At a time when the nation is riveted by the horrific happenings in North Charleston where an African-American man was shot at the back by a white police officer, Murali Balaji, PhD, takes a look at the relations between the Indian-American and black communities Twenty years ago, in the aftermath of the O.J. Simpson acquittal and the Million Man March, the chasm between blacks and whites seemed almost irreconcilable.
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In 1997, President Bill Clinton called for a national conversation on race, which he hoped would bring both black and white Americans together in hopes of racial healing. A decade later, then-Senator Barack Obama called for a racial dialog, addressing what he saw were the longstanding wounds of racism felt by black Americans and the hesitancy many white Americans had towards discussing race. Neither of these conversations ever materialized, and neither explicitly referred to Asian-Americans or Hispanics as part of the dialog. But it’s important to ask if such a conversation were to ever take place (unlikely given our scale of racial polarization), whether Indian-Americans and South Asian Americans as a whole would want to participate.
After all, the majority of Indian-Americans, particularly in the last 20-25 years, have been racialized as model minorities, placed in close enough proximity to white privilege to reap many of its benefits - yet far enough away to continue to be politically and socially othered. As a result, Indian-Americans simply don’t fit conveniently into what has been the traditional paradigm of racial discourse, which has been largely shaped by class, geography, and the political and social legacies of the past 150 years in the United States (and longer, if you consider that slavery in the United States existed since the 1600s).
It’s also that the community’s narrative and identity construction are based upon the post-1965 narrative, which has largely excluded the experiences of the smaller South Asian populations that existed in America prior to the passage of the Asian Exclusion Act in 1924. Such a narrative ignores the racialization of Indian-Americans in the early 20th century, notably the 1907 “anti-Hindoo” riots in Washington state and the 1923 Bhagat Singh Thind case, in which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the revocation of a U.S. military veteran’s citizenship based on the premise that he was not white. Of course, these examples aren’t even common knowledge within our community, which makes viewing America’s racial history that much harder.
Following the death of Eric Garner at the hands of police in New York, the Department of Justice’s damning report on systemic racism in Ferguson, Missouri, and the murder of Walter Scott in South Carolina this week, there are many activists who want the community to be more vocal on issues of anti-black racism. While it’s imperative that the community needs to be more active in racial dialogue and condemning racism, there are many levels of nuance that have shaped the relations between Indian-Americans and whites and with other communities of color.
The community for all its diversity, tends to have similar patterns of settlement and socialization. The community tends to be suburban, congregated in areas with strong public schools, and, for the most part, in white majority locales. As a result, many second-generation community members are socialized in primarily middle and upper-middle class white settings, often as the token “brown person.” In this environment, race and class privilege are rarely, if ever, acknowledged, making many South Asian Americans ill-equipped to deal with issues such as systemic racism or police brutality. The beating of Sureshbhai Patel by a white police officer in Alabama might have moved the needle a bit, but substantive action would likely involve a larger connection between the experience of Patel with the daily experiences of black and Latino men with law enforcement.
While combating anti-black racism should become more prominent within the Indian-American community, it’s worth noting that the tensions that the community and blacks often experience stems from interactions in close proximity. It would be foolhardy to discount the tensions directed towards Indian-American from blacks, particularly in communities experiencing demographic change or in low-income neighborhoods where South Asians comprise the majority of business owners. Moreover, for those who come from countries such as Uganda, Guyana, and Kenya, the social histories of racial violence against the Indian communities there have played a significant role in their relations here with African-Americans. Those histories cannot be discounted or downplayed, but instead need to be acknowledged as part of any constructive dialogue between the communities.
The experiences of South Asian (primarily Indian) Americans in this country, both before 1924 and after 1965, continue to revolve around racial poles. If the Indian-Americans who lived in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century were ostracized and coded black, then members of the community who have moved here or were born here over the past 50 years have inched towards the scales of acclimation and in some cases, assimilation. It’s noteworthy that some of the same tensions existing between blacks and South Asians today existed nearly a century ago, as W.E.B. Du Bois and Lala Lajpat Rai lamented to each other in the 1920s that the two groups had so much in common and yet failed to understand each other.
But the tensions that exist between our communities also highlights the pitfalls of essentializing discourses or homogenizing entire groups. As the collective and individual experiences of Indian-Americans and blacks reflect, framing issues in a rhetorical black-white dichotomy overlooks the ambiguous and expansive gray area in which most of us exist.
Balaji is a former award-winning journalist and media studies professor whose research focused on critical race perspectives. He is currently the director of education and curriculum reform at the Hindu American Foundation.
After all, the majority of Indian-Americans, particularly in the last 20-25 years, have been racialized as model minorities, placed in close enough proximity to white privilege to reap many of its benefits - yet far enough away to continue to be politically and socially othered. As a result, Indian-Americans simply don’t fit conveniently into what has been the traditional paradigm of racial discourse, which has been largely shaped by class, geography, and the political and social legacies of the past 150 years in the United States (and longer, if you consider that slavery in the United States existed since the 1600s).
It’s also that the community’s narrative and identity construction are based upon the post-1965 narrative, which has largely excluded the experiences of the smaller South Asian populations that existed in America prior to the passage of the Asian Exclusion Act in 1924. Such a narrative ignores the racialization of Indian-Americans in the early 20th century, notably the 1907 “anti-Hindoo” riots in Washington state and the 1923 Bhagat Singh Thind case, in which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the revocation of a U.S. military veteran’s citizenship based on the premise that he was not white. Of course, these examples aren’t even common knowledge within our community, which makes viewing America’s racial history that much harder.
Following the death of Eric Garner at the hands of police in New York, the Department of Justice’s damning report on systemic racism in Ferguson, Missouri, and the murder of Walter Scott in South Carolina this week, there are many activists who want the community to be more vocal on issues of anti-black racism. While it’s imperative that the community needs to be more active in racial dialogue and condemning racism, there are many levels of nuance that have shaped the relations between Indian-Americans and whites and with other communities of color.
The community for all its diversity, tends to have similar patterns of settlement and socialization. The community tends to be suburban, congregated in areas with strong public schools, and, for the most part, in white majority locales. As a result, many second-generation community members are socialized in primarily middle and upper-middle class white settings, often as the token “brown person.” In this environment, race and class privilege are rarely, if ever, acknowledged, making many South Asian Americans ill-equipped to deal with issues such as systemic racism or police brutality. The beating of Sureshbhai Patel by a white police officer in Alabama might have moved the needle a bit, but substantive action would likely involve a larger connection between the experience of Patel with the daily experiences of black and Latino men with law enforcement.
While combating anti-black racism should become more prominent within the Indian-American community, it’s worth noting that the tensions that the community and blacks often experience stems from interactions in close proximity. It would be foolhardy to discount the tensions directed towards Indian-American from blacks, particularly in communities experiencing demographic change or in low-income neighborhoods where South Asians comprise the majority of business owners. Moreover, for those who come from countries such as Uganda, Guyana, and Kenya, the social histories of racial violence against the Indian communities there have played a significant role in their relations here with African-Americans. Those histories cannot be discounted or downplayed, but instead need to be acknowledged as part of any constructive dialogue between the communities.
The experiences of South Asian (primarily Indian) Americans in this country, both before 1924 and after 1965, continue to revolve around racial poles. If the Indian-Americans who lived in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century were ostracized and coded black, then members of the community who have moved here or were born here over the past 50 years have inched towards the scales of acclimation and in some cases, assimilation. It’s noteworthy that some of the same tensions existing between blacks and South Asians today existed nearly a century ago, as W.E.B. Du Bois and Lala Lajpat Rai lamented to each other in the 1920s that the two groups had so much in common and yet failed to understand each other.
But the tensions that exist between our communities also highlights the pitfalls of essentializing discourses or homogenizing entire groups. As the collective and individual experiences of Indian-Americans and blacks reflect, framing issues in a rhetorical black-white dichotomy overlooks the ambiguous and expansive gray area in which most of us exist.
Balaji is a former award-winning journalist and media studies professor whose research focused on critical race perspectives. He is currently the director of education and curriculum reform at the Hindu American Foundation.
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