In the recent World Cup my heart says Pakistan for some reason. I was feeling somewhat traitorous and disloyal because of the infamous Tebbit test as to whether a British Pakistan would (or rather would not) support England in a match against Pakistan.
As I grow older and wiser I realise now this is simply coded racism. The concept of British nationality is the Union of the 4 Nations (Ireland sort of broke away but no matter) and 3 Kingdoms.
So nobody would bat an eye lid if a Welshman, living in England and maybe even born in England, would loudly cheer for Wales in an England-Wales rugby match.
We don’t have team Britain in the Cricket but Team England. I don’t feel English and Asians have never been asked to be English. If an Asian came up to me and told me they were English; I would look down on him as a coconut.
This is different to Scotland, where a civic nationalist has arisen. The largeish Pakistani community there feels both Scottish and Pakistani whereas Englishness is linked to blood and soil (there are exceptions for mixed race individuals and the Black community since there are almost an extension of the working class).
Would I have it any other way? Not really but then if the Welsh, Scots and the Irish can be fiercely patriotic and still be welcomed as British, I can’t see why the same shouldn’t apply for me.
Supporting Pakistan doesn’t make me any less British.
Please watch the Netflix Show; “Daughters of Destiny.”
It is a powerful 4-part program (each episode an hour) about a school setup by an Indian-American millionaire, Dr. George, for the girls of the untouchable (Dalit) caste in India.
I have heard it stated by some scholars that generations don’t exist, but cohorts do. That is, our bracketing of ranges of people into particular generations is artificial and bins what is truly a more continuous variable into a few categories. The same criticism applies to the Myers-Briggs typology in personality (the main reason psychologists prefer the “Big Five”).
But the flip side of this issue is that to talk reasonably about some phenomenon you have to bin and categorize continuous variables. Human races may not have hard and fast boundaries, but human genetic variation is difficult to talk about unless you use some categorical shorthand.
Some of the same applies to the term immigrant and native-born. The reason I’m putting up this post is that there was a discussion online about whether there can be something called a “second generation immigrant.” That is, someone whose parents were born abroad, but they themselves were born in the country of their citizenship. Myself, I think the term immigrant should only apply to those who were born abroad. Native-born and immigrant are disjoint distributions.
But, there are more than a few categories here within the dichotomy. When you arrive in your life, and where you arrive, matters a great deal.
That was when Ms. Greco took over Subway, and the company’s store count began to shrink. In the East Bay, Mr. Tripathi was under the jurisdiction of a development agent named Chirayu Patel, known as Akki. He oversaw a huge, choice territory that included most of Northern California and western Nevada. Mr. Patel also owned dozens of Subway stores.
I was curious about this story because when I was in college Subway was my “fast food” of choice. But it was interesting to see that under the surface of a story about corporate malfeasance was another about South Asian (Indian) petty corruption. There are whole entrepreneurial subcultures in the USA which are highly South Asian, and conventional business reporters are probably missing some dynamics.
please note I’m loving the representation of black and disabled people but I would also like to see Black Beauty really underscored as well instead of in a tokenistic manner.
Immigrant & white? You're still white. Disabled & white? You're still white. Female & white? You're still white. Queer & white? You're still white. Trans & white? You're still white. Poor & white? You're still white.
Marginalized & white? You will always have white privilege.
I’ll start this piece with an observation- I follow this chap on Facebook and have noticed something rather odd (subliminal) about his videos. I first came across his viral video on what it’s like to have an Indian girlfriend.
Whenever he needs a platonic girl friend she’s usually black or brown. Whenever it’s a girl or romantic interest she’s blonde (unless it’s a video about specifically having an ethnic girlfriend).
Another BP Podcast is up. You can listen on Libsyn, iTunes, Spotify, and Stitcher. Probably the easiest way to keep up the podcast since we don’t have a regular schedule is to subscribe at one of the links above.
You can also support the podcast as a patron. The primary benefit now is that you get the podcasts considerably earlier than everyone else. I am toying with the idea of doing a patron Youtube Livestream chat, if people are interested, in the next few weeks.
Would appreciate more positive reviews!
Today I talk to my friend “Nan”, who is a Sri Lanka Tamil American. We talked a bit about his own background, growing up in a lower SES household in the American South, but mostly about why and how Sri Lankans think they are distinctive from “mainlanders.”
This is just the beginning of trying to understand this issue in my opinion. Ergo, “scratching the surface.”
In 1992, Disney released the animated movie, Aladdin. In 2019, Disney releases the live action version of Aladdin. OMG IT'S A SIGN. #CWC19#NZvPAKpic.twitter.com/iOJOJCu8qG
On the individual level who you find attractive and what you find attractive is your own deal. I’m not one to go exhorting anyone to anything. To be frank I find “campaigns” to make x more attractive a bit cringe. It’s like the joke about having to explain to someone that actually you are very attractive!
That being said, it’s interesting to observe cultural patterns, differences, and trends. I do not, for example, perceive women with natural epicanthic folds to be less attractive in any deep sense. But the surgery to create folded over eyelids is a “coming of age” practice in much of Northeast Asia, especially South Korea because it is seen as more aesthetically pleasing. This is a new trend triggered by Western norms, as prior to the past century the more common Asian look with epicanthic folds was considered more beautiful.
This brings me to South Asians, and beliefs, attitudes, and opinions about skin color. Years ago I read that Indian (Tamil) American actress Sharon Muthu was lost a part where she would be playing an Indian character “because she didn’t look Indian.” The director, in this case, was a white American. He admitted she nailed the audition, but optically he didn’t think she’d be plausible as Indian to the audience.
This goes to show that the Bollywood aesthetic has come to define what “Indian” looks like even in the West! Muthu is on the darker side, but not anymore atypical than may lighter-skinned Bollywood celebs.
Sendhil Ramamurthy
I am very jaundiced about many aspects of South Asian (which means mostly Indian American really) American culture, but one thing that is striking in contrast to the culture of their parents is that there is little attention to skin color. In fact, there are multiple instances where I’ve heard people say that the parents thought someone they were dating was too dark. This is probably a function of the fact that in an environment where all brown people of various shades are bracketed together, it’s a little ridiculous to make the sort of distinctions that are common in the Indian subcontinent.
Speaking as an outsider to brown culture (my wife is white, most of my close friends are not brown, my children are mixed, etc.) and community, so often when I see an Indian or Pakistani actor or actress they look like older versions of Zayn Malik, the half-Pakistani and half-English teen idol, or an Italian actress with a bigger nose. In general, I laugh, and a lot of American-born/raised brown people I know laugh too.
On the other hand, American South Asians are among the most privileged in the world. The people consuming Bollywood, and Tollywood and all the other woods, are the broad middle and lower classes of India, and their choices do shape what gets put on the screen.
When I was visiting Bangladesh in 2004 many of the posters of actresses I saw were notable for two things:
They were fairer than the average young Bangladeshi woman
They were plumper than the average young Bangladeshi woman
My prediction is as Indian audiences get more affluent, and self-confident in themselves, the actors and actressse will start looking more and more like better look versions of the average Indian, rather than cut-rate Jaggus and Jagginas.
