"Is Milk in my Coffee a Racial Metaphor?" - THE GOAN: I'm Not Here (21 March 2015)

I fear my skillset has been rendered redundant and that all prospects for my employability have been lost. What has given rise to this panic, you ask? The announcement that the American coffee company Starbucks, which boasts a global presence, has now positioned itself as an expert on race. Earlier this week, the company announced that it was going to initiate a programme called “Race Together”, wherein baristas at 12,000 Starbucks locations across the United States would engage patrons in conversations about race. Who knew that all it would take to end oppression was a nice chat over a cup of coffee? And what does this say for those of us who work on race-related issues, but are no good at making a decent cup of joe?

When I acquired my Masters in Asian American Studies from UCLA, it was with the awareness that that degree was conferred upon me by an educational entity that had been borne out of the political struggle of the US Civil Rights movement. Indeed, the legendary Campbell Hall where my MA programme shared space with other Ethnic Studies centres, such as the Native American, African American, and Chicano Studies programmes, was the site where John Huggins and Bunchy Carter – members of the Black Panther Party who were UCLA students – had been slain in 1969. It would be revealed that the FBI had had a hand in the murders. 

Thanks to my MA in the study of race, I went on to acquire work where I could analyse how effective high school programmes were at catering to the specific learning needs of multicultural student bodies. And, in case you were wondering, the answer is not very well. But as simply rendered as that answer seems, it was arrived at after a great deal of data-collection and analysis at my first post-graduate school job, which was with the Los Angeles Unified School District. The team I was part of hoped that in answering that question, which seemed like a foregone conclusion anyway, that the way would be paved to bring about necessary educational changes. This, not least because Los Angeles is a city where, as US census data indicates, the birth rate among minority groups has outstripped that of whites. Now, imagine having that kind of conversation while buying your cup of coffee as you try to make it to work on time in the morning!

Don’t get me wrong – this isn’t a putdown of the capabilities of baristas to, both, get your day started on the right note with a much needed caffeine boost and to aid dialogue that could foster community relations. In fact, coffeehouses have quite the history of being the sites of information exchange, hotbeds of revolution even. Take the European coffeehouses of the 17^th and 18^th centuries, for example, where people gathered precisely because those were the spaces where news could be sought and conversations had. And these were not always genteel affairs. On 12 July, 1789, Camille Desmoulins stood atop a table at the Café de Foy, shouting out a call to arms while, himself, waving two pistols in the air. “Aux armes, citoyens!” he is believed to have proclaimed, a moment that would go down in history as the precursor to the fall of the Bastille a mere two days after. Something tells me that, in this day and age, getting one’s non-fat soy latte at Starbucks is not going to inspire the same kind of fervour… 

To be fair, however, it has less to do with political apathy than with what Starbucks itself has come to represent. Arguably, the popularity of Starbucks lies in its sheer ubiquity rather than in the quality or taste of its coffee. In most major American cities, one is guaranteed to find a Starbucks location (or three) in the most well-trafficked spots, and even in less frequented areas. Like McDonald’s, it’s the place you go because you know they probably have a restroom you could use without necessarily having to buy something. To discuss race relations? A less likely choice. 

Even as Starbucks rolls out the #RaceTogether programme, little has been said about what the company has done to educate its baristas on the most pressing of racial concerns in the United States today. Without judging the intelligence of the person who makes my coffee, I expect them to know how to do precisely that and not to need to entertain queries I have about why white cops can kill unarmed black people and be acquitted for crimes of that nature. Honestly, it’s probably hard enough dealing with customers desperately in need of a cuppa ahead of going into a soul-crushing job without also having to make believe that talking about race is as simple as creating a hashtag.

From The Goan.

"Guilty of Walking While Brown" - INDIA CURRENTS (California - March 2015)

On February 6, 2015, an elderly Indian man was left partially paralyzed following an encounter with the police in Madison, Alabama. News of the event spread on social media and elsewhere online. When it became known that a police car had captured video of the incident on its dashboard camera, an online petition was circulated to exert pressure on the Madison City Police Department to release the footage. But even before the petition had acquired the threshold of 1600 signatures it had set itself, the police had made the video public.

Watching the video for the purposes of writing this article was difficult. At the edge of the screen, one sees Sureshbhai Patel (57), with his hands behind his back, possibly handcuffed, being thrown to the ground by officer Eric Parker. Later, when Parker, along with one of the other officers on the scene, attempts to get Patel to stand up, it becomes apparent that the “suspect” is unable to, and is literally hauled onto his feet before sagging back down. Patel, it was discovered, had suffered a neck injury that would cause him paralysis in some parts of his body. 

As the video spread virally, the indignation, particularly of South Asians, was instantaneous, and rightly so. It would be revealed that Patel, a citizen of India, had come from that country to help care for his grandson, born prematurely and, to do so, was living in his son’s home in Alabama. As more of the story became known, perhaps we likened Patel to members of our own family. We saw in this grandfather our own parents and grandparents, those transnationals and migrants who connect our lives between continents. In fact, I had heard of this case of police brutality from a cousin whose children my father took care of in Texas. Like Patel, my dad and other relatives like my aunt and uncle, had come to the States for the function of temporarily helping out with childcare. And while I appreciate how much coverage the event has received, there is something about the nature of the conversation around the incident that leaves me dissatisfied. 

This is not an isolated event of police brutality. To regard it as such runs the risk of reducing it to a sign of South Asian American exceptionalism. Consider that the police had been alerted by a resident of the neighborhood who claimed that a “skinny black guy” they had “never seen … before” was “just wandering around,” and who was estimated to be in his thirties. That the police would be compelled to respond to such a call should make one question who and what they wished “to Serve and Protect,” as the police motto goes. In all likelihood, the call probably originated from a white household, but what is unmistakable is that the police reacted precisely because the person being reported was believed to be black. Evidently, it was unfathomable to, both, the caller and law enforcement that a young black person should have any business in such a neighborhood.

“This is a good neighborhood. I didn’t expect anything to happen,” Chirag Patel, the victim’s son told the press, possibly explaining why he had thought it would have been all right for his father to walk around in broad daylight as he had become accustomed to doing in their town. Speaking to The Washington Post for their February 12 report, the younger Patel had said: “It is a dream for me [to live here] because I came from a very poor family and I worked so hard … I’m totally devastated that I might have made a big mistake.” 

Even as middle class aspirations and immigrant desires to live the veritable American dream prove to be no protection against racism, there is no doubt that the Patels – just as anyone living in the United States – should not have had to feel that the commonplace act of walking out one’s door would put one’s life at risk due to the commonplaceness of racism. Nonetheless, it is specifically because of the assurance felt by a community that is often emblematically deemed the upwardly mobile model minority that South Asian Americans can believe themselves to be immune to systemic racism. Moreover, this extends itself to the notion that the police, rather than being embedded within such systems, are testament to the protection of those who are considered ideal subjects in the multicultural civil society of the United States. 

To cut to the chase, Sureshbhai Patel, who speaks very little English and is an Indian farmer who was visiting this country, was severely injured by a white policeman because Patel was identified as being black. Following the recent verdicts in the Eric Garner and Michael Brown cases, where the white policemen who were responsible for the deaths of these two black men were tried and found not guilty, I would argue that the incident involving Patel received as much attention as it did because of the growing inescapability of questions surrounding abuses of power. As crystallized in the trending hashtag “Black Lives Matter,” these questions center on how racial difference is perpetuated by such abuses, both by the police and laws that protect them over minorities. 

While Parker was swiftly charged with third degree assault, the attack on Patel should not be seen as an outlier to forms of racialized violence that have been manifesting increasingly through the involvement of the state, be it in the form of the police or even politicians. Note the lack of irony in Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s declaration in a January radio interview with the Family Research Council’s Washington Watch that the United States was under threat of a Muslim invasion because immigrants of that faith background “want to use our freedoms to undermine that freedom in the first place.” An Indian American who converted to Christianity from Hinduism, Jindal’s opinions are those of the garden variety Republican, but the danger lies in those views emanating from a politician of minority racial origins. They serve to obfuscate the very real threat to the lives of Muslim Americans, such as Deah Barakat, Yusor Abu-Salha, and Razan Abu-Salha, the three young relatives who were executed by a white gunman in Chapel Hill a week after Parker attacked Patel.

In that South Asian American immigrants are of many faiths, Jindal’s callous statement, made for political gain, diminishes the post-9/11 Islamophobic violence his own community faces, let alone those other Americans who so happen to be Muslim. Being deliberately oblivious to xenophobia, coupled with a sense of insulation that can emanate from being considered a model minority, especially because one is not black, can easily lull one into being complacent about institutionalized racism. But are you sure “they” know who you are when you take a walk around your neighborhood?

From India Currents. The longer version appears as "Walking While Brown While Looking Black" on Media Diversified, and a short piece on the subject appears in The Goan as "To Serve and Protect (Someone Else)."

"When Academics Play Tourists" - THE GOAN: I'm Not Here (24 January 2015)

While in Goa for a conference this past December, my brother-in-law enquired if it was the India Ideas Conclave that I was there for. My protests to the contrary were quick, due to the nature of said event. The conference I was in Goa for had barely found mention in any media in the state, while the Conclave could be seen advertised on the main thoroughfare with flashy billboards. Online, it was being avidly discussed on Goan listservs, because the Indian right wing had unabashedly proclaimed it as a gathering of intellectuals and politicians who sought to distance themselves from Nehruvian socialism. Several affiliates of Hindu fundamentalist organisations were present at the occasion, as were members of the BJP. This betrayed the Hindutva leanings of the affair, revealing it to be more than just about politics and the economy. So, no, I corrected my sister’s husband; I was most assuredly not in Goa for that conference, but another. Except, upon actually attending the Re-Imagining Theory Conference, organised by the Forum on Contemporary Theory (FCT) at the International Centre, Goa (ICG), I wondered if there was something to my brother-in-law’s conflation of the two meetings.

To be fair, the Conclave made no bones about why it had chosen Goa for its deliberations, having hired a five star hotel for the get-together. Even though the rise of religiously fundamentalist organisations in the state can readily be charted over the last few years, it was evident that the right wing had settled on Goa more for its location than in recognition of its zealotry or political importance. In comparison, the theory conference, which gave the impression of being a serious academic affair, not least because of its inclusion of such high profile speakers as Gayatri Spivak and Arjun Appadurai, quickly let that veneer slip. Was it a foregone conclusion that as the site of choice for the academic conference, Goa was to be relegated to being merely a service venue rather than an intellectual space? One is inclined to believe so, given the quaint little note the organisers sent participants in a logistical email before the conference began on 21 December, 2014. It said: “Enjoy Goan hospitality and return home refreshed in body and spirit”.

That the sole purpose of Goa and Goans should be that it and they exist primarily as purveyors of hospitality rather than as intellectual participants in the programme, as such a missive implies, should give one pause. And if the notion that Goa was where one comes to be serviced rather than to be of service had not been articulated clearly enough by the aforementioned note, then it was hammered home in the conference’s opening session. In it, the organisers attempted to theorise the space of Goa as one that could be characterised through the idea of “liquidity”; they clarified their meaning by underscoring Goa’s proximity to the ocean and by hinting at the liberal availability of alcohol. When FCT held its annual conference in Goa in 2007, similar comments were made by the organisers, who then referred to Goa being a “spirited” location. But at least then FCT had made some attempt to be more cognisant of the region itself and to engage it academically. For instance, at that earlier instalment, the discussions were held at Goa University and, additionally, there was a session convened to discuss Pundalik Naik’s Acchev/The Upheaval (2002).

That seven years later at the ICG, Goa University’s presence at the conference could be marked by the official appearance of just one faculty member from that institution is just as damning of the university as it is of the organisers. Consider, too, that the conference’s only recognisable panel on Goa was laughably labelled “Spatializing the Local: Kolkata, Goa, and the Locality of Space”. As a participant on this panel, I was thoroughly confused as I wondered how the disparate locales of Goa and Kolkata were to be bridged during the session – an impossible endeavor, I was to discover. I was even more concerned as my presentation was about the Goan diaspora and the Portuguese Empire rather than about the ‘spatializing’ of Goa. But no matter, as it was quite clear that this was of no consequence to the organisers.

If the India Ideas Conclave represented the country’s religious right wing and the Re-Imagining Theory Conference India’s secular liberals, to both the meeting point was Goa. The conference I attended concluded on Christmas Eve. To Goans, Catholic or not, Christmas is a significant date not only due to the religious prominence it bears for some, but also because it is emblematic of the socio-cultural fabric of the region. To have an event end right before this occasion highlights the conference’s aim to use Goa as a destination with the added promise of local festivities. As with the right wing gathering, the pre-Christmas academic conference cast Goa as the religious other to India, fixing it once more as the nation’s pleasure periphery. Perhaps Goa’s failing tourism industry should take note of the emerging market in fundamentalists and academics.

From The Goan.

"In Fact, Fiction" - THE GOAN: I'm Not Here (20 December 2014)

At the recently concluded fifth edition of the Goa Arts and Literary Festival, I was compelled to attend a panel with the intriguing title of “Goa’s First Diaspora.” What followed, however, was a perplexing display of cultural hubris and the obfuscation between fact and fiction. In conversation with Dr. Kiran Budkuley, the head of Goa University’s English Department, writer Gopalkrishna Pai discussed his Kannada novel Swapn Saraswat (2009) which chronicles the alleged sixteenth century exodus of 22,000 Hindu families from what we now know as Goa; this, it was averred, was due to the conversions that ensued with the arrival of the Portuguese. To be clear, there is little historical doubt that conversions occurred and people were displaced. Nonetheless, what is less certain in Pai’s version of events is the questionable reality in which these claims are grounded. What Pai’s project entails, then, is the remaking of events in order to claim a history of persecution for a contemporary community of religiously and culturally elite, namely the Saraswats.

In turning a critical eye to the way in which Pai translates assumed fact into fiction, my purpose is not to deny the Saraswats their identity, although others have successfully argued that the very category of the Saraswat is not one that emerged till recently. Rather, what is up for examination is the manner in which Pai uses fiction to establish a Saraswat past. Operating from his own standpoint as a descendent of the diasporic community he fictionalises, Pai – a heritage Konkani-speaker – claims evidence of the persistent existence of this tongue, despite exile, as proof of origin. What is notable here is the equation formed between language, geography, and persecution, which the writer melds together to explicate origin.

Not only does this origin-story rely on the postcolonial idea of language-based states that are the hallmark of Nehru’s vision of modern India, but this linguistic basis of nationalist Goan origin is remade in Pai’s reclamation of a past Goan geography for the Saraswats of his novel as an undisputable homeland. This is curious, because “Goa” of the early modern period at the time of the Portuguese conquest was only the Velhas Conquistas, and one would be hard-pressed to believe that any one language was spoken exclusively in any region. Apart from geographic closeness, if the exiles chose Karnataka, it would also have been because of pre-existing kinship networks and linguistic familiarity. In other words, while colonisation may have caused exile, its routes were pre-ordained.

What this also speaks to is a power-base that extended beyond any one location; so, if such linkages can be traced through language, as Pai does, then they must also be traced through caste. During his panel presentation, neither was Pai questioned about how he dubiously arrived at the figure of 22,000 exiled families from a Goa that would have been far smaller than the region we know now, but also what it meant for such a group to continue to exercise power as an upper caste elite group. It would appear that the panel was more interested in foregrounding Saraswat identity as one of the community having been victims. In such an uncritical mode, no room was left to enquire into the possibility that the purpose of the migration might have been to maintain hierarchical caste power, especially with the advent of a new political force in the shape of the Portuguese. History is replete with examples of power operations shifting to other locations in moments of crisis and the elite continuing to function in such capacity even when in exile.

Pai did make some passing reference to the colonial displacement of other communities, such as the Kunbis. But as is common in all considerations of Goa’s First Peoples, that community is given short shrift in Pai’s evocation of diasporic Goanness, and were mentioned only as an afterthought. One wonders what Pai would make of the fact that African-descended slaves also escaped Portuguese India into Karnataka. Surely they too should be accounted for as being part of “Goa’s first diaspora” if they found themselves in the same region as the Saraswats and in the same general timeframe. Yet, what passes for research in Pai’s mythification of a community is not overly concerned with accounting for “facts” that have little to do with destabilising the ethno-racial and religious supremacy of the people he chooses to centre.

What is one to make of Pai’s strange assertion that he is in possession of a photograph that shows the

Hindus of Goa handing over keys to the Portuguese in the sixteenth century? Later during his talk, he corrected himself and said he meant a painting, instead; but at any rate, whatever the alleged visually symbolic proof of the handover of power, that this serves as research evidence for his novel should raise eyebrows. In lieu of this, Budkuley asked Pai why he felt his novel had received so much acclaim. Pai basked in the moment. Perhaps the answer is that people love stories of the resilience of the persecuted, especially ones that traverse fact and fiction as if they were one and the same.  

From The Goan.