Desis and Desi Organizations in Asian America

I've been thinking a lot about the current state of desis working in community-based settings around the nation, and specifically in NYC. The community infrastructure, at least through the lens of professionalized and staffed non-profit organizations, is still very limited, and not balanced around the nation. While there seem to be far more individuals entering the field, they are doing so without established channels for leadership development, nor even training and an introduction to the community. I fear that more folks are jumping in with hopes to create big waves and become the identifiable leadership before learning the ropes or engaging the broader social justice movement, and, to put it crudely, without paying their dues. There are always natural leaders in our midst, but without training in larger coalitions like Asian America, some folks have been questioning the value of these connections, either aligning with other interest groups, or going solo on a mission to make a brown voice heard above the cacophony of other groups.

When I began, and in the years before me, there was a very limited pool of South Asians who were interested in community-based work, and far from having South Asian-specific organizations in which to work, we took positions and interest in the pan-Asian mode of identity and coalition. There are a number of activists from that time, beginning in the late 80s on through the mid-nineties who took these positions and became more involved in the majority Chinese/Korean institutions within the Asian American communities in the East coast. These folks cut their teeth in the second wave of the Asian American movement (or whatever remained of it at that point), and were trained to recognize the commonalities between the communities, the uneasy alliances, and prospects for true coalition-building between the old order within Asian America and the new, more diverse young leadership.

Many of these desis came to more directly recognize the need for brown spaces, but not as an only resort. While the alliances between East and South Asians within Asian America are wrought with their own challenges, the need for political cohesion to form a critical mass of like-minded progressive/radical proponents for social change still seemed necessary, good, and worthwhile. Jump forward ten years, and the gap seems to be widening. I feel that the time at which it could have gone either was in the immediate aftermath of September 11th, but that's another post altogether. The point to remember here is that it wasn't always this difficult to have South Asians more involved in pan-Asian organizations and work, and it's a shame that in a city like New York, the principal pan-Asian organizations can't seem to hold onto their South Asian staff - with the holdouts who remain only biding their time, but seemingly uninvested in the bridging of the evident gap between the established communities and the new and emerging communities in the fragile alliance called Asian America.

On top of that, there are a lot of fledgling South Asian organizations that are forming, or splitting off from more established groups. With the funding landscape only becoming more and more difficult to navigate for new groups, specifically for agencies that work with communities that have come under so much scrutiny after the Patriot Act and other punitive measures have come into play. Foundations are stating overtly that they aren't interested in funding more South Asian groups - "why don't you learn to play nicely with one another?" is the general gist. So what to do? Some group leaders are coming together to talk about this soon, but there's so much mistrust, mixed history, and positioning going on that it's hard to figure out what's going to happen. Getting the groups to meet together isn't that difficult (unlike some communities), but getting them to work together in the long haul - that's a completely different, and far more difficult, proposition.

Not to mention that there seems to be a vacuum in the leadership structure, at least in New York City... where are all the progressive Desi men? But that's a future post...