One conversation that has come up during this time of political activism and revolution is racism. Racism is complex and nuanced; not all racism is equal or even comparable. Many minority groups have been facing this head-on, addressing why they are still responsible for being an ally to the Black Lives Matter movement. As minorities themselves, they have benefited from anti-Black systemic racism, and they have gained opportunities because of black activism and civil rights movements. However, when racism is politicized, the media tends to lump it all into one issue, and this ends up delegitimizing the diverse and unique problems that different groups face.
As a mixed-race Indian family, many of you have experienced some form of racism in your life. You may have experienced discrimination, slurs, stereotyping, or inappropriate jokes. There may have been people who insulted or berated you for your ethnic background, or plain didn't like you because of race. You may have felt isolated, or "othered" by being Indian in a white country. Racism can be damaging, and I do not doubt that it has affected you. However, these examples are mostly examples of individual racism, which is very different from the systemic racism that Black and Indigenous folks face in every interaction with the state. I'm not saying that Indian-Americans can't experience systemic racism, but certainly not to the extent that Black and Indigenous folks do. Anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism are at the core of our institutions. Black and Indigenous folks are systematically shut out of opportunities by our institutions, limiting their paths to success.
In contrast, Indian-Americans have a path to success and are the wealthiest minority group in America. Many people, perhaps some in our family, equate wealth with success and use wealth disparity between races to make blanket statements about folks of a given race or ethnic group. I believe that using wealth as a measure of success is entirely absurd, as, past a certain point, it has little to do with accomplishments or quality of life. But whether you believe this or not, wealth isn't useful to measure anything if the opportunity to gain wealth is unequal from the get-go.
Someone who grows up poor is much less likely to become wealthy in adulthood than someone who grew up rich. That poor person is also vastly more likely to be impoverished than someone who grows up wealthy. Asian-Americans and white people tend to move upwards on the socioeconomic scale, while Black folks raised with the same income tend to move downwards. These divergent paths show systemic, anti-Black racism at work. I know that many Indian people believe that Indians are hard-working, resilient, and smart, which leads to their success. Reinforcing this perception is that children of immigrants have more upward social mobility than the children of people born in the United States (regardless of race). However, this perception that Asian-Americans are "model minorities" is a myth. Of course, we work hard! But we aren't working any harder than other groups who can work just as hard and get half as far. We are the same as any other group; our immigrant parents' success has to do with the conditions of our immigration, and not any inherent superiority based on race, skin colour, or anything else. Let's unpack the myth of the "model minority." While it may seem that the success of some minority groups in America has to do with an inherent difference in their work ethic or ability, this cannot be further from the truth. This racist (and classist) idea ignores both science and historical context and dangerously contributes to anti-Blackness and the oppression of Black folks.
Before 1965, immigration to the United States was restricted by the Immigration Act of 1924, which included the "Asian Exclusion Act," which effectively prevented Asians from immigrating to the United States. The purpose of this law was to "preserve the ideal of US homogeneity." In other words, the white men who ran the United States did not want us. So what changed by 1965 that facilitated the removal of these restrictions? Surely the whites realized how smart and hard-working we are and decided to let us in, right? Nope, not at all. The decades-long struggle to end de-jure segregation and explicitly legal anti-Black racism forced lawmakers to scrutinize racial discrimination in the immigration system. So, the US enacted the 1965 Hart-Celler Act, which prioritized the immigration of relatives of US citizens as well as professional and skilled workers.
We may not have come to the US with a lot of money, but our education allowed us to immigrate, putting us at an advantage over native-born Americans who were technically in the same social class. We are not smarter than our peers; we were better educated, which was the condition upon which we entered the United States. Our success is simply a case of us being in a better position to be successful from the outset. There is no evidence that there are differences in complex human behaviour traits based on "race." "Race" itself isn't a biological difference, but a social construct. So the next time somebody tells you that Indians are smart or 'Blacks' don't "value" education, I can assure you that this isn't the case. Nobody is working harder than anybody else. Oh, and by the way, welfare doesn't make people lazy. There have been so many studies on this. It blows my mind every time somebody who has privilege suggests that poor folks abuse social safety nets; it is simply untrue. The "model minority" stereotype is a myth. Different minority groups have had different experiences leading to vastly different opportunities. Unfortunately, this "model minority" myth is used by racists as a fact to prove that there is no systemic racism.
White people will point to Asian-Americans (and other minorities) and note how "successful" we were after entering the country and weaponize their success to blame Black folks for failing to achieve the same. This false equivalence ignores the systemic discrimination and relative lack of opportunities that Black folks have had to deal with for centuries in America. Black people who work just as hard as us, even if they did start with the same level of wealth as we do, which due to systemic racism they do not, will, on average, end up less wealthy than we do due to systemic racism that we do not face. It is woefully ironic that white people, who denied us entry into the US until Black folks fought for us, now use us as a tool to continue to maintain the oppression of Black Americans. We can not let this stand. As most of us are members of the Asian-American community, we should understand our privilege. We should refuse to allow white supremacists to use us as part of an argument that denies the existence of systemic anti-Black racism.
I understand that this conversation is uncomfortable. It isn't easy to admit that others may be at a systemic disadvantage. Still, I urge you to embrace the discomfort and listen to the experiences of Black folks and accept that we are in a privileged position. We should fight for the rights of oppressed people. Most of us grew up with an entirely different set of rules than the oppressed. We didn't earn this privilege; we possess it by the colour of our skin as well as our environment. We need to acknowledge that as we are at a systemic advantage instead of treating our success as a cultural triumph. By taking opportunities and resources that our institutions deny Black folks, we are guilty of taking advantage of them. By staying silent, we have been complicit in supporting Black people's oppression. We cannot continue to be complicit. We must use our voices and votes to demand change and fight for real equality.
Thank you for continuing to be a part of this conversation. How have you experienced the "model minority" stereotype? How have you been feeling about this BLM movement and our position in it as a minority? We welcome all of your comments, questions, and feedback. We want to hear your voice. Please send us an email, drop us a text, or even give us a call.
Next week we will continue this conversation by talking more specifically about how anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism is the foundation of America itself. In our schools, we are taught history from the perspective of white colonizers. We start with the "discovery" of inhabited land and the colonists' actions leading to the formation of the country. By definition, this perspective takes the side of colonizers, erasing both Black and Indigenous culture and history and widely ignoring the history of the lands we live on. Imagine if Indian history was about the British's discovery of resources and fight for wealth in a "new" world? Erasing our culture and history would be another step towards the dehumanization that is inherent in colonization. Much of the experience of learning about systemic and anti-Black racism centres around unlearning the euro-centric lens we have been taught to think through. This experience is about embracing the complexity and nuance of history and understanding the factors that have led to the inequities we see in the world today. This podcast is an excellent example of how nuance is missed in white history.
SOURCES:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/27/upshot/make-your-own-mobility-animation.html
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/19/upshot/race-class-white-and-black-men.html
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/immigration-act
https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/6/15/15797120/race-black-white-iq-response-critics
https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/remahanna/files/151016_labor_supply_paper_draft_final.pdf
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