When I first read the Joel Stein article the only thing that came to my mind was "funny". Nothing more or less and then when I slowly saw how the rest of my friends were reacting through social networking sites, my opinion formed. Why did everyoe get so hurt when Stein called our Gods multilimbed or our food spicy??
I think all of us have a little bit of racist streak in us. The tamilians dont like to be called telugu, the North Indians have their own opinion on the south Indians and the mallu & Singh jokes are never ending. There used to be a friend in grad school calling me chicken-worshipper.(Muruga swamy) And we dont stop there, the china-china's accent and food jokes, the jewish - well lets not even go there. Neverending. Its Ok to make small non viscous jokes. Its OK for someone ELSE to make fun of us. The indians here boast about their kids doing well in math and sci, being attached to their family and culture. Its OK if someone jokes about something like this. The whole point is, we are different. We cannot force Americans to acept and like our culture all the time. We dont either, thats why we have innumerable Patel Brothers, Hindu temples and Movie theatres. I am not asking everyone to shut up when a racist group attacks us, but just take a small joke.
The article was more on the lines of how a certain Deepa or Madhu would feel if T.Nagar is infested with... well even just plain vada naatu makkal (we dont even have to imagine outside India). Racist jokes will be all over the place!
Appadi podu aruvaala. Very apt! A link to the actual article will help folks who haven't read that piece.
ReplyDeleteQuite surprisingly,a lot of other indians responded in the same way. But none of this makes us think "what are we still doing here, are we any less better in India?" or "may be its time to do more than discussing, time to stop being racist"
ReplyDeleteFor anyone who is not racist, Joel Stein's article is a rigmarole of his feelings about a changing America.
i always maintain that we indians are the most racist! different cultures look down on others.. and hell even darker indians are looked down upon!
ReplyDelete@ sai, I couldnt attach the link- technologically imparied
ReplyDelete@nandita, I totally agree. And its more observable over here.
@Vidhya, Yep, thats what he felt when he wrote it.