Hindi/Urdu Word #3

‘jaldi’

Emphasis on the first syllable.

Means quickly, fast.

Ex: Bring the chai jaldi (se). Used in phrase with ’se’ to show action.

Hindi/Urdu Word #2

‘kal’

As in Kal Penn.

Means tomorrow or yesterday, which of the two is clear based on context.

Ex: “Help me move?”

“Kal, yaar.” (Tomorrow, dude.)

Hindi/Urdu Word #1:

‘yaar’

(Long a sound, as in the sound you make when the doctor sticks a popsicle stick in your throat).

Colloquially functions as ‘dude.‘ and conversationally equals dude and/or friend as well. Formally mean your love.

South Asia in the Obama Rorschach

Rereading this Newsweek’s article on Obama, I was again struck by how much his story resonates with me and how much overlap I see with his experiences growing up biracial and living abroad and with the South Asian American experience. “Dreams from My Father” was filled with moments that felt he was talking about South Asian Americans.

The article and “Dreams from My Father” mention his years in Indonesia when he became cognizant of dark-skinned, skin bleaching, and the reality of societal light-skin preference. He also talks about his mother teaching them not to distinguish themselves between the expatriates and Indonesians. Furthermore, he discusses eating street food, the animals, different approaches to dealing with beggars, playing in the street, and other more mundane delights children find in the things that make it so different from America. All of the above apply to South Asian Americans, particularly when we go back to the homeland. Even his observations of Indonesia’s practice of Islam reminded me of my own observations how Pakistan practices Islam differently than India.

His more adult perspective took in the poverty and corruption of Indonesia (another key prospective many people of South Asian descent can glean from their exposure to South Asia). Back in America, as the “other,” he fielded questions analogous to one my friend got:

“So your name starts with Sri, and you’re from Sri Lanka…does that make your dad the king of Sri Lanka?”

What South Asian American didn’t deal with a situation like that? The article cites the classic South Asian American cringe worthy experience: the substitute teacher calling roll and butchering your name. Going by Barry before he started at Columbia, melting away the foreignness of South Asian name, is hardly uncommon.

Obama is open about his college experience and his quest for identity and belonging. It’s common for a South Asian Americans to be exposed to a wider interpretation of their culture in college, as well, and experience a cultural awakening.

I also rather enjoyed hearing from Wahid Hamid, a “good friend” of Obama’s from college who is a Pakistani immigrant chime in about identity. Another friend of his characterized him as a “self-made man,” which is another term that the South Asian American community can identify with.

So how can South Asian Americans vote Republican in November?

Politicizing Homeschooling

Re: Many Muslims Turn to Home Schooling (New York Times)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/26/us/26muslim.html?ex=1364702400&en=9cbf9497c115b9a1&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

This article about one rural community California attempts to connote a trend about the schooling of 1.2 billion Muslims with the heading “Many Muslims Turn to Home Schooling.” It not only glosses over cultural complexities that affects not only immigrant American Muslims life choices, but ignores the effect of tradition on religious life.

It admits no hard statistics exist for either American Muslims or the general American public nationwide, but does not shirk from extrapolation.

American Muslims are remarkably heterogeneous, from white American converts, to African immigrants, to third-generation South Asian Americans of all socioeconomic levels and of different attachments to Islam. Many issues the article highlights in the second half are cultural and transcend religion – you could easily find a non-Muslim South Asian or Southeast Asian in this country with the same regressive views on his or her daughter’s future marriage and education as those espoused in this article.

The article only briefly mentions a significant factor in why immigrants, Muslim or not, choose America as their new home: the educational and consequent opportunities for their children.

If the New York Times aimed to spotlight a Muslim community disproportionately homeschooling its children without disingenuously painting Muslims in this country still as an unassimilated, dangerous Other, it failed. Would an article about Christian homeschooling have read the same?

Can We Get It?

March 19, 2008

Barack Obama’s landmark speech on race was not the best he has given thus far. His speech at the JJ dinner in Iowa, despite reaching most people via YouTube, surpassed this week’s speech, and many still continue to hail his 2004 DNC keynote address as his finest.

What was remarkable about Barack’s speech this week was the content. His critics accuse him of sounding great, but being light on content. This speech was all content. He apprised white people of things they either don’t know, aren’t cognizant of, or combination of the two because of white privilege.

His interview after with ABC News really drove this point home when he explained to Terry Moran about how differently white and black people react to the news of major crime. He explained it to him, as I [as a person of color] have many times in a nonthreatening way, how one’s initial reaction to news of the major crime is to worry that the perpetrator might be of your subculture. Barack then clearly illustrated to him the privileges of being white in America by asking him if he would ever be worried about resembling someone who had done something bad.

Jon Stewart, as always, nicely summed up Barack’s big gamble now. He has treated us like adults, put forth subtleties and difficult questions for us to digest. He got his message across, despite being asked idiotic question like, “Are you a black man or an American first?”

Funny how being black is like being Muslim…you’re still not allowed to have multiple identities if you’re American.

Combatting Sexual Harassment

Sexual harassment, a form of sexual violence and workplace aggression, is the most widespread type of sexual victimization. Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act outlaws sexual harassment and the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in 1980 explicitly delineated categories of illegal behavior. Psychological definitions of sexual harassment include gender harassment, unwanted sexual attention, and sexual coercion. Harassment most typically consists of nonviolent coercive, undesired attention that feels intrusive; for example, repeated sexual comments. Targets of harassment are disproportionately female, as male aggressors often act to maintain social control over their domain; approximately one in two women faces sexual harassment at some point in her life. Sexual harassment of women in the workplace both results from and reemphasizes women’s inferior status and will continue unless primary prevention strategies of reducing gender inequality change social and workplace policies.

Advocacy-seeking remains the most effective response to sexual harassment situations, yet is most infrequently employed by victims; avoidance-denial is the most common. The effects of reporting do not necessarily improve psychological, health, and career outcomes and may even hurt if retaliation victimization ensues. Organizations may react inappropriately defensive by isolating or revictimizing the target and insensitive investigative procedures may inflict additional distress onto the victim.

More research funding into violence against women and social policies that accurately recognize and concentrate on ushering women into traditionally masculine jobs, altering the gendered nature of jobs and organizational climates, and changing traditional social attitudes.

Affirmative action and recruiting can achieve workplace equality, necessary for eradicating sexual harassment. Discrimination in initial hiring practices and in training procedures and the top echelon management must be eliminated as employers adjust gendered power dynamics, especially in supervisor-subordinate relations. Organizations can change the masculine nature of careers by providing pro-family, pro-woman policies like flexible family leave and childcare policies. Furthermore, victims who quit because of sexual harassment should be eligible for unemployment benefits and the statute of limitations for filing harassment charges should be eliminated, as well as caps on monetary awards of damages. Organizations thus have incentive to address sexual harassment as it decreases motivation and productivity via poorer work performance, damaged interpersonal relationships, absenteeism and tardiness, and high turnover – decreasing their bottom line.

Facts about sexual harassment from the EEOC: http://www.eeoc.gov/facts/fs-sex.html

Filing a grievance with your local EEOC field office: http://www.eeoc.gov/offices.html