{UAH} COLORBLIND RACISM AND THE MODEL MINORITY
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WHY YOU SHOULD CARE
Because there is nothing exemplary about a group that makes progress on the backs of other minority groups.
The author is a professor at Connecticut College and a fellow with the Public Voices Greenhouse through The OpEd Project. His book, American Karma: Race, Culture and Identity in the Indian Diaspora, was published by NYU Press in 2007.
The recent shootings in Kansas, South Carolina and Washington state of three Indian migrants — supposedly mistaken for being illegal immigrants, Middle Eastern or Muslim — understandably stunned and angered members of the Indian-American community in this country, leading some to question whether they belong in President Donald Trump's America.
"Get out of this country!" shouted Adam Puriton, a white U.S. Navy veteran, just before he fatally shot Srinivas Kuchibothla and wounded his co-worker Alok Madasan outside a Kansas bar. In the wake of the attack, Kuchibothla's widow, Sunayana Dumala, received nearly 20,000 shares on her Facebook post, "Do we belong here?"
But as Indian-Americans hold vigils denouncing racism and mobilize to combat the rising tide of xenophobia, we need to acknowledge the existence and damaging effects of desi (Indian or South Asian) racism that is embedded in the model minority framework — according to which a particular group is perceived to have attained a higher level of success than the average population. As both a member of America's Indian immigrant community for over two decades and a researcher of the racial and cultural identity formation of the post-1965, professional Indian immigrant families in New England, I feel well-placed to weigh in on the troubling ramifications I see springing from the concept of the model minority in my community.
The 2014 Pew Research Analysis of census data shows there are 3.3 million Indian-Americans, or about 1 percent of the total population. Yet 32.3 percent of Indian-Americans have bachelor's degrees, and 40.6 percent of those 25 and older hold graduate or professional degrees. Moreover, in 2010, the median annual household income for Indian-Americans was $88,000 — pointing to an earning capacity that easily outstripped Asian-Americans ($66,000) and U.S. households ($49,800). The authors of The Other One Percent: Indians in America subscribe to the model minority theory, claiming that Indian-Americans are a highly select group of immigrants who are now "the most educated and highest-income group in the world's most advanced nation."
INDIAN IMMIGRANTS … ARE FEARFUL, AMBIVALENT AND RELUCTANT TO TALK ABOUT THE LATENT — AND AT TIMES BLATANT — RACISM WITHIN OUR OWN COMMUNITIES.
Digging beneath the statistics, historian Vijay Prashad has argued in his book, Uncle Swami: South Asians in America Today, that the large number of model minority Indian migrants in the U.S. are "twice blessed" or "doubly privileged." He writes, "In India they were born after independence had been won, and in the United States they arrived after the civil rights battles had already won them dignity and rights." That is to say, the smooth entry of Indian-Americans in the U.S was due in large part to the civil rights struggles and victories of the African-American community.
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