Tag: South Asian diaspora identity

Do Muslim refugees have a right to Australia?

X.T.M · March 15, 2018 · 22 comments

I don’t see what’s so wrong with Australia protecting her borders. The Ummah has a moral responsibility for Muslim refugees; why should the West have to take on this burden.

White South African Farmers have a right to escape to Australia. Pakistan & Iran can host Afghans & Iraqis; why do they need to travel all the way to Oz & Europe with their alien values?

If Australia was a neighbouring country to Afghanistan I can understand the need for refugee. This is why I’m quite sanguine about Latin American immigration to the US (it’s the same geographic region). Of course each country has a right to police its borders as it sees fit.

I’m all about Mughlai decadent culture but the West should not be raped any longer (as a corollary it should not rape either; what it did in Syria & the Arab Spring was unforgivable).

Is it time for Asian Americans and Latino Americans to ask to be considered “white”?

AnAn · March 14, 2018 · 21 comments

This article might seem provincial and mostly irrelevant to non Americans and maybe it is. But for Asian Americans and Latino Americans this is an increasingly important subject.

Indians and Indian Americans love the Clintons . . . including conservative Indians, and Republican Indians; but a line from Hillary Clinton’s speech in Mumbai has an eerie uncanny feel to it:

“You know you didn’t like black people getting rights, you don’t like women, you know, getting jobs, you don’t want to, you know, see Indian Americans succeeding more than you are.”

It is no secret that Asian Americans massively outperform caucasion Americans based on every available socio-economic statistic; including divorce rate, out of wedlock births, academic performance, mean and median income, mean and median wealth, rate of committing criminal offenses, incarceration rates, unemployment rates during recessions (unemployment rates during economic booms are similar), entrepreneurship.

These well known facts represents the greatest fear Asian Americans have. How to prevent a major anti Asian American xenophobic racist jealous backlash similar to what Jews are currently experiencing?

Has the time come for Asian Americans, Arab Americans, Muslim Americans and Latino Americans to ask to be considered “white” for all legal, affirmative action, business and secular purposes? Of course all academic, US census, DOJ tabulation of granular statistics for legitimate purposes should continue as is; and every American has the right to practice any global culture and faith they choose.

Continue reading Is it time for Asian Americans and Latino Americans to ask to be considered “white”?

Mindy Kaling – the South East Asian

X.T.M · March 13, 2018 · 7 comments

I follow Black Twitter (well Black Instagram) very closely and I’m taking a keen interest in the Wrinkle in Time controversy. However I couldn’t resist:

“Shouldn’t everyone have a seat at the table? That’s all we are saying here,” DuVernay said at a press conference. “Mindy is South-East Asian, Deric McCabe, a little Filipino-American boy. African-American, biracial, black, Caucasian, let everyone be there, Latino. It’s about time.”

Not to quibble but Mindy is half Tamil & half Bengali (her actual name is Vera Mindy Chokalingam). I really admire how she’s Westernised her name without losing her roots (contracting Chokalingam was quite clever).

I have been to Calcutta and I regularly go to Chennai (my wife was born in Madras). There is definitely a tropical feel to Chennai and Calcutta is a very romantic city with a beautiful but unkempt colonial heritage. They are of course firmly in South Asia but I’m not expecting the talented Ava to know the particularities of Asian geography (in the West we are all Wakandans).

I tweeted earlier today that in Hollywood one is either White or Wakandan. The People of Colour debate has been effectively championed by African Americans who define the diversity debate. It is Ava’s magnanimity that when casting her film she also includes Asians of all sorts. I hope Wrinkle in Time smashes expectations. I hazily remember reading the book many moons ago in the summer of ’92/93 as an eight year old. It was a random gift from my friend’s mother and I remember being struck by it’s dark tones. Of course many decades later I read Wrinkle in the Skin, which was an even darker tome on post-apocalyptic earthquakes (which is a surprisingly gripping genre).

Why do English nonmuslims treat English muslims so badly?

AnAn · February 26, 2018 · 30 comments

Honestly, I can’t figure it out why UK nonmuslims treat UK muslims so badly.

Nonmuslims in general treat muslims badly and I am tempted to write similar articles about most nonmuslim majority countries; but this article will focus on the UK.

This article is a sequel to these two previous articles on nonmuslims mistreating muslims and their comment sections.

I can think of no better example of this phenomenon than the story of Tania Joya, a Bengali UK muslim mother of four who recently divorced one of the highest ranking living leaders of Daesh, assuming he is still alive:

Continue reading Why do English nonmuslims treat English muslims so badly?

Black Panther

X.T.M · February 21, 2018 · 4 comments

Amazing movie; even the wife (she likes science and I like sci-fi) was impressed!

Throwing in a controversial question: why do Black people have such better PR over brown people?

Does being a model minority make us ever so (slightly) boring?

Either way #wakanda4ever. As an interesting aside I used to live next to Wakanda (in Uganda) for a little while.

Brown Pundits

X.T.M · February 4, 2018 · 3 comments

I just realised in my reply to Min Min Pucci that Brown Pundits has turned 7 yrs Old over the Christmas – New Year period of 2017.

I had just met my wife-to-be so BP coincides with the definitive end of my single life. December 15 is my birthday and Dec 15′ 2010 (I had just turned 26) is when I met the very brilliant Vidhi; a birthday gift from the gods..

In that same period I remember feverish discussions on the Sepia Mutiny thread board between Razib, Alia and myself. I can’t remember the topic and I prefer the haziness of my memories to the cold hard truth of a google search.. Legends arise in mists after all.

It was a very interesting Christmas/birthday period since I hadn’t travelled anywhere (my job at that time was very demanding) but everyone else had and it was a curiously still moment in my life.

In the script of my life it was the pregnant pause that would birth the events of the next decade. In a way it was a very innocent and idealistic time of my life; passionate about the far rather than the near. Essentially I was ripe to take my blogging to the next level (I had been blogging at my own blog from 2002 but never as far or as wide as I would have liked)..

It was Razib’s idea to start a brown-focussed weblog (to add to his mighty online empire). I jumped on the idea since I work well collaboratively.

I remember I submitted a list of names and Razib pounced on Brown Pundits; so it was a very serendipitous beginning for the first two “Brown Pundits”.

Omar joined almost immediately and became a formidable (and saner voice than mine; the devil in me loves to bait the mob) presence on this blog. We spent most of the first years discussing Pak-nationalism (the gift that keeps on giving to all desi comment forums) until BP “intermitted” (I can’t remember exactly when).

This reboot of BP is a lot quieter but maybe because we’re a lot older..

Aziz Ansari

X.T.M · January 19, 2018 · 19 comments

Thoughts on the Aziz Ansari issue?

I have many but I’ve kept them to myself..

I’ll throw a rather controversial question out there; “has Aziz reinforced certain stereotypes about Brown & maybe Muslim men in the dating market?”

I’m just asking the questions (don’t shoot the messenger) and exploring the issue from a “Brown” “Pundit” angle.

Shithole countries

X.T.M · January 13, 2018 · 14 comments

How wrong was Trump?

I’m half Pakistanis & half Iranian. While I have a patriotic love for my origins; it’s hard to deny how disorganised Pakistan & Iran are (to varying degrees).

Obviously what Trump said was offensive however the fact that usually when a country has a diaspora, it means there’s something very wrong with it.

This is of course just my thoughts on the matter; it is offensive but how wrong is it? Is it offensive to tell the truth?

Brown Pundits