identity politics – Brown Pundits

The Elder Race and the English-Speaking Heat

June 4, 2025June 4, 2025X.T.MAmerica, Civilisation, Culture, Geopolitics, Politics, Race, Religion, X.T.MAmerican States, Anglo-Americana, Brexit, Brown Pundits, Catalonia, Class, Cultural Assimilation, Cultural Decay, Culture & Identity, Demographic Decline, Diaspora Politics, Diaspora Reflections, Elder Race, Empire & Memory, English-Speaking World, EU, Europe vs America, Global South vs Global North, Harvard, identity politics, Immigration, India, Letters from the Field, New England, Pakistan, Politics & Society, Rob Henderson, Scotland, WASP26 Comments

As I write this from Dublin, waiting to board my connecting flight—I’d nearly missed it in Newark, too absorbed in writing to hear the gate call—I’m struck by how a Euro sign or EU flag can alter one’s sense of place. Technically, I’m still in the British Isles. But culturally—unmistakably—I’m on the Continent. A sensation I never quite feel in England.

It’s a strange feeling, this flicker of European belonging. In the early millennium, I was a passionate Brexiteer—young, angry, seeking change. By the time of the referendum, a decade later, I found myself morally conflicted. I knew the EU was not a good fit but as a Bahá’í, I knew I could never advocate for disunity, of any sort. I abstained. Ironically, Commonwealth citizens could vote, but EU nationals couldn’t—a bit of imperial gatekeeping that deeply irritated my liberal British-Irish friend. (“Why can Indians vote, but not the French?” he asked.)

Today, standing in Europe, I feel the contrast sharply. The Continent is genteel, even decadent, locked into postwar consensus. Meanwhile, the English-speaking world feels like it’s on fire—politically, culturally, psychologically. It’s not just the UK or the US. India, too, belongs to this hot zone of rhetoric and reinvention. Pakistan, by contrast, while elite-driven in English, remains emotionally and socially an Urdu republic. Continue reading The Elder Race and the English-Speaking Heat

“A Foreign Class of Servants” — JD Vance and the Great American Amnesia

June 1, 2025June 1, 2025X.T.MAmerica, Civilisation, Culture, Geopolitics, Politics, Race, Science, X.T.MAmerica First, American decline, brain drain, Brown Pundits, Geopolitics, global talent war, identity politics, immigrant labor, immigration policy, JD Vance, nationalism vs merit, postwar America, skilled migration, soft power, STEM talent, US-China rivalry, Usha Vance10 Comments

Vice President JD Vance recently declared that America doesn’t need to “import a foreign class of servants” to remain competitive. “We did it in the ’50s and ’60s,” he said. “We put a man on the moon with American talent. Some German and Jewish scientists who had come over during World War two, but mostly by American citizens.”

The line is memorable—not for its nationalism, but for its breathtaking amnesia.

The moon landing was not the product of some closed, white-bread meritocracy. It was powered by German engineers, Jewish refugees, and immigrant scientists—many quite literally “imported.” Wernher von Braun, the face of NASA’s rocket program, was a former Nazi, repurposed by America for its Cold War dreams.

Today, the immigrant pipeline Vance sneers at includes his own in-laws—his wife’s parents, Indian-born academics. I’ve highlighted this problematic tendency before. They weren’t servants. They were scholars. Like hundreds of thousands who have powered this country’s universities, tech firms, hospitals, and labs. America doesn’t run on pedigree. It runs on brains. And yes, those brains often have accents.

America First doesn’t mean America stays first Continue reading “A Foreign Class of Servants” — JD Vance and the Great American Amnesia

Café Concord: A View from the Counter

May 31, 2025June 1, 2025X.T.MAmerica, Culture, Race, X.T.MAmerica, Brown Pundits, café culture, Capitalism, Class, Concord, identity politics, Immigration, invisible bias, labour hierarchy, model minority, Race, social commentary, structural inequality6 Comments

I’m writing this from a bakery-café in Concord, Massachusetts—the cradle of the American Revolution, where ideals like liberty and equality were born anew in the New World. The croissants are fresh, the espresso is bespoke (lavender), and the staff layout is eerily familiar.

At the front: white staff—stylish, aesthetic, articulate—handling (bossing sometimes but in general everyone is exceptionally lovely & calm) model minority clientele with curated ease. In the kitchen: Mexican workers—efficient, invisible, foundational. It’s the same setup across most of America’s cool, clean consumer spaces: the aesthetic and the labor silently segregated by race and language.

No one talks about it. You’re not supposed to notice the subtle “Americanisation” at play (the American dream and its attendant complexities). But once you do, as a twice-immigrant (East to Britain, old England to New England), it’s hard to unsee. The roles aren’t assigned by policy, but by a deeper algorithm—one that sorts people into place based on centuries of sedimented power: race, class, culture, even aesthetics. Continue reading Café Concord: A View from the Counter