tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5214642.post112134648458896373..comments2024-03-07T10:30:51.374-05:00Comments on down on the brown side.: Revisiting "South Asian" IdentityRagehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10310102856263393174noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5214642.post-1121608029534791062005-07-17T09:47:00.000-04:002005-07-17T09:47:00.000-04:00thanks for reading - and welcome back. :)thanks for reading - and welcome back. :)Ragehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10310102856263393174noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5214642.post-1121437148836047912005-07-15T10:19:00.000-04:002005-07-15T10:19:00.000-04:00Thanks. It's just amazing how limited you can be ...Thanks. It's just amazing how limited you can be about issues of identity when you've grown up in a uniform/homogeneous environment. Many of the folks who are most angry about pan-South Asian identities don't even have contact or friends who are not from their particular economic/religious/geographic space. They don't know what it means to negotiate identity, or to create something new.<BR/><BR/>I told my mom as I became more conscious that I "wasn't Indian." She got angry, and the conversation ended, but my second line was going to be "I'm Indian American". <BR/><BR/>I think that the fear is that second gen. folks will lose all of the cultural capital that parents worked so hard to preserve over the long hard journey to the United States, and become empty brown shells. What a lot of the parents don't know is that, save for some of the folks in really screwy suburbs, young people recognize that they aren't white and create hybrid identities on the fly (have you noticed how many young desis are on top of the urban/pop music scene <B>and</B> the latest bollywood tracks at the same time?).<BR/><BR/>And what is "American" culture anyway? But that's an even <I>older</I> debate!Ragehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10310102856263393174noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5214642.post-1121434826845602302005-07-15T09:40:00.000-04:002005-07-15T09:40:00.000-04:00"It's like the old debate of 'are you Indian or ar..."It's like the old debate of 'are you Indian or are you American?' which I still hear. Shit, man, I'm me, and I'm all of these things. I can take the complexity. If you can't, that's not my problem."<BR/><BR/>Thanks for this. I wish I were able to articulate it so concisely as you have.<BR/><BR/>I never was of the mind that I had to "pick one", and only one. I like jeans, but I like kurtis. I like mirchi on pizza, and I smoke cigarettes with my chai... and I don't think any of those things make me (us) Less Than. <BR/><BR/>vutt to do, we are like this only ;)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com