After embarrassing himself
spouting Faux News propaganda about "no-go zones" (which even Fox disclaimed), Bobby Jindal, governor of Louisiana, home to ethnic enclaves of
Creoles,
Cajuns and ethnic celebrations like Mardi Gras, needs a brief American history, anthropology, and demographics lesson.
He is doubling down on his position:
As an Indian-American, Jindal argued that we have to start removing the hyphens from our identities here in the United States. “If people don’t want to come here to integrate and assimilate, what they’re really trying to do is set up their own culture, their own communities,” he said. “What they’re really trying to do is overturn our culture. We need to recognize that threat.”
This country doesn't require "
assimilation" the way he seems to be desperately seeking it. One of the things that has brought many groups here from far-flung corners of the globe, is to have a fresh start,
and bring their cultures, heritages, and beliefs with them.
"American freedom" doesn't mean divesting one's self of identity and ancestry in order to become some type of red, white, and blue cookie-cutter clone.
Alhough the right-wing pontificators over at National Review tout Jindal's degree from Oxford and his "brilliance" ad nauseam, he seems to have missed some basics about his parents' adopted country.
Follow me below the fold for more on Jindal's posturing, and an ethnic-enclave American tour.
In the crowded pack of Republican contenders for the 2016 presidential nomination, Jindal is trying to garner press (which he has done), polish his Islamophobia creds, jostle for position, bash "the left", and hopefully bury the memory of his less-than-stellar response to the State of the Union in 2009, which has been resurrected on Twitter recently, due to a typo in one of his tweets.
The faux controversy, swirling around remarks made by Arsalan Iftikhar on MSNBC, who recently made the news thanks to Don Lemon, the clueless talking head at CNN, has served Jindal well, perhaps, because they referenced an ethnic identity he is striving hard to erase. The remarks made by Ifikhar are not new, and have been made by others at length in the past. Case in point: "The Whitewashing of Bobby Jindal" by Indian American Rajiv Malhotra:
Whiteness may have expanded in scope over time, but rejects those, like Hindu-Americans who fall outside the Judeo-Christian religious group. Can the Hindu-American remain a Hindu and "become white"? To address this question, Khyati Joshi's book, "New Roots in America's Sacred Ground", provides empirical data to prove that there is religious bias facing Indian-Americans on account of being Hindu. In other words, Hinduism is seen by most Americans as a marker of non-white ethnicity. This should be enough impetus for Indian-Americans (the vast majority of whom are Hindu) to claim a separate identity that is distinct, not white or black, not Judeo-Christian, and yet wholly American.
The example of Jindal demonstrates the pressure to capitulate for the sake of political ambition. Jindal couldn't change his color, but he converted his religion to become less different from the dominant white Christians of his party. His personal narrative amplifies his conversion to Roman Catholicism, even though he was raised Hindu by immigrant parents who were very active leaders in the local Hindu temple in Louisiana. He feels no qualms in making statements hurtful to the sentiments of the community from which he derives his "minority" card. In a piece some years ago, he said when asked about his conversion: "the motivation behind my conversion, however, was my belief in one, objectively true faith (Christianity). If Christianity is merely one of many equally valid religions, then the sacrifices I made, including the loss of my family's peace, were senseless". Presumably the conversion of his Hindu Punjabi wife to Roman Catholicism some years later occurred by her having coincidentally the exact same epiphany as he did.
To those of us Indian-Americans who are unwilling to obliterate our identity and get "digested" into the whitestream, Jindal is no trailblazer. He does not speak for us and merely uses his Indian-American status to gain leverage with Republicans who must now present a more inclusive face in order to remain relevant. His life underscores the fact that America has a long way to go before Indians and Hindus can project openly and without negative consequences the full range of their cultural and religious identity.
The contradictions in our society—historical and present-day—around questions of ethnic and "racial" identity, culture (including language and religion), assimilation (forced and unforced), diversity and multiculturalism versus melting pot, have not been resolved, and probably won't be in the near future. We have "reservations" for Native Americans, and have historically attempted to force assimilation via a form of ethnocide, via
Native boarding schools. Read
Indians 101 by Ojibwa for the history. We all are familiar with various "
Chinatowns," although few people think about our ugly history of
Asian exclusion. There is the history of black towns and
their destruction, and de facto segregation that persists. I spent my early childhood in an
Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn, which was
Hasidic, and where my grandfather was the
shabbos goy, and I learned some Yiddish. The men wore distinctive dress and beards, and the women covered their hair or wore wigs.
One only has to look at a list of ethnic enclaves in the U.S., to see that Jindal's view of what we should be isn't a reality or even remotely realistic.
Looking back in history, I should probably start with the Pilgrims and other groups like the Society of Friends (dubbed Quakers) who fled here from England, who were ridiculed for not only their religion but their adoption of both plain speech and plain dress. The use of plain dress continues among groups like the Amish.
An Amish family
Of course, the Amish are white, so Jindal doesn't seem to see them as an apocalyptic boogeyman threat to our social fiber. In my own county in New York state, we have a
Bruderhof enclave that dons head-coverings for women and modest dress for both genders. When I started teaching at SUNY New Paltz quite a few years ago, I saw some female students in
hijab, which I was not curious about since I am very familiar with Islam, but I did wonder who the white girls in headscarves and old-fashioned dress were. I got a chance to speak to one of the young women, and learned that she came from the
Bruderhof community.
It was founded in Germany in the 1920s, but the brothers' communist principles and unorthodox approach to education inevitably attracted the wrath of the Nazis. Their flight from persecution scattered them across the world, with some ending up in southern England and others migrating first to Latin America and then to the United States. Most of the group's 2,500 members now live either in England (where there are two settlements) or the northeast United States (with six).
Speaking of head-covering, few Sikh men of my acquaintance have abandoned their wearing of turbans. On Sikh Americans:
Sikhs have been a part of the American populace for more than 130 years. Near the end of the 19th century, the state of Punjab of British India was hit hard by British practices of mercantilism. Many Sikhs emigrated to the United States and began arriving to work on farms in California. They traveled via Hong Kong to Angel Island, California, the western counterpart to Ellis Island in New York Harbor.
Members of the Sikh community of Somerville, Massachusetts
They have, of course, been
victims of our homegrown terror, fueled by the type of language used by not only Jindal, but much of the right:
The most concentrated Sikh community in the United States has traditionally resided in agricultural Yuba City, California, although this agglomeration has since dispersed as Sikhs have gained a greater educational foundation, enabling them to have now spread out to metropolitan areas all over the United States. The largest and most rapidly growing Sikh community in New York City is based in the Richmond Hill area of the borough of Queens; the majority consist of more recent emigres from India and Canada. Conversely, in the Sikh Foundation of Virginia, most members comprise both recent and more established Jatt Sikhs, Ramgarhia Ramgarhia Sikhs, and Sikh Rajputs. Most Sikhs of Española, New Mexico are non-Punjabi converts to Sikhism. In the wake of the September 11 attacks, there was an upsurge in anti-Sikh discrimination across the United States, including a number of incidents that involved physical attacks on Sikh individuals who were wearing turbans...
Balbir Singh Sodhi, a gas station owner, was killed on September 15, 2001 due to being mistaken for a Muslim. In a 2011 report to the United States Senate, the Southern Poverty Law Center reported several assaults and incidents of arson at Sikh temples after September 11. All were labeled as hate crimes that resulted from the perpetrators' misconceptions that their targets were Muslim. In August 2012, a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin was the site of a shooting, leading to multiple Sikh individuals being killed. On May 7, 2013, an elderly Sikh man was attacked with an iron bar in Fresno, California in a possible hate crime. On September 21, 2013, Dr. Prabhjot Singh, a Sikh professor was brutally attacked in Harlem, New York by a group of 20-30 men who branded him as "Osama" and Terrorist".
Check out
Red, White, and Beard:
The short documentary Red, White, and Beard is a quirky, lighthearted glance into Sikh Captain America and the man behind this growing phenomenon. The more he brings the character to the people, the more he hopes they recognize their own prejudices toward Sikhs and other religious, ethnic, and cultural groups. But is the public only respecting the superhero figure, or do they truly realize what the artist is saying?
As a cultural anthropologist, I'm not here to debate the precepts of any religious or ethnic enclave in the U.S. There is no way to cover all these groups in one article. I am, however, deeply worried by the rising tide of Islamophobia, abroad and at home, and the tacit acceptance of that bigotry by many people who should know better. I'm married to a man who has a Muslim first name, and who "looks Muslim" (for profiling purposes), which I wrote about here after 9/11 in
Why we had to put an American flag decal on our car, and in
I too wear a headwrap.
My roots in this country are deep ones, not just those of my enslaved African ancestors dragged here in chains in the early 1700s, but also those of my Norwegian forebears who arrived here in 1637 to settle in Rensselaerswyck, New Netherlands. Even deeper are my roots from the Kahniakenhaka (Mohawk) whom they married.
I vehemently disagree with Jindal's assertion (in agreement with many others on the right) that we must "return America to its Judeo-Christian roots."
I take a polar opposite stance: We must embrace, celebrate and accept our diversity, for in that diversity lies our strength.