Being Indian in Trump’s America

By Amitava Kumar

March 15, 2017

Sunayana Dumala at the funeral of her husband, Srinivas Kuchibhotla, an Indian engineer who was murdered last month as part of a hate crime in Kansas.PHOTOGRAPH BY NOAH SEELAM / AFP / GETTY

On a September evening in 1987, Navroze Mody, a thirty-year-old Indian man living in Jersey City, went for drinks at the Gold Coast Café, in Hoboken. Later that night, after he left the bar, he was accosted on the street by a group of about a dozen youths and severely beaten. Mody died from his injuries four days later. There had been other attacks on Indians in the area at that time, several of them brutal, many of them carried out by a group that called itself the Dotbusters—the name a reference to the bindi worn by Hindu women on their foreheads. Earlier that year, a local newspaper had published a handwritten letter from the Dotbusters: “We will go to any extreme to get Indians to move out of Jersey City. If I’m walking down the street and I see a Hindu and the setting is right, I will hit him or her.”

When I first read about the attack on Mody, I had only recently arrived in the United States. I was a young graduate student at Syracuse University then, and although the news alarmed me I wasn’t fearful. In those days, distances felt real: an event unfolding in a city more than two hundred miles away seemed remote, even in the imagination. I might have worried for my mother and sisters, who wore bindis, but they were safe, in India. Whatever was happening in Jersey City, in other words, couldn’t affect the sense that I and my expat friends had of our role in this country. The desire for advancement often breeds an apolitical attitude among immigrants, a desire not to rock the boat, to be allowed to pass unnoticed. Since 1965, when Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Immigration and Nationality Act, abolishing the racist quotas of the nineteen-twenties, our compatriots had been bringing their professional skills to America. If we didn’t hope to be welcomed, we at least expected to be benignly ignored.

A lot has happened in the long interregnum. Indian-Americans have the highest median income of any ethnic group in the United States. There is a greater visibility now of Indians on American streets, and also of Indian food and culture. I’ve seen the elephant-headed deity Ganesha displayed all over America, in art museums, restaurants, yoga centers, and shops, on T-shirts and tote bags. The bindi isn’t the bull’s-eye it once was. But the bigotry, as we have witnessed in 2017, has not gone away. In early February, an Indian man in Peyton, Colorado, awoke to find his house egged, smeared with dog feces, and vandalized with racist slogans. Two weeks later, at a bar in Olathe, Kansas, a U.S. Navy veteran named Adam Purinton allegedly opened fire on two Indian patrons. Srinivas Kuchibhotla, a thirty-two-year-old aviation engineer, was killed; his colleague Alok Madasani survived. Ten days later, a Sikh man was attacked outside his home in Kent, Washington, while washing his car. A white man wearing a mask told him to go back to his country, then shot him in the arm. Soon after that, as if to confirm that Indians across the country were now on notice, an unsettling video began to circulate online. Originally posted in August by a sixty-six-year-old computer programmer named Steve Pushor, it shows a crowded park in Columbus, Ohio. As the camera pans past immigrant parents playing with their children, Pushor says, in voice-over, “The Indian crowd has ravished the Midwest.”

The racist’s calling card is ignorance: he cannot discriminate (if that is the right word) between nationalities and religions, between Indians and Saudis and Egyptians, Hindus and Muslims and Sikhs. One of the first hate crimes to take place in the days following 9/11 was the murder of Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh gas-station owner in Mesa, Arizona. The killer probably thought that Sodhi, with his turban and beard, was Muslim; he had told his friends that he was “going to go out and shoot some towelheads.” This year’s attacks bear some of the same hallmarks. Purinton reportedly shouted “Get out of my country!” before firing on the men from India, who he believed were from Iran. And last Friday a white man in Florida set fire to an Indian-owned convenience store because, he told police, it didn’t carry his brand of orange juice and he wished to “run the Arabs out of our country.” We, the mistaken people.

The incitement sixteen years ago was 9/11. Today it is Donald Trump. The President’s nationalistic rhetoric and scapegoating of racial others, not to mention his habitual reliance on unverified information, have sown panic among immigrants. I’ve often asked myself lately whether I’ve been right to suspect that people were looking at me differently on the street, at airports, or in elevators. Whenever a stranger has been kind to me, I have almost wanted to weep in gratitude. Unlike when I first arrived here, distance no longer offers any reprieve from these feelings. The Internet delivers ugly fragments of report and rumor throughout the day, and with them a sense of nearly constant intimacy with violence.

Soon after Kuchibhotla’s murder, a commentator in India pointed out a grave irony: in the run-up to the 2016 election, a number of right-leaning American Hindus supported Trump’s candidacy, not only with donations but also with elaborate prayer ceremonies to propitiate the gods. The more conservative of these people—those who backed the rise of a hypernationalist Hindutva ideology in India through the nineties—have made common cause with American conservatives, who share their view of Islam as the enemy. Trump’s fear-mongering found a ready echo in the ultra-right-Hindu heart. But to the homegrown racists emboldened by that same fear-mongering, the Hindu-G.O.P. alliance makes no difference. Purinton’s question for Kuchibhotla and Madasani in the bar in Kansas was not whether they were Muslim but whether they were in the country illegally. (They weren’t.) A week later, in a Facebook post, Kuchibhotla’s widow framed the question as Purinton perhaps really meant it: “Do we belong here?” This week, a possible answer came from Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, when an Indian-American woman confronted him at an Apple store. “It’s such a great country that allows you to be here,” Spicer told her. His interlocutor was an American citizen, but that didn’t seem to register. (Not white, not quite.)

An Indian man in the Midwest once told me that, every time an American shakes his hand and says, “I love Indian food,” he wants to respond, “I thank you on behalf of Indian food.” He might just as well thank the American on behalf of—take your pick—spelling bees, lazy “Slumdog Millionaire” references, yoga and chai lattes, motels, software moguls, Bollywood-style weddings, doctors and taxi drivers, henna, Nobel laureates, comedians, the baffling wisdom of Deepak Chopra, and Mahatma Gandhi. But perhaps it’s time he reminded the American of something, too. The man who shot Gandhi, in 1948, was neither Muslim nor Sikh nor a foreigner. He was a disgruntled member of the majority, like Purinton, and had once belonged to India’s most nationalistic party—the same party that, just today, told Indians in the United States to stop worrying for their safety.

Amitava Kumar is a writer and journalist who teaches at Vassar College. His latest book, “Immigrant, Montana: A Novel,” is forthcoming from Knopf.

Source: newyorker

The Hole in Obama’s Legacy

 By Eric Alterman , August 12, 2016

Before becoming President, Barack Obama raised a question he hasn’t come close to answering: What to say to the white working-class people whose way of life was being destroyed? 
Photograph by STEFAN ZAKLIN / EPA / Redux   

n the spring of 2005, I received an invitation to a small dinner in Washington, D.C., with the new junior senator from Illinois. The other invitees all turned out to be leaders of national progressive organizations. We introduced ourselves, and John Podesta—then the president of the Center for American Progress, now Hillary Clinton’s campaign chief—thanked Barack Obama, on the group’s behalf, for an invitation to a meal that was not accompanied by a demand for at least a thousand-dollar donation. We all chuckled, in those innocent, pre-Citizens United days, about our corrupt electoral system.

Obama, who had entered the Senate with sky-high expectations, began his brief remarks by noting that, at his very first press conference, he had been asked to describe his legacy. Then he got serious. He talked about campaign stops that he made in former factory towns and manufacturing centers across Illinois. These were places that, until recently, had kept generations of working-class men gainfully employed. He worried that he had nothing to say to them that would be both honest and hopeful. He had gathered us, he explained, to find out if the members of the progressive community had some good ideas to help these people that he might be able to champion as senator. He was not saying that he considered himself to be on our team. Rather, he was looking for a mutually beneficial relationship.

No doubt many sensible ideas were proposed by the wonks present. Perhaps some of them have even been implemented; my memory fails on these details. I can say with some certainty, however, that no one present was able to offer the kind of overarching political framework that could be deployed to counter the conservative mantra of small government, low taxes, and reduced regulation. What I do remember—indeed, what I will never forget—is the feeling of both awe and relief at meeting a successful national politician who was so damn normal. Obama happened to be seated next to me, and our talk felt not in the least forced or staged, as it had with virtually every other politician to whom I had ever spoken in semi-private. The authenticity he communicated struck me as even more impressive when I considered the fact that he was, as we all knew, just about the only glimmer of hope offered to liberals in the aftermath of George W. Bush’s 2004 victory. I left the dinner on a kind of high. I recall hoping that my daughter, who was then seven years old, might one day be able to vote for this amazing man to be President, once the country got over itself regarding race.

You know the rest. Aside from daily e-mails asking for money, I never heard from Obama again, but he did somehow win two Presidential contests. (My daughter, now eighteen, will instead get to cast her first vote for the woman we all expected to be the nominee in 2008.) Obama’s two terms have been a disappointment in many respects—mostly growing out of his need to bow to the financial forces that ever more tightly control our electoral system. Even so, his Presidency looks to have been the most consequential for progressives since Franklin Roosevelt was in office; Obama not only saved the economy in 2009 but also moved the country toward universal health care, tamed some financial market abuses, and significantly improved America’s standing on the global stage. That he has done this without starting any wars or creating any major scandals, and in the face of ridiculous Republican recalcitrance, while remaining basically the same cool dude I met eleven years ago—and a great dad—in the bargain, leaves me breathless with admiration.

And yet Obama never even came close to solving the problem he raised at that dinner: What to say to the white working-class people whose way of life was being destroyed by the vagaries of global capitalism coupled with a political system that responded first and foremost to the wealthy? This, too, is part of his legacy. And it has helped to give rise to a billionaire demagogue, who has answered Obama’s question with a combination of racism, xenophobia, false promises, and threats of violent reprisals.

Most progressives I know would say that Obama barely even tried to fix the problem he raised that night. By picking an economic team from the pro-corporate wing of the Democratic Party, embracing an insufficiently robust stimulus package in a failed attempt to secure Republican support, and then pivoting too quickly to deep deficit reduction, he insured that those left behind in the wake of the financial crisis would stay behind (if not quite as far behind as they were at its outset). And, given his support for the corporate-friendly Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, one can only conclude that he believes in this course—something few people understood when we elected him. In this respect, the seeds of dissent and dissatisfaction were sown at the moment of his inauguration.

Of course, Donald Trump’s success is not Obama’s fault, as some empty-headed, allegedly “evenhanded” pundits would have it. Republican leaders, egged on by Fox News and talk radio, encouraged the bigoted language that has defined Trump’s campaign by questioning Obama’s religion, birthplace, patriotism, and legitimacy from day one. They certainly deserve to see their party taken away from them. The journalists who looked the other way as Republican spokespeople, in the Party leadership and the media, exploited racial hatred and anti-immigrant fervor deserve a significant share of the blame as well.

But the fact remains that this year’s election hangs on the question of whether enough members of the white working class can see past the hatred and blame that Trump is stoking. Trump’s egregious flaws as a candidate might turn out to be our saving grace. The grievances that drove his success, however, are not going anywhere. Even if Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine’s convenient flip on the Trans-Pacific Partnership sticks, they will still be, as Obama was, answerable to a political system that puts campaign contributors far ahead of ordinary voters. More than merely winning the 2016 Presidential election, this will be the Democrats’ greatest challenge—assuming that Trump returns to a comparatively private life, and our political system to the level of dysfunction and distrust we have all come to take for granted.

Eric Alterman is a CUNY Distinguished Professor of English and Journalism at Brooklyn College, a media columnist for The Nation, and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

Source: newyorker

Farewell to the Benghazi farce: Trey Gowdy’s investigation concludes not with a bang but a whimper

Wednesday, Jun 29, 2016 05:30 AM EST

To the surprise of no one, the House Select Committee's eighth report is expected to contain no major revelations

Eric Boehlert, Media Matters

Trey Gowdy (Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin)

This article originally appeared on Media Matters.

To the surprise of no one, the Republicans’ four-year partisan inquisition surrounding the terrorist attack on the American compound in Benghazi, Libya, is likely ending with a whimper. With the House Select Committee on Benghazi finally releasing its findings, and the report representing the eighth and (likely) final government investigation into the deadly event, the Benghazi hoax, as sponsored by Fox News for four years, finally comes to an impotent and ignominious end.

Early indications are that the report, as expected, provides no major revelations. Already undercut by a report from Democratic members of the Benghazi committee that further debunked right-wing myths about the attack, the GOP’s long-awaited Benghazi report is in danger of being met with collective shoulder shrugs.

Even Donald Trump seems relatively uninterested in kicking the Benghazi can around the campaign trail this year. Yes, he’s made a couple passing references to it and implied grave misdeeds by Hillary Clinton. But there’s been no serious push on his part to highlight the GOP’s endless pursuit. (Last year, Trump actuallycriticized the Republicans’ investigations as being incompetent.)

So if Benghazi isn’t being used as an election year battering ram against the Democrats, what has been the point of committee chairman Trey Gowdy’s comically extended inquiry? Anybody with a pulse and a political calendar realized that the final GOP Benghazi report, with its 2016 summertime release, was designed to disrupt Clinton’s White House run. Why else would the committee’s work be extended for two-plus years when it likely could have been completed in six or seven months? (Two years to hold four hearings?)

Unsure they could defeat Clinton at the ballot box, and lately even more unsure that Trump is competent enough to run a White House campaign, Republicans were hoping and praying for an investigative intervention to stop Clinton.

It ain’t happening with Benghazi. But anyone who followed the facts, or who reads Media Matters, knew that a very long time ago.

The whole mindless, partisan endeavor shines a light on what’s gone completely wrong with the Republican Party and the right-wing media. It’s about how shallow, endlessly debunked conspiracies and money-sucking investigations have replaced any attempt to govern and legislate.

The fact that the GOP’s Benghazi gotcha pursuits have stretched through the entirety of Obama’s second term, and that Obama stands poised to leave office with surging approval ratings, tells you all need to know about the crippling disconnect between the right-wing media and the real world today. (Fox’s Eric Bolling: “I think Benghazi’s a much bigger scandal than Watergate.”)

But let’s never forget that the Beltway press claims partial ownership of this slow-motion fiasco, too. The press certainly owns the first three years of the Benghazi charade when journalists breathlessly amplified every slipshod allegation leaked from Republicans on Capitol Hill, or followed Fox News’ lead in hyping an endless series of supposed revelations about the attacks. Sometimes we couldn’t tell who was more anxious to uncover an Obama or Clinton-related “scandal,” the press or partisan conservatives.

If I had to estimate, I’d say it took until October 2015 — three entire years of Benghazi news dead ends — before the D.C. press mostly conceded there’s no there there with regards to this so-called scandal. It took Hillary Clinton testifying for 11 hours on Capitol Hill and Republicans completely unable to advance, let alone confirm, their wild conspiracy theories before the press largely seemed to acknowledge the futility of the whole enterprise. (Accidental truth telling in 2015 by some GOP House members regarding the motivation about the Benghazi committee likely also convinced reporters the endeavor was largely a scam.)

Unfortunately, this was after several Beltway journalists’ reputations took serious hits when they were caught trusting dubious sources who lied about Benghazi revelations.

Meanwhile, here’s some distressing context. I wrote this more than 1,300 days ago:

Benghazi has entered the realm of churning, right-wing myth making. (Think Waco and Vince Foster). The story has become completely detached from reality, and the twisted narrative feeds off itself with constant misinformation that’s repeatedly presented as ‘fact.’

I certainly never thought in the fall of 2012 that four years later I’d still be pointing the Benghazi hoax and highlighting the obvious absurdity of the pursuit. Overall, Media Matters has posed hundreds of fact-checking items on Benghazi and we’ll continue to do so as long as conservatives cling to the fantasy. But that will be much harder to do now without a congressional inquiry to give the wild claims shape.

The larger point is that Republicans and Fox News have wasted untold time, money and energy pushing a thoroughly discredited pipe dream about how Obama and Clinton are supposedly monstrous people who chose to let four Americans die at the hands of Islamic terrorists and then lied about it. Worse, Obama watched video “in real time” while the terrorists snuffed out American lives. “Support wasn’t given,” in the words of Karl Rove.

Vile, vile lies.

This whole endeavor has been a depressing reflection on how broken the conservative movement has become, and also how the Beltway press simultaneously takes its marching orders from the scandal-obsessed right wing. Like Republicans, journalists seemed to be eagerly holding out hope for an Obama or Clinton scandal to emerge from the Benghazi investigations.

And of course that faulty blueprint hasn’t just applied to the Benghazi “scandal.” As noted in September last year, ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, and NBC Nightly News together spent just as much time covering Clinton’s email controversy as they spent covering the substance of her entire presidential campaign.

If we’re truly bidding farewell to Fox News’ Benghazi conspiracy hoax (fingers crossed), there’s another point about context that’s worth stressing one last time.

I think one way the GOP and conservative media were able to string the serious press along on Benghazi was that they framed the Benghazi terror attack as an almost-unprecedented event in American history (sadly, it was not) and one that exposed unheard of security failures by Obama’s White House and Clinton’s State Department; it was supposedly an epic fiasco that demanded countless investigations.

What the press for most of the last four years refused to do is put the Benghazi terror attack in any kind of historical context.

Consider these facts under President Ronald Reagan:

*April 18, 1983: Bombing of U.S. Embassy in Beirut. 63 people were killed, including 17 Americans, includingthe CIA’s chief analyst in the Middle East, and the Beirut station chief.

*September 6, 1983: Two Marines were killed during a lengthy rocket assault on the Marine base at Beirut’s airport.

*Oct. 23, 1983: Bombing of Marine barracks in Beirut. A suicide bomber detonated a truck full of explosives at a U.S. Marine barracks; 241 U.S. service personnel were killed.

*Sept. 20, 1984: Bombing of U.S. Embassy annex. A truck bomb exploded in Aukar, northeast of Beirut, outside the annex, killing 24 people, including two U.S. military personnel.

During an 18-month span, U.S. facilities in and around Beirut were attacked by terrorists four times, killing 330 people, including 262 Americans.

There was exactly one congressional investigation into the Beirut debacle.

Eric Boehlert, a former senior writer for Salon, is the author of "Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush."

Source: salon