed to biographer Kameshwar Wali that he was subjected to humiliating experiences in America because of the color of his skin. Chandrashekhar was born in India, educated in England, and lived all his professional life in the U.S until his death in 1991. In the 1930s Chandrashekar taught, conducted research, and collaborated with the United States War Department on the atomic weapons research project. He became the first nonwhite person to be appointed to the faculty of the University of Chicago. According to Wali, the chairman of the physics department summarily opposed the appointment of Chandrashekhar to the faculty "because he was an Indian, and black". The dean, Henry G. Gale, also did not approve of the participation of the brilliant young Indian astronomer in teaching an elementary course in astronomy for precisely that reason. That objection was not lifted until the president of the university intervened. Direct evidence of prejudice based on "race" or "color" may be scant. It has become bad taste for sure, to express such feelings openly. In the case of South Asians, moreover, there are so many other grounds, religious and cultural, for overt hostility that feelings about "color" or "race" could easily remain safely submerged. But as far as Euro-Americans are concerned, the skin color of the South Asian serves as a "label of primary potency," psychologist Gordon Allport's term for the most highly visible impression of a person or a people. In some major respects, American color prejudice indiscriminately embraces everything non-"white." According to Harold Isaacs there are also shades of prejudice as various as the shades of color, and they flicker often according to place, person, and circumstance. And it is "black" - wherever it comes from - that sets the racial-color counters clicking the most violently. The South Asian, shading along a wide spectrum from fair to brown to black, arouses these reactions in varying measures. For example, President Lyndon Johnson was reported to have said while canceling the visits of the heads of state from India and Pakistan in 1965: "After all, what would Jim Eastland (the conservative senator from Mississippi) say if I brought those two niggers over here." (Quoted in Richard Goodwin, "The War Within," The New York Times Magazine, 21 August 1988, P.3. It was reported that the American President decided to cancel the visits of Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri of India and President Ayub Khan from Pakistan when the two countries expressed opposition to U.S. policies in Vietnam.) In his path-breaking study of American images of Indians, MIT's Harold Isaacs reported one respondent who confessed: "skin color causes a certain tension in meetings with Indians." Another said explicitly: "in dealing with Indians you feel you're dealing with colored people, the same way you feel in the presence of Negroes…" A third, speaking of people in his circle of friends, said: "The Indian with his darker skin perhaps consciously or unconsciously suggests the Negro in the United States." A college professor in Texas expressed it openly when he declared: "They're just damn Niggers to me!" When the same professor was asked what he thought the American man-in-the-street might mentally associate with Indians, the reply was instantaneous: "Nigger!" It took someone like Professor Sucheta Mazumder of Duke University to acknowledge that for most South Asian immigrants the myth of their Caucasian racial origin forms the basis of their identity and political mobilization. And that there are those Indians who really think of themselves as more 'white' than the 'whites,' indeed as descendants from that 'pure Aryan family' of prehistoric time. According to Mazumder, South Asians invariably see themselves as "Aryan" and, therefore, as "Caucasian" and "white". This perception prevents the immigrants from making common cause with other people of color who were barred from citizenship on grounds of color or race. Thus, instead of challenging racism, the early Indian-American struggle for citizenship rights became an individualized and personalized mission to prove that he was of "pure-blood Aryan stock". Though victimized by white racism, which denied them citizenship, the South Asian response was equally racist, observes Mazumder. Instead of challenging the white man's racism, the Indian immigrant responds with "How dare you assume your air of Aryan superiority over me when I am just as Aryan as you, even more so!" This was the substance of the Indian claim in the courts back in the 1920s and it is still the substance of many an Indian response to American racism, asserts Mazumder. This mythography of "Aryan origins" has wide currency among today's South Asian immigrants in America, says Mazumder, suggesting that this notion of white (Caucasian or Aryan) origin has led to a confused rejection of the color of their own skin. This leads to an almost paranoid response to even being thought of as black. For example, Bharati Mukherjee, the noted Indian writer, complains: "I am less shocked, less outraged and shaken to my core, by a purse-snatching in New York City in which I lost all of my dowry gold- everything I'd been given by my mother in marriage- than I was by a simple question asked of me in the summer of 1978 by three high-school boys on the Rosedale subway station platform in Toronto. Their question was, 'Why don't you go back to Africa?'" Meanwhile, one second-generation South Asian-American recalls: My father has said in anger, more than once, that he is black in his coworkers' and boss's eyes. THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF COLOR Color in itself is meaningless. Color is just color. It is a physical, spectroscopic fact. It ought to carry no compelling conclusions regarding a person's beliefs or his position in any social structure. It should be like height or weight. Yet, it attracts the mind; it is the focus of passionate sentiments and beliefs. Sociologists have noted that oftentimes the issue of color in relation to South Asians in America rises in a setting of great mutual self-conscious sensitivity: South Asians watch for it to come up, Americans are embarrassed that it does. Currently, South Asians may not be a clear-cut case of "black" in US consciousness, but they are definitely "other," which is one reason why Mazumder, as well as other intellectuals, believe that only if South Asians develop a broader consciousness of themselves as people of color will they be able to participate in a genuine struggle for social justice. This consciousness is still in its formative phase, as we witness some second- and third-generation South Asians who are emerging as advocates for peace and social justice alongside people of color in America. Francis C. Assisi can be reached at indiaspora@gmail.com http://www.indolink.com/displayArticleS … 605113928` [/QB][/QUOTE]
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