South Asian Americans come to terms with own anti-blackness
Photo (Alexandra Wey/Keystone via AP)
Written by Nandini Rathi
Black Lives Matter protests refuse to die down as the US remains wrapped up in discussions of structural racism, white supremacy and police abolition. Most importantly, conversations have been sparked even in families without necessarily any progressive or activistic leanings. It isn’t only on Instagram and it isn’t just commentators like Hasan Minhaj talking — South Asian diaspora communities in the US are ringing with multitudes of online and offline conversations to reckon with how to respond and how to address apathy, anti-black racism and casteism within.
It is no secret that South Asians grapple with various measures of anti-blackness that manifest in banal preferences for lighter complexions, prevailing negative associations in pop culture, and languages with all things black. Sometimes it is unleashed as verbal and physical attacks against Africans. Once in the US, immigrant families often continued to mingle within their own caste and regional associations and strongly discouraged children from dating or marrying African- Americans. Even when many of them gained economic and cultural capital, old patterns and prejudices lingered. According to the Pew Research, Indian-Americans have a higher household income than any other ethnic subgroup in the United States.
“For decades, South Asians have been very afraid to rock the boat,” said Shoba Sharad Rajgopal, a media studies professor at Westfield State University in Massachusetts. As outsiders, many felt “their status was so marginal in the first place that they barely got a toehold in the American society.” But awareness, frustrations and activism within the community have simultaneously come together to interrupt decades of bystander syndrome. Crucially, the young generation that is unafraid to introspect within and initiate difficult conversations is increasingly putting its weight behind the cause.
In response to Black Lives Matter, Tarina Ahuja, a college-bound Indian American teen, along with her cousin and two friends in Ashburn, Virginia, is organising an open-to-all, virtual townhall for South Asians for different generations to talk about inherent bias and colourism, the history of institutional oppression against Black Americans, and how to build solidarity with them. According to Ahuja, who joined several demonstrations and protests in recent weeks, their initiative is representative of what she’s seeing in friend circles, in Bhangra teams and across South Asian student associations and organisations in high schools and colleges.
