South Asians and Indo-Caribbeans Confronting Racism in the US

by Moses Seenarine

Since South Asians, mainly Punjabis, started migrating to the US as low wage workers over 100 years ago, they have been confronted with racist attitudes and violence from the white mainstream community. In a country divided between "whites and blacks," South Asians and Indo-Caribbeans find themselves defined as "black" and subjected to the same history of white racial oppression that Native peoples, Africans and Latinos have had to deal with for five hundred years - from genocide and slavery, to lynchings and imprisonment. For example, in terms of public education, drop-out rates for recent South Asian and Indo-Caribbean immigrant students follow similar patterns as Africans and Latinos, going beyond 50 percent in some schools. Yet, typically, similar to history books and school curriculum, the multitude forms of systemic racism and racial violence in the US is downplayed and ignored by mainstream American society which views racism as either justified or something of the past.

Now numbering close to two million, South Asian Americans face increasing hatred, discrimination and brutality in the US, yet they remain divided among themselves by differences in language, religion, culture, caste, nationality, class, age, and as immigrants, first generation, second generation, and so on. South Asians, rarely, if ever, venture into Indo-Caribbean communities or attend their temples or cultural events. Similarly, South Asian organizations do not invite Indo-Caribbeans to participate in their events, address Indo-Caribbean issues, or provide outreach to Indo-Caribbean communities. Historically, South Asians have distanced themselves from Indo-Caribbeans, just as Asian Americans have distanced themselves from South Asians. Perhaps, as part of an attempt to "whiten" and distance themselves from being black and having minority status, upwardly mobile South Asians often practice their own racists and casteist attitudes towards recently arriving South Asians, Indo-Caribbeans, Africans and Latinos.

Nonetheless, diverse "Indian" communities from Africa, Bangladesh, the Caribbean, Europe, India, Nepal, the Pacific Islands, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, are finding that, as Americans, often living side by side, in the same buildings and neighborhoods, they encounter similar problems. These various South Asian communities perceive racial attacks on any "Indian" as equivalent to an attack on all "Indian-looking" peoples in the US. Both individuals and groups are no longer tolerating these issues to interfere with their lives in the US, and are organizing themselves for change.

New York City, the mythical melting-pot of white ethnicities, despite having the largest numbers of South Asians living in the US, is increasingly an unsafe space. Led by an openly hostile and belligerent mayor and police commissioner, the city has become a racially-charged, exploitative environment for South Asian taxi-drivers, street-vendors, and students alike. For example, taxi-drivers were recently referred to as "terrorists’ by the police commissioner. Muslims are further targeted as part of the general US’s anti-terrorist hysteria, and increasing numbers are being imprisoned, many without a fail trial. Whether in the city, suburb, or rural areas, racial bias and violence is a daily problem many South Asians are currently forced to live with.

For example, a few weeks ago in late September, Rishi Maharaj, a 20 year old American-born Indo-Trinidadian, was beaten with baseball bats by three white young men in South Ozone Park, Queens. Maharaj, walking with two of his cousins, incurred the wrath one of three men sitting on a nearby proposed to initiate an attack on "the Indians." One of the assailants hurled a string of racist curses while he was beating Rishi, saying, "This is never going to be a neighborhood until you leave." With no recourse, Maharaj apologized repeatedly until beaten unconsciousness. Maharaj is not an exception as everyday incidents of harassment, racial epithets, fist fights, and beatings often culminate into similar brutal and savage attacks, which forces many of us to the hospitals.

Many South Asians are also killed as a result of racist attacks. Only last week, two recent immigrants from Gujrat, India, Kanu Patel and Mukesh Patel, who worked in a Donut shop owned by an Indian American in Camp Springs, MD, a suburb of Washington DC, were brutally killed at 3 AM in a holdup. A third person was critically injured in the shooting, and the killers also set fire to the shop. This may be a case of hate crime as the culprits took some cash, but also left some money in the cash registers untouched. The wives and children of the victims are still in India and were yet to join the victims in US.

South Asian women who are abused by their families in the US face further victimization if the risk calling the racist police system for support or assistance in de-escalating violence. One incident which occurred recently in Richmond Hill, an Indo-Caribbean community in Queens, NY, was that of a wife who was being physically abused by her husband. After the police arrived, there was an escalation of violence, as they proceeded to shoot her husband dead with full impunity. As the recent Amnesty report reveals, NYC police typically ignore proper procedures and act in racist and violent ways.

Even homeowners are not safe from racism. Across America, many minorities are prevented in buying or renting homes in red-lined, white neighborhoods, and are forced into over-crowded, minority ghettos, devoid of employment, shopping and services. As part of this conflict over living space in Queens, NYC, tensions between Indo-Caribbean newcomers and white neighborhood veterans are high. Residents and local officials say that tensions revolve around mundane civic matters like the uncertified conversions of single-family homes into multiple units, usually by the addition of a basement apartment.

As part of community and state racism, working class minority homeowners are criminalized for converting their basements into apartments, and thereby providing extra housing space, often for relatives and friends, in a city desperately short of affordable housing. Poor peoples’ strategies of survival in a city with a very high-cost of living are criminalized, and they face penalities of $2,500 to $15,000 for unapproved conversions. While local civic leaders say their concern is with illegal and potentially dangerous dwellings, regardless of the ethnicity of the people inside, Indo-Caribbeans say they feel they have unfairly been made targets of a housing crackdown. White-dominated community associations are monitoring their homes and often report them to the authorities.

As a response to the attack on Rishi Maharaj, a few members of the Indo-Trinidadian and Indo-Guyanese communities have come together with members of South Asian and Latino groups in three events following the incident, organized around racial violence. First a group of 100 people demonstrated at the court house in Queens, and a few day later another group of 35 met for a town hall meeting in a Richmond Hill public school, then a group of 50 people assembeld in the offices of an Asian and Pacific Islander organization in the South Asian Jackson Heights community. At this later event, the mother and father of Anthony Rasario, a Puerto Rican killed by the NYC police, spoke to the group, emphasizing that only community protest would ensure that justice is served in the Maharaj incident.

At the town hall meeting, organized by members of the Indo-Guyanese legal and real estate community, many commented on the poor turnout in a community with over 100,000 Indo-Caribbeans. Noticeably absent were members of the otherwise visible political parties, cultural groups, religious organizations, and media. One speaker commented on the self-serving attitudes of community leaders and groups, "if they are not sponsers, organizers, or part of a panel in an event, they will not come." Interestingly, relatives of the Maharaj family and Indo-Trinidadian community were also absent. Typically, the panel was without youth, female or lower class representatives, and this also explains the poor turnout. Probing deeper, one popular community leader present at the town hall meeting admitted, "our people are very complacent." However he stressed that "unless we stand up for ourselves, no one will respect us. We need to form umbrella organizations with have nothing to do with the temples and mosques."

This leader underscores the point that as long as a particular minority community continue to exclude others, they themselves will be excluded. As long as one group discriminate and are prejudiced to those who are poorer or "blacker" than themselves and their communities, they continue to reinforce and maintain the system of white racism. It is of no use of Indo-Caribbeans trying to distance themselves from Africans, or for South Asians distancing themselves from Indo-Caribbeans and Africans, because ultimately, these groups are all considered "black" by the dominant whites. Instead of excluding others, all "Indian-looking" peoples should build alliances with each other, and with African, Latino and other minority groups, to prevent racism in all of our communities.

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