Lots of response to my piece, How Brahmins lead the fight against white privilege. I’m trying to do less Twitter and more blogging, so here I go with some responses to reactions
Q: “Why are you picking on Brahmins?”
A: The only groups white people know about in regards to caste are Brahmins and Dalits. So Brahmins went in the title. That being said, 25% of Indian Americans are Brahmin. The highest proportion Brahmins are in and around UP (in the hills as well), but very few immigrants to the USA came from this region (proportionately). So Brahmins seem about 10x overrepresented.
Q: “Why are you mentioning caste, no one cares about in the USA….”
A: Totally correct in my opinion that caste is not an issue. But Indian Americans are very unrepresentative. In a private survey of 2,000 Indian Americans, 400 stated they were Brahmin. How many stated they were Scheduled Caste or Dalit? 5. This is an underestimate because some people won’t admit it, and some parents may not have told their children. But ~15% of Indians are Scheduled Caste. 0.25% of Indian Americans. This seems notable. I could have used a different term obviously, and if the audience was India I would have. But I wanted to get across to the Western audience that Indian Americans are not your typical Indian.
Q: “Why does this matter?”
A: I used Saira Rao as an example, but she’s an extreme caricature of a type. For several years people I know in academia and media have been privately complaining me (that’s what I’m here for!) about “social justice posturing” of Indian Americans. Particular, to be frank, young Indian American women. These are often very self-righteous, very vocal, and, very privileged. I haven’t done a survey, but most of these individuals aren’t the children of cabbies, but hail from well-heeled suburbs. There is no shame necessarily in being a Leftist from a prosperous background, but what people tell me (and I have seen on Twitter), is that many of these individuals co-opt narratives of colonialist and racist oppression. Of course, being a brown American most of them have experienced racism, but obviously the history of the United States before World War II is not their family’s history, and being more privileged than typical, American Desis, on the whole, are not crushed of the earth.
But due to the ignorance of Americans of many aspects of international culture, everything and everyone gets bracketed into a “postcolonial narrative.”