Author Archives: SAALT

Second Mistrial Declared South Asians Must Be Vigilant and Engaged

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Novem­ber 5, 2015
Con­tact: Lak­sh­mi Sri­daran, lakshmi@saalt.org

SAALT is out­raged that a sec­ond mis­tri­al was declared on Novem­ber 4, 2015 after a dead­locked jury once again failed to con­vict Madi­son, AL police offi­cer, Eric Park­er, on a civ­il rights charge brought against him by the U.S. Depart­ment of Jus­tice ear­li­er this year. Park­er was cap­tured on video beat­ing Indi­an grand­fa­ther, Sureshb­hai Patel, to the point of par­tial paral­y­sis in Feb­ru­ary after Patel, ini­tial­ly iden­ti­fied by a neigh­bor as a “sus­pi­cious Black man,” repeat­ed­ly told the offi­cer he could not speak Eng­lish. The U.S. Depart­ment of Jus­tice re-tried the case after the first mis­tri­al was declared in Sep­tem­ber.

“While the tri­al was sup­posed to focus on the unrea­son­able use of force that Park­er used on Patel, it was Patel’s immi­gra­tion sta­tus and Eng­lish pro­fi­cien­cy skills that were real­ly on tri­al,” said Lak­sh­mi Sri­daran, Direc­tor of Nation­al Pol­i­cy and Advo­ca­cy at SAALT. Indeed, in his open­ing remarks, Park­er’s attor­ney said: “When you come to the U.S. we expect you to fol­low our laws and speak our lan­guage. Mr. Patel bears as much respon­si­bil­i­ty for this as any­one.”

“We con­tin­ue to believe in the strength of the evi­dence and that the defen­dan­t’s actions vio­lat­ed the con­sti­tu­tion­al rights of the plain­tiff,” said Bha­vani Kakani, Pres­i­dent of AshaKi­ran.

As we see time again with police bru­tal­i­ty cas­es in this coun­try, par­tic­u­lar­ly with Black vic­tims, the mes­sage of this case is loud and clear: that police bru­tal­i­ty rarely war­rants pun­ish­ment. Dante Bar­ry, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of Mil­lion Hood­ies Unit­ed, not­ed: “It is absolute­ly dev­as­tat­ing to hear the news from Alaba­ma as it reflects a deep pat­tern of unfair­ness for peo­ple of col­or. Although ground­ed in anti-black­ness, police bru­tal­i­ty by law enforce­ment and immi­gra­tion enforce­ment is no stranger to South Asian com­mu­ni­ties and it is indica­tive of this polit­i­cal moment to be on the path to jus­tice.”

SAALT encour­ages South Asian Amer­i­cans to be vig­i­lant and engaged in the efforts of the move­ment for Black lives to draw atten­tion to the ways in which Black com­mu­ni­ties in par­tic­u­lar, as well as oth­er com­mu­ni­ties of col­or, are fac­ing state vio­lence. “The case of Mr. Patel pro­vides an oppor­tu­ni­ty for South Asians to become active par­tic­i­pants in the demands of the move­ment for Black lives,” said Suman Raghu­nathan, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of SAALT.

How Anti-Blackness Affects my South Asian-American Identity

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I recently attended a weekend-long conference, the South Asian Americans Leading Together’s Young Leaders Institute in Washington D.C., on addressing and confronting anti-black racism within the South Asian-American community.

The fol­low­ing week, I spent time with extend­ed fam­i­ly, and wit­nessed a group of young white adults chant­i­ng Hin­du bha­jans as a part of the clos­ing cer­e­mo­ny for the end of their yoga train­ing and lat­er went to a fusion wed­ding between a Pak­istani friend and her now white hus­band. I noticed so many things that I don’t know if I would have paid as much atten­tion to, had it not been for that week­end with SAALT in late-July.

And for that, I can­not be more grate­ful.

I’ve always gen­er­al­ly stayed away from the South Asian folks at my school, whether it was high school or col­lege. I don’t know if it is because of white America’s con­sis­tent mes­sage that being brown isn’t good enough, or if it’s because most of the South Asian folks I know seem to care more about Bol­ly­wood, bhangra, and med school (that they may not even want to attend) than about con­fronting the issues with­in our com­mu­ni­ty, or if it’s because I always thought I was so dif­fer­ent from them, or all of the above.

SAALT[Pho­to Cour­tesy: SAALT Young Lead­er­ship Insti­tute 2015]

SAALT’s pro­gram gave me the oppor­tu­ni­ty to meet South Asians with whom I could relate and form a con­nec­tion. More impor­tant­ly, it helped me see that the South Asian-Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty that I’ve been around all my life is only a frac­tion of the whole.

Noth­ing but white­ness is good enough for white Amer­i­ca, and no mat­ter how hard we try to assim­i­late, we brown folk are still, at the end of the day, brown.

It took me a long time (much longer than I would like to admit) to tru­ly real­ize how much South Asians ben­e­fit from—and active­ly take part in—anti-blackness in this coun­try. I think I liked to believe that I sym­pa­thized with and cared about the strug­gle of black folk so much that it didn’t mat­ter that I was a part of this (in some ways) priv­i­leged group of peo­ple.

I look at my fam­i­ly and see how well we’ve played into Sil­i­con Valley’s ver­sion of the mod­el minor­i­ty myth—my par­ents came from India with noth­ing and “made it” here, but what does that “mak­ing it” real­ly mean?

It means striv­ing to reach the ide­al of Amer­i­can life—that is, mid­dle-to-upper-class white­ness. White­ness is our mod­el, and we brown folk, once we reach the peak that we are allowed to reach, are to be the sub­se­quent mod­el for black folk.

We are not to stoop to their level—it is, after all, the oppo­site of any­thing white, and in white Amer­i­ca, that is a sin. White suprema­cy wants us to believe, like them, that we are bet­ter than black­ness.

That we are bet­ter than black­ness, even though it is the slave labor of black folk that paved the way for our immi­gra­tion to the Unit­ed States.

SAALT[Pho­to Cour­tesy: SAALT Young Lead­er­ship Insti­tute 2015]

Brown and black peo­ple as a minor­i­ty race have a shared his­to­ry of resis­tance. We are also vic­tims of hate crimes, for instance, the Indi­an grand­fa­ther who was par­a­lyzed in Alaba­ma by the police in Feb­ru­ary. White Amer­i­ca con­stant­ly calls us “dot­heads,” “ter­ror­ists,” and tells us to “go back to where we came from.” But, still, we must be bet­ter than black Amer­i­ca, must we not?

[Read Related: Indian Grandfather Paralyzed by Police for Looking Like a ‘Skinny Black Guy’]

My fam­i­ly and I were tak­ing pic­tures a few days ago, and my aunt called me over and said, “We need some light­ness in the pho­tos!” It was all “in jest,” of course, but these jokes come from a place of anti-black­ness. This pass­ing state­ment man­i­fests itself in oth­er fam­i­lies as self-esteem dam­ag­ing com­ments dur­ing desi par­ties, as par­ents for­bid­ding their chil­dren from going out­side in case they become too dark or peo­ple bleach­ing children’s skin.

I didn’t know that South Car­oli­na Gov­er­nor Nik­ki Haley was desi until a few months ago when my mom told me. She and Louisiana Gov­er­nor and 2016 Repub­li­can Pres­i­den­tial Can­di­date Bob­by Jin­dal and peo­ple like them have done all they can to assim­i­late into white, cap­i­tal­ist Amer­i­ca, but it’s still not enough. They still face racist attacks that their white coun­ter­parts would nev­er receive. They will always be con­sid­ered the “oth­er.”

[Read Related: #BobbyJindalisSoWhite That He Is #Jindian]

As an exam­ple,  when I was younger and I used to write sto­ries, all of my char­ac­ters were white. I nev­er tried to write sto­ries about peo­ple like me because I nev­er read main­stream sto­ries about South Asians liv­ing in the Dias­po­ra.

I still strug­gle with society’s need to con­form to the majority’s stan­dard. I didn’t know what to say when I spoke to the white yoga teach­ers, who were chant­i­ng Om Asato Ma Sadga­maya, com­plete with acoustic gui­tar, on the shore of a lake. I didn’t know how to tell them that their rela­tion­ship with these vers­es, with the very prac­tice of yoga, comes from a place of priv­i­lege. I didn’t even know how to con­front my own fam­i­ly when they were mak­ing what they thought were harm­less jokes about everybody’s skin col­or.

I’m con­stant­ly told that I shouldn’t make every­thing about race (or class, or gen­der), that I need to be able to have fun.

But it isn’t fun when I’m par­tic­i­pat­ing in a his­to­ry of oppres­sion and racism.

My boyfriend—before he was my boyfriend—and so many oth­er brown men use the n‑word with each oth­er all the time. When I first called him out on it, he told me it was “just a word, San­jana!” But it’s not, is it? It’s not just a word. It is a vio­lent word with a his­to­ry of sys­tem­at­ic degra­da­tion and oppres­sion and slav­ery and mur­der behind it, and it is not ours to use, let alone to try to reclaim.

Unlearn­ing is a process, of course, and I am still in the mid­dle of it. Our choic­es as South Asians need to be delib­er­ate. We need to pay atten­tion to the peo­ple we look up to and aspire to be, to the things we want to do, even to the words we use. We need to exam­ine why we choose to stand on the side that we stand on. Because right now, the Unit­ed States is at war, and there is no mid­dle ground. Silence is com­plic­i­ty; there is no neu­tral­i­ty. We either stand on the side of the oppres­sor or the oppressed, and every choice we make is a tes­ta­ment to that.

I was in the car with my Pak­istani friend before her wed­ding, going to get her hair done, and she told me that the oth­er day, when she went to a salon, they tried to bleach her skin to make her lighter. The scary thing is, it’s not uncom­mon. She was told to lose weight and become lighter for the wedding—essentially, she was told to con­form to white, colo­nial stan­dards of beau­ty on a day that was sup­posed to cel­e­brate her in all her beau­ty.

We are being used as pawns in white America’s war against black folk. When we play into the mod­el minor­i­ty myth, we are only help­ing white Amer­i­ca oppress a peo­ple who have been oppressed since they have been here. When we make com­ments about skin col­or, we are doing what white suprema­cy wants us to do.

They seem like harm­less choices—even ben­e­fi­cial choices—but they are, in fact, vio­lent. They harm not only black folk, but they harm our own com­mu­ni­ties as well.

And, most of all, they are unac­cept­able.

********
San­jana Lak­sh­mi
Young Lead­ers Insti­tute Fel­low, 2015

This post was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished on Brown Girl Mag­a­zine, and being repub­lished with their per­mis­sion.

The Young Leaders Institute 2015 is sponsored by:

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14 Years Later: Still Under Suspicion, Under Attack

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Today, the 14th anniver­sary of the trag­ic events of Sep­tem­ber 11th, South Asians are the most rapid­ly grow­ing demo­graph­ic group in the coun­try num­ber­ing over 4.3 mil­lion. Yet, as our com­mu­ni­ties con­tin­ue to grow in new, unex­pect­ed, and long­time des­ti­na­tions, we are increas­ing­ly the tar­gets of hate vio­lence, sus­pi­cion, and sur­veil­lance. Mus­lims, Arabs, South Asians, and those per­ceived as Mus­lim have borne the brunt of a con­tin­ued post‑9/11 back­lash, reflect­ed in poli­cies that cast our com­mu­ni­ties as un-Amer­i­can, dis­loy­al, and sus­pect. Mus­lim, Arab, and South Asian com­mu­ni­ties were swift­ly tar­get­ed for “spe­cial reg­is­tra­tion” through the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Entry-Exit Reg­is­tra­tion Sys­tem (NSEERS) pro­gram just months after the events of Sep­tem­ber 11th. Through NSEERS, more than 80,000 men were required to reg­is­ter with the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment; thou­sands more were sub­ject­ed to addi­tion­al inter­ro­ga­tion, deten­tion, and depor­ta­tion. Nev­er­the­less, this exten­sive and mis­guid­ed pro­gram did not result in a sin­gle known ter­ror­ism-relat­ed con­vic­tion. A sur­veil­lance sys­tem first deployed against the Black Free­dom Strug­gle, adapt­ed for NSEERS, and then evolved to spy on Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ties through FBI map­ping pro­grams is now in the third stage of its evo­lu­tion through the cur­rent Coun­ter­ing Vio­lent Extrem­ism (CVE) pro­gram, which sin­gle-mind­ed­ly focus­es on Mus­lims to iden­ti­fy and crack down on vio­lent extrem­ism.  The same sys­tem con­tin­ues full cir­cle today to sur­veil  Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment lead­ers.
The cur­rent polit­i­cal debate con­tin­ues to poi­son and inform the nation­al dis­course about our com­mu­ni­ties and immi­grant com­mu­ni­ties at large. SAALT cap­tured this trou­bling dynam­ic in our Sep­tem­ber 2014 report, Under Sus­pi­cion, Under Attack,which tracked a near­ly 40% increase in xeno­pho­bic polit­i­cal rhetoric from our pre­vi­ous 2010 report. Fur­ther­more, over 90% of these com­ments were moti­vat­ed by anti-Mus­lim sen­ti­ment.  Some of the most egre­gious polit­i­cal rhetoric from pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates Don­ald Trump and Jeb Bush, among oth­ers has cur­rent­ly labeled immi­grants as “ille­gals” and “anchor babies.”  This whole­sale and unac­cept­able lan­guage implies some do not have the right to be in the Unit­ed States, the quin­tes­sen­tial nation of immi­grants.
Four­teen years after increas­ing­ly xeno­pho­bic polit­i­cal rhetoric and mis­guid­ed fed­er­al poli­cies paint­ed our com­mu­ni­ties as dis­loy­al, mono­lith­ic, and sus­pi­cious with no results, Mus­lim, Arab, and South Asian com­mu­ni­ties appear to increas­ing­ly be the tar­gets of hate vio­lence. SAALT’s report, Under Sus­pi­cion, Under Attack, also doc­u­ment­ed 76 inci­dents of hate vio­lence against our com­mu­ni­ties from Jan­u­ary 2011 through April 2014. Over 80% of these inci­dents were moti­vat­ed by anti-Mus­lim sen­ti­ment. In fact, the most recent FBI hate crime sta­tis­tics released last year show that anti-Islam­ic hate crimes are at their high­est since 2001. 2015 has seen a wave of vio­lent inci­dents aimed at Mus­lim, Arab, and South Asian com­mu­ni­ties. In Feb­ru­ary,three Arab Mus­lim stu­dents at Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na-Chapel Hill were gunned down exe­cu­tion-style, appar­ent­ly due to their reli­gion. Lat­er that month, a  Pak­istani Mus­lim man and father of three in Ken­tucky was shot and killed in his car after drop­ping his daugh­ter off at school. This week a Sikh man in Chica­go was approached by anoth­er dri­ver who yelled “ter­ror­ist go back to your coun­try” and vio­lent­ly beat him in his own car, requir­ing hos­pi­tal­iza­tion. And we can­not for­get when a known white suprema­cist walked into a Sikh house of wor­ship, or gur­d­wara, and shot and killed six Sikh com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers in Oak Creek, Wis­con­sin in 2012. Ear­li­er this year a vicious and dead­ly attack by a white suprema­cist in Moth­er Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Car­oli­na, left nine Black com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers dead. We join oth­er com­mu­ni­ties of col­or to address the grow­ing threat of white suprema­cy that has bur­geoned nation­wide. Accord­ing to the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter, the num­ber of white suprema­cist groups in the Unit­ed States has grown over 54% from 2000 to 2014.
Now more than ever, South Asian com­mu­ni­ties need and deserve trust with law enforce­ment at mul­ti­ple lev­els as we grow in num­ber and con­tin­ue to be tar­gets of vio­lence. In response, SAALT devel­oped a pro­pos­al and suc­cess­ful­ly advo­cat­ed for the cre­ation of the White House Inter­a­gency Task Force on Hate Vio­lence last year. We are work­ing to ensure the task force focus­es on the unique bar­ri­ers our com­mu­ni­ties face with law enforce­ment to report and pre­vent hate crimes, par­tic­u­lar­ly after the revised Depart­ment of Jus­tice Pro­fil­ing Guid­ance was released last year, includ­ing exemp­tions for nation­al secu­ri­ty, bor­der secu­ri­ty, and state and local law enforce­ment. We have seen what hap­pens when our com­mu­ni­ties are vic­tim­ized rather than pro­tect­ed by law enforce­ment: ear­li­er this year Sureshb­hai Patel, an Indi­an grand­fa­ther in Madi­son, Alaba­ma, was beat­en to the point of par­tial paral­y­sis by a local police offi­cer in his son’s neigh­bor­hood. He was mis­tak­en for Black, rec­og­nized lat­er as a South Asian immi­grant with lim­it­ed Eng­lish abil­i­ty, and ulti­mate­ly bru­tal­ized by law enforce­ment.
To tru­ly real­ize our val­ues as a nation, every­one is enti­tled to equal pro­tec­tion under the law. Our com­mu­ni­ties deserve to know their rights, feel empow­ered to report hate vio­lence, address xeno­pho­bic polit­i­cal rhetoric that will cer­tain­ly surge fur­ther in this elec­tion cycle, and build mean­ing­ful rela­tion­ships with gov­ern­ment and law enforce­ment. In order for our com­mu­ni­ties to flour­ish as we grow, we must advance poli­cies that uphold our core Amer­i­can val­ues of diver­si­ty, inclu­sion, equal rights, and pro­tec­tion for all.

SAALT Honors the Victims of Oak Creek Calls for Policy Change

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 5, 2015
Con­tact: Lak­sh­mi Sri­daran, lakshmi@saalt.org

Three years ago today on August 5, 2012 a known white suprema­cist mur­dered six Sikh-Amer­i­cans at their Gur­d­wara or place of wor­ship in Oak Creek, Wis­con­sin. SAALT con­tin­ues to mourn and hon­or the vic­tims: Suveg Singh, Sat­want Singh Kale­ka, Ran­jit Singh, Paramjit Kaur, Sita Singh, and Prakash Singh. This past week­end, the Oak Creek com­mu­ni­ty came togeth­er along with hun­dreds from around the coun­try for the annu­al Char­di Kala 6K Run/Walk in the spir­it of hope and relent­less opti­mism.

Oak Creek was a tragedy — not only for South Asian and Sikh Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ties, but for the nation as a whole. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, what hap­pened that day is becom­ing less of an anom­aly due to a num­ber of rea­sons: South Asians are the most rapid­ly grow­ing demo­graph­ic group in the coun­try set­tling in new des­ti­na­tion com­mu­ni­ties. And, unre­lent­ing hate vio­lence con­tin­ues to tar­get South Asians and com­mu­ni­ties of col­or at large.

In the last six months alone, there have been vio­lent inci­dents tar­get­ing Hin­du, Arab, and Sikh com­mu­ni­ties in New Jer­sey, North Car­oli­na, and Cal­i­for­nia, respec­tive­ly. Cur­rent poli­cies do not allow for such inci­dents to be eas­i­ly cat­e­go­rized as hate crimes. This must change. These events are also part of an alarm­ing trend of white suprema­cist activ­i­ty, fur­ther illus­trat­ed by the dead­ly shoot­ing at the Moth­er Emanuel AME church in Charleston in June fol­lowed by a wave of arsons at Black church­es in the South. Com­mu­ni­ties of col­or are increas­ing­ly fac­ing a com­mon threat of vio­lence from white suprema­cy, even as our nation grows more racial­ly and eth­ni­cal­ly diverse. In a 2011 study, Pol­i­cyLink esti­mat­ed that the Unit­ed States will be major­i­ty peo­ple of col­or by the year 2040.

Sad­ly, this growth is paired with a cur­rent polit­i­cal debate that is increas­ing­ly char­ac­ter­ized by polit­i­cal rhetoric that paints our com­mu­ni­ties as dis­loy­al, sus­pi­cious, and un-Amer­i­can. SAALT’s report Under Sus­pi­cion, Under Attack, released last Sep­tem­ber doc­u­ment­ed 78 instances of xeno­pho­bic polit­i­cal speech over a three-year peri­od span­ning 2011–2014, of which near­ly two-thirds occurred at the nation­al lev­el.

We can only expect the debate to get worse this elec­tion cycle. GOP pres­i­den­tial con­tender Don­ald Trump has already described Mex­i­can immi­grants as “rapists and mur­der­ers.” Repub­li­cans in Con­gress con­tin­ue to push an anti-sanc­tu­ary cities bill that will under­mine rela­tion­ships between law enforce­ment and immi­grant com­mu­ni­ties. We have also seen the Coun­ter­ing Vio­lent Extrem­ism pro­gram emerge from fed­er­al gov­ern­ment this year that dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly focus­es on Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ties and not enough on the real threats of white suprema­cy and domes­tic ter­ror­ism.

But, our com­mu­ni­ties con­tin­ue to push for change. The Oak Creek shoot­ing helped dri­ve a crit­i­cal change in the FBI hate crimes report­ing pro­to­col this year. For the first time, there are now cat­e­gories for crimes moti­vat­ed by anti-Sikh, Hin­du and Arab sen­ti­ment. The White House also cre­at­ed a high-lev­el Inter­a­gency Task Force last year focused on address­ing hate vio­lence nation­wide.

How­ev­er, it is crit­i­cal that there are strong hate crime poli­cies at the state and local lev­el, which is where the rela­tion­ships between local res­i­dents, com­mu­ni­ty-based orga­ni­za­tions, and law enforce­ment are most impor­tant. The may­or of Oak Creek coor­di­nat­ed his city staff, police, and fire depart­ments to devel­op a mod­el first response munic­i­pal pol­i­cy after the shoot­ing. The Arab Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion of New York and oth­ers suc­cess­ful­ly advo­cat­ed for the Brook­lyn Dis­trict Attor­ney’s office to estab­lish a unit ded­i­cat­ed to inves­ti­gat­ing hate crimes last year. This is the kind of infra­struc­ture that all com­mu­ni­ties need to address and hope­ful­ly pre­vent hate vio­lence.

In the spir­it of Char­di Kala or relent­less opti­mism, we hon­or the vic­tims of that trag­ic day three years ago and stand with our 51 com­mu­ni­ty part­ners nation­wide to help stem the tide of relent­less vio­lence tar­get­ed at our com­mu­ni­ties and all com­mu­ni­ties of col­or.

The Development of “Who You Are”

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As a Master’s in Devel­op­ment Prac­tice can­di­date at Emory Uni­ver­si­ty, I am always inves­ti­gat­ing the ‘devel­op­ment’ of gen­der empow­er­ment, hous­ing, dis­as­ter response, envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty, among oth­er top­ics. A com­mon mis­take made in devel­op­ment, specif­i­cal­ly inter­na­tion­al devel­op­ment, is that a good idea or method of imple­men­ta­tion is assumed to work in every con­text and in all com­mu­ni­ties. As a gay South Asian male, I want to under­stand devel­op­ment issues in the con­text of the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty. Is the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty mak­ing the mis­take of using a uni­ver­sal method approach in under­stand­ing who we are?

“Com­ing out” came up in many con­ver­sa­tions dur­ing my expe­ri­ence with SAALT’s 2014–2015 Young Lead­ers Insti­tute (YLI), which focused on LGBTQ issues. Some stu­dents were “out,” some were in the process, some had not even thought about it, and some don’t plan on “com­ing out”. At dif­fer­ent times in their lives, peo­ple explore com­ing out aIMG_0088nd its impacts in dif­fer­ent ways. At eight years old, I came out to my mom after watch­ing a tele­vi­sion episode of Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal when one of the char­ac­ters came out to his mom after acknowl­edg­ing his homo­sex­u­al­i­ty. I told my mom, “Hey Maa, the son is gay just like me!” My mom chuck­led, as she knew I loved relat­ing tele­vi­sion shows to my own real­i­ty. I chuck­led as well, but some­where in me I knew I was gay just like the son in the soap opera. My first kiss was with a boy just like his was. I would get ner­vous around my guy crush just like he did. And I want­ed to tell my mom that I am gay just like he did. At that time, how­ev­er, it seemed like it was not the right time for me to come out to my mom. Maybe because her chuck­le meant that she wasn’t ready. Maybe because she told me that I was too young to know if I was gay. Maybe because I was scared of los­ing my fam­i­ly and com­mu­ni­ty even though I grew up know­ing oth­er LGBTQ South Asians who were always so kind and wel­com­ing. Maybe, just maybe, I was scared think­ing back to a par­ty where I over­heard some Indi­an aun­ties and uncles hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion about the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty say­ing, “They do dis­gust­ing stuff, very dis­gust­ing.” Then, an uncle point­ed his fin­ger at me say­ing, “Stay away from them, Sumon, stay away from them.” How could I stay away from them when I was just like them?

It wasn’t until 14 years lat­er that I felt it was right for me to tell my mom I am gay by sim­ply say­ing, “Maa, I have been attract­ed to Ricky Mar­tin since his debut of Livin’ La Vida Loca.” At that moment, I knew it was right for me to tell my mom about a part of me that I want­ed her to know about and under­stand. Iron­i­cal­ly, this was around the same time Ricky came out pub­licly as a gay. Over­all, I am hap­py with my deci­sion to come out as it allowed me to under­stand a part of my iden­ti­ty and embrace the oth­er iden­ti­ties and real­i­ties of my life.

IMG_0041Through­out YLI, I heard many sto­ries of what it means to be part of the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty. Each young leader that I met fol­lowed their own way of express­ing who they are, even though they all had their doubts and ques­tions when iden­ti­fy­ing them­selves as we all do. They all had a time, or times, in their devel­op­ment where they dis­cov­ered that there is no one true def­i­n­i­tion of what it means to be LGBTQ.

From YLI’s phe­nom­e­nal stu­dents, I learned that I am tru­ly liv­ing who I am when I embrace the mul­ti­ple iden­ti­ties that make me who I am. I live life as a gay male, a South Asian, a grad­u­ate stu­dent, a Hin­du, a son, an nephew, a sib­ling, a friend, a vol­un­teer, and so much more. My roles and who I am devel­op by many fac­tors in life and the respon­si­bil­i­ties I take on. See­ing myself through the lens of only one iden­ti­ty pre­vents me from hon­or­ing my full self and from expe­ri­enc­ing all of my qual­i­ties and strengths. When I see the inter­sec­tions with­in my life, I live my real­i­ty and I allow myself to ful­ly expe­ri­ence life’s jour­ney. I have learned that sex­u­al orientation—and explor­ing the role of “com­ing out” in my life—are impor­tant parts in the devel­op­ment of who I am, but this is not the only deter­mi­nant.

I thank SAALT, the 2014 YLI stu­dents, Trikone Atlanta, Rak­sha, Inc., my aunt, fam­i­ly, and friends for help­ing me to under­stand that the devel­op­ment of “who you are” is not one path, but many paths that lead to this moment and the many more that lie ahead.

********
Sumon Ray
Young Lead­ers Insti­tute Fel­low, 2014

On the Limits of American(a)

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Peo­ple are sur­prised to find out that I’m not actu­al­ly from here. The stan­dard con­ver­sa­tion after the hol­i­days goes: “You went all the way back to Bangladesh? So, your entire fam­i­ly is there? Oh, you lived there till you were 19?” And then of course: “But you speak Eng­lish so well!” My brown skin and third world cit­i­zen­ship hide the inter­na­tion­al school edu­ca­tion that I was priv­i­leged to receive. A child­hood of Scoo­by Doo and Friends makes my accent famil­iar enough to go unno­ticed. Alas, pass­ing priv­i­lege does not an Amer­i­can make. Right?

I was thrilled to learn that a group called South Asian Amer­i­cans Lead­ing Togeth­er DSC_0035(SAALT) was host­ing a LGBTQ-themed sum­mer lead­er­ship insti­tute. It bog­gled my mind that I might actu­al­ly meet oth­er queer and gen­der vari­ant deshi stu­dents inter­est­ed in cre­at­ing change. But sure­ly I would­n’t be eligible—many semes­ters as a stu­dent work­er in the career ser­vices office had taught me to expect a “U.S. cit­i­zens and per­ma­nent res­i­dents” clause hid­den in the eli­gi­bil­i­ty sec­tion. Imag­ine my sur­prise when the Young Lead­ers Insti­tute (YLI) explic­it­ly wel­comed “diver­si­ty in regard to [among oth­er things] immi­gra­tion sta­tus.” As I hur­ried­ly pulled togeth­er the appli­ca­tion, I asked myself for the first time: Did this put me under the umbrel­la of South Asian Amer­i­can?

Was it enough to self-iden­ti­fy as Amer­i­can?

Legal papers are a poor mea­sure of iden­ti­ty, but I had only ever con­sid­ered this line of rea­son­ing in the con­text of undoc­u­ment­ed Amer­i­cans who have lived here for years. My accep­tance into a col­lege (and the finan­cial aid that came with it) gave me the priv­i­lege of a legal avenue of entry to the Land of Oppor­tu­ni­ty not afford­ed to them. I was not com­pelled by cir­cum­stances at home to risk arrest by ICE, or worse, incur the wrath of my punc­til­ious father. Yet, after five very for­ma­tive years in the Unit­ed States, the process of my inte­gra­tion was well under way. I could no longer dri­ve on the left side of the road, I grew an invis­i­ble lay­er of per­son­al space, and I could even sing most of the words to Jour­ney’s Don’t Stop Believin’. Yet, I knew that I could “hold on to that feel­in’” only for so long.

There will come a time when my Dura­tion of Sta­tus will come to an end, and I will need to go back. When I share my appre­hen­sion about this legal dead­line on my stay with friends who have grown up here, they are right­ly con­fused about the log­ic behind it. As a stu­dent of eco­nom­ics, I know that the poten­tial gain to world GDP is much high­er from elim­i­nat­ing bar­ri­ers to immi­gra­tion than bar­ri­ers to trade, yet it is my body that is stopped at the bor­der for fur­ther screen­ing while iPods and Big Macs hop across with ease. There’s some­thing a lit­tle hyp­o­crit­i­cal about insist­ing on an imper­me­able bor­der while cul­ti­vat­ing a glob­al con­sumer IMG_0059base for all things Amer­i­cana. I know, how­ev­er, that the way to move for­ward is not through a bat­tle of wits but by lis­ten­ing to each other’s sto­ries.

Sto­ries are a pow­er­ful thing. They allow us to see our shared human­i­ty with those dif­fer­ent from us, and to see beau­ty in diver­si­ty. Sto­ries are also a way for those of us liv­ing at the mar­gins to claim space for our­selves. It is no sur­prise to me that many of my fel­low YLI par­tic­i­pants have cho­sen to take on projects that cel­e­brate sto­ries of peo­ple like us.

My YLI project per­for­mance is an effort to share my sto­ry. I draw upon my own lived expe­ri­ences to trace the cracked lines between being a Bangladeshi cit­i­zen, a queer deshi, and an Amer­i­can. I have strug­gled to find a way to tell my sto­ry with any degree of hon­esty, when I know that the lived real­i­ty of LGBQ and T* South Asians are invis­i­ble, or worse, erased. Yet, that is exact­ly why it needs to be told. As I toe the line between that beau­ti­ful spec­ta­cle of exhi­bi­tion­ism that is Amer­i­can per­for­mance art, and my deshi impulse to keep skele­tons hid­den deep inside my clos­et (pun intend­ed), I remind myself of the com­fort I have found in the voic­es of queer and trans peo­ple of colour. In turn, I hope that my sto­ry may offer some solace to my younger broth­ers and sis­ters and sib­lings (and cousin-broth­ers and cousin-sis­ters and cousin-sib­lings).

Wher­ev­er they are from, I hope that they feel that they belong.

********
Shabab Mirza
Young Lead­ers Insti­tute Fel­low, 2014

Father Gunned Down After Dropping Daughter off at School

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | March 4, 2015

Con­tact: Lak­sh­mi Sri­daran
lakshmi@saalt.org
301–270-1855

SAALT and the Nation­al Coun­cil of Asian Pacif­ic Amer­i­cans (NCAPA) note with sad­ness and alarm yet anoth­er inci­dent of vio­lence against Mus­lim, Arab, Sikh, Hin­du, and South Asian com­mu­ni­ties.

Last Fri­day, Feb­ru­ary 28, Mukhtar Ahmed, a Pak­istani Mus­lim man in Louisville, KY, was gunned down and killed after drop­ping his daugh­ter off at school. Local police have made an arrest, but have not yet released infor­ma­tion on a pos­si­ble motive. We must place this inci­dent in the con­text of the trou­bling num­ber of recent attacks against Mus­lim, South Asian, Sikh, Hin­du, and Arab com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers and insti­tu­tions in the last few months alone.

These include:

  • The hit and run killing of a Soma­li Mus­lim boy in front of a mosque in Kansas City last Decem­ber 4, 2014;
  • An attack on a Flori­da Iraqi busi­ness own­er on Feb­ru­ary 6, 2015;
  • The police beat­ing of an Indi­an grand­fa­ther in Madi­son, AL also on Feb­ru­ary 6, 2015;
  • The exe­cu­tion-style mur­der of three Arab-Mus­lim stu­dents in North Car­oli­na on Feb­ru­ary 10, 2015;
  • A like­ly arson attack on the Hous­ton Islam­ic Insti­tute on Feb­ru­ary 13, 2015;
  • Van­dal attacks on two Hin­du tem­ples in Wash­ing­ton State on Feb­ru­ary 14, 2015 and Feb­ru­ary 28, 2015

This steady stream of vio­lent inci­dents reminds us that our com­mu­ni­ties remain under attack—as SAALT detailed in our Sep­tem­ber 2014 report, Under Sus­pi­cion, Under Attack.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, these attacks occur as the dom­i­nant rhetoric that posits Mus­lim Amer­i­cans as sus­pect and under sus­pi­cion continues—through pro­grams such as the FBI’s efforts to map Mus­lim Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ties and the recent White House Coun­ter­ing Vio­lent Extrem­ism (CVE) Sum­mit, which focused exclu­sive­ly on Mus­lims as per­pe­tra­tors of “vio­lent extrem­ism.”

Fed­er­al, state, and local law enforce­ment must all address domes­tic hate vio­lence inci­dents tar­get­ing Mus­lim, Arab, Sikh, Hin­du, and South Asian com­mu­ni­ties. We all deserve to feel safe.