Not aware of David Cameron being a 'mathematical type' in any way...matrimc wrote:I thought only mathematical types cone up with impractical ideas. Chalo, calling it a night.
While one welcomes the "breakthrough" in Indo-US N-cooperation,the burning issues reg. N-safety after Fukushima,the $200Billion cleanup costs,pitiful amt mentioned as liability in the deal,a paltry few hundred millions,and the design and obsolete technology of US plants are of grave concern to India.A thorough investigation must be made into these issues before we sign on and order any N-plants from the US.OVERSIGHT: “Although the design defects in reactor GE Mark I was first noted about 40 years ago, the nuclear industry resisted regulatory changes that could have ameliorated the Fukushima disaster.” Picture shows tanks containing radioactive water in Okuma, Fukushima, where the disaster occurred.
Any understanding between Narendra Modi and Barack Obama on circumventing the Indian nuclear liability law to protect American reactor suppliers should be a matter of concern
At their recent meeting, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Barack Obama discussed methods of circumventing the Indian nuclear liability law to protect American reactor suppliers from the consequences of accidents caused by design defects. Although public details are scarce, if they have indeed reached an understanding on the issue, then this is not a cause for celebration; it should be a matter of deep concern.
The importance of supplier liability is illustrated by the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011. When the reactors were hit by the tsunami that year, the weakness of the General Electric (GE) Mark I design was cruelly exposed. The reactors’ inadequate containment was unable to prevent the spread of radioactivity when the cooling systems failed and pressure built up inside the reactors. Although this design defect was first noted about 40 years ago, just as the Fukushima reactors were commissioned, the industry resisted regulatory changes that could have ameliorated the disaster.
Framework of impunity
The Japan Center for Economic Research estimated that the cost of cleanup at Fukushima may reach $200 billion. A 2013 expert study “Accounting for long-term doses in worldwide health effects of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident” published in the journal Energy and Environmental Science estimated that the disaster may lead to about a thousand excess deaths due to cancer. However, it is unlikely that GE will ever be held accountable for its poor design choice. Under Japanese law, the supplier is indemnified from liability for an accident. This is the framework of impunity under which nuclear suppliers like to operate.
Legal indemnity for suppliers creates a “moral hazard”— encouraging suppliers to take excessive risks since they don’t have to pay for the consequences. The case of GE not strengthening the Mark I containment is not an exception. The Presidential commission appointed to study the 1979 Three Mile Island disaster, which saw a partial nuclear meltdown, pointed out that the supplier, Babcock and Wilcox, was already aware of design defects that contributed to the accident, but never bothered to resolve them.
Nevertheless, suppliers have ferociously defended their privilege of being free of liability, and they exerted tremendous pressure on the Indian government when the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act was framed in 2010. Contrary to the industry’s propaganda, this is not a “tough” law. Indeed, several clauses in the law were directly lifted from an annex to the “Convention on Supplementary Compensation,” created by the U.S. government to benefit its nuclear industry.
The law channels primary liability for an accident to the operator — the public sector Nuclear Power Corporation of India — and caps it at Rs. 1,500 crore. This overrides the absolute liability judgment of the Supreme Court, passed after the Bhopal gas leak disaster, which had no such limit. The cap is about a thousand times smaller than estimates of the damage that a serious nuclear accident could cause. Therefore, the law is designed to protect the financial interests of the operators and the supplier; victims or the taxpayers will simply have to bear costs beyond this cap.
Multinational suppliers are unhappy because a relatively minor clause allows the operator to recoup this compensation. By the scales of nuclear commerce, the amount of money involved is minuscule. A single reactor may cost up to an estimated Rs. 60,000 crore — 40 times the maximum amount the supplier could be liable for. The figures of each unit have been arrived at from studying plants under construction in Finland and France. If imposing liability on suppliers leads to cost increases, it can only mean that they are using the law as an excuse to escalate prices.
A close reading of the statements made by advocates of their interests reveals what suppliers are really concerned about: the Indian law could set a precedent that could undermine the iniquitous international system of impunity that they enjoy. “If litigants were able to file suit against suppliers, essentially it could destroy the whole industry,” declared Ashley Tellis, an American negotiator for the nuclear deal.
The United Progressive Alliance government repeatedly tried to subvert the law, earning a sharp rebuke from Arun Jaitley who wrote in 2013 that “a leopard never changes its spots. The government’s intention to dilute the right of recourse … [has] continued.” He should explain why his own government is pursuing a similar policy. The current proposal of using a “legal memorandum” to reinterpret the law is similar to the UPA’s attempt to sign away its “right of recourse” on various pretexts.
No tangible benefits
The most baffling feature of the current agreement is that it holds no tangible benefits for India. The United States has offered to sell two reactor designs — both of which are expensive and untested. The Westinghouse AP1000, which has been chosen for Mithi Virdi (Gujarat) is not in commercial operation anywhere and has encountered difficulties wherever it is being built. At Plant Vogtle, in the U.S. state of Georgia, Westinghouse and its partner Georgia Power have sued each other for a billion dollars over cost increases and delays. Even in China, the AP1000 has been delayed by about two years because of problems with reactor coolant pumps.
Even less can be said for GE’s Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (ESBWR), selected for Kovvada (Andhra Pradesh). After years of questions about ESBWR’s steam dryer, the design obtained regulatory approval from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission — the first step before construction can commence — only in September 2014. There are no firm orders for the ESBWR.
The Vogtle plants were initially estimated to cost about $7 billion apiece. Even accounting for lower construction costs in India we showed — in a detailed study “Cost of Electricity from the Jaitapur Nuclear Power Plant” published in the Economic and Political Weekly — could translate into electricity tariffs that are as high as Rs. 15 per unit. If the government is looking for cheap electricity to promote development, importing American reactors hardly seems like a smart choice.
Last week, the residents of Mithi Virdi wrote an open letter to Mr. Obama and Mr. Modi reminding them that the “gram panchayats of four most-affected villages … [have] passed a resolution declaring the entire … region as [a] nuclear free zone.” The leaders of the “world’s largest democracies” face a clear choice. They can channel billions of dollars into nuclear corporations by sacrificing safety and economic prudence. Or they can heed the democratic voices from Mithi Virdi and cancel these unnecessary deals.
(Suvrat Raju and M.V. Ramana are physicists with the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace)
it is not just religion, there's also ethnicity based issues involved. even if jindal was born a christian, he would have still disowned his indianness/heritage. of course this is hypothetical as he was not born christian....matrimc wrote:Because theirs is an abrahamic heritage.Gus wrote:no other prominent politician of other heritage does this sort of distancing from their heritage.
But that is the crux of the problem. The "Brasht" concept that divides "Indic" culture and keeps it from advancing. The 2 ideas above are, at least since January 26, 1950, supposed to be completely separated. But even today, an outsider, POTUSBO, has to come and lecture 'young' Indians that the real beauty of the Constitution devised and staunchly defended all these years by BHARATIYAS guarantees that people can 'convert' from any religion to anything else, and be the best of BHARATIYAS.he is ashamed of his Indian roots, he converted his religion,
If Jindal inherited his looks from his mother, he may well have inherited his drive from his father, who reminded his sons every day how lucky they were to live in America.
Amar Jindal grew up in northern India during the chaotic years that followed the partitioning of India and Pakistan. The family lived in a remote farming community that was backward even by Indian standards — the main source of fuel for cooking and heat was dried cow dung. Amar's mother was illiterate. His father was educated to the fifth grade. In time, Amar graduated with a degree in civil engineering from Punjab University. He married a classmate's sister, Raj; she had a master's degree.
The Jindals settled into graduate-student housing near LSU. In the eyes of an immigrant, Louisiana in 1971 was paradise on earth. There were abundant oil and gas reserves, thriving industry, major ports, multiple railroads, jobs aplenty, the guarantee of schooling for all. Amar got a good job with one of the railroads; Raj switched from nuclear physics to the budding field of computer science and was hired by the state of Louisiana as one of its first IT people. (Thirty years later, she is still working in the same department. Technically, Bobby is her boss.)
Jindal remembers his parents always working hard. For a time the family had no car; they rode the bus everywhere. Amar took great pains to be home at night to read to his son before bed, something Bobby now tries to do with his own children. Supriya complains that Bobby's version of monster hide-and-seek gets the kids riled up at bedtime. (All three children sleep together in one room, right next door to the master. You get the picture of a little family camped out in only a few rooms upstairs in a huge old mansion.) After his own bus rides home from work, Amar didn't have quite so much energy. Frequently, it would be he who fell asleep during story time. Bobby would pad out and dutifully report to his mother: Dad's asleep. "I thought I was putting him to bed," Bobby recalls with a smile.
Jindal remembers his father being disappointed with A's — it had to be A-pluses. As a youngster, Bobby competed in tennis tournaments, but later he would turn entrepreneurial, starting a computer newsletter, a retail candy business, and a mail-order software company. He also worked the concessions at LSU football games, and rooting for the Tigers remains a passion to this day. Jindal has said that when he was growing up, there were "several" other Asian Indian families in the Baton Rouge area and that he was raised in a "strong Hindu culture." Because there was no temple in town, the Jindals worshipped at the homes of friends. Jindal has spoken of attending weekly pujas, reading the Vedic scriptures, and making trips back to India to visit relatives. At the same time, he said recently during a conversation in the back of his SUV as he was driven through Baton Rouge, "my parents, and my mom especially, were adamant that, 'Look, we made the decision to come to America, our kids are Americans, they should grow up fully American.' If you look at our childhood, it was pretty typical of a whole lot of other children's childhoods."
The Jindals lived in a series of apartments for nearly seven years, until the birth of Bobby's younger brother, Nikesh. Today, Nikesh Jindal is a thirty-year-old lawyer in Washington. He went to Dartmouth and Yale — "Quite a shock for a southern boy," he said on the phone recently with a chuckle. Unlike Bobby, he has no southern accent. Nikesh remembers fondly the family's one-story, three-bedroom house in a "small little neighborhood where you knew all the people on the street." When asked if his family ever got together with other Hindu families to worship during holidays, Nikesh, who has never before been interviewed, became flustered. "I'll have to think about it and get back to you on that," he said. (All requests for an interview with Amar and Raj Jindal were declined.)
Bobby Jindal entered Baton Rouge Magnet High School at age thirteen. At the time, the school system in the city was under a controversial desegregation order; while the LSU community lent some diversity, Baton Rouge was still very much a part of the Old South. Jindal said that he never once experienced prejudice as a youth. "Before I went to college, I didn't realize not everybody grew up the way we do in south Louisiana." (The postings on popular desi Web sites often seem at odds with Jindal's own experience, especially from those raised in the South.)
The magnet school attracted the best students, and Jindal was one of the stars. "He always had his eye on, first of all, where he wanted to go, and second, how he was going to get there," said Fred Aldrich, a former teacher. "He was very — I don't want to use the word clever, because that's a cheap word. I think he was very good at analyzing what will work and then going out and doing it."
Around this time, Jindal began questioning his faith. It began when his best friend, Kent, a born-again Baptist, gave him a Bible with his name embossed on the front in gold letters. The two buddies would spend hours in serious religious debate; Jindal delved into both the Bible and the Bhagavad Gita, arming himself with scriptural ammo.
Soon Jindal began dating a girl named Kathy. Cute and blond, she was Catholic. According to Jindal's writings, their relationship began on the top floor of a downtown hotel after a high school dance. That night, in between their attempts to toss quarters into the large ornamental fountain twenty-two stories below, Kathy told Bobby that "she wanted to be a lawyer so she could serve on the Supreme Court and stop the country from killing babies." With Kathy, Jindal attended his first Roman Catholic mass. "I was probably the first teenager who ever told his parents he was going to a party so that he could sneak off to church," he wrote later, in one of a series of essays on his religious awakening he published in a Catholic magazine, the New Oxford Review. A teacher who knew both students in high school remembers that the couple's relationship ended badly due to parental concern on both sides about the differences in their cultures and religions.
By the end of high school, Kent's simple fundamentalism had won out over the saints and rituals of the Romans. The exact moment can be traced to the intermission of a religious musical Jindal attended. The youth minister showed a "crude black-and-white film" depicting the crucifixion. "Suddenly, God was tangible," Jindal wrote. "Seeing Christ's sacrifice convicted me of my sinfulness and my need for a savior... I asked seriously who was I that my Lord should suffer for my sake."
Because he feared the "inevitable confrontation with my very unsympathetic Hindu parents," Bobby simply didn't tell them. He found refuge in his closet, where he studied the Bible by flashlight. In his writings, he would later compare his situation to that of the earliest Christians, worshipping in caves, "hiding from government persecution."
If you want to do a fundamentalist's fundas, u better b known as a 'fundamentalist' urself. I wouldn't write that in the comments column of ESQUIRE bcoz it may be misconstrued, and me as pure as the snow that falls on the pakistans in Ulan Bator!"He always had his eye on, first of all, where he wanted to go, and second, how he was going to get there," said Fred Aldrich, a former teacher. "He was very — I don't want to use the word clever, because that's a cheap word. I think he was very good at analyzing what will work and then going out and doing it."
).matrimc wrote:<SNIP>
How about hindu-american? I am a (lapsed)hindu-American and a vegetarian? So I automayically become a vegetarian rapist?
The haddi in the kebab is the First amendment,myou see. there is no difference between xxxx-american and american. Period.
By the way same is true in India. Same same.
hazaro sawalo se meri khamoshi achchi.. I mean, didn't Hindoo Rajat Gupta land in jail, but Mr. Bobby J is a governor, so is Mrs. Nikki Haley.Pls check into the glorious traditions of Governors of both LA and SC. Many went where Mr. Gupta is now, and they were most certainly not Hindoo. And long b4 Rajat Gupta was accused, Martha White, who is both Martha and White, was sent to jail for Insider Trading - for MUCH LESS gain that was Mr. Gupta was accused of attempting to get. I think the charge against White was some $50K? $500K worth? Peanuts compared to Wall Street scales of fraud. Don't know if it was Bharara or his predecessor who sent her up.hazaro sawalo se meri khamoshi achchi.. I mean, didn't Hindoo Rajat Gupta land in jail, but Mr. Bobby J is a governor, so is Mrs. Nikki Haley.
(unless there is another article in ESQUIRE that I can have open on my screen with Limited Immunity while within range of the Rolling Pins) :LOL ).What's your name, wog runt? Where you from, Packeestan?
(laughter).Piyush, from India
Pee-What now?
Piyush.
No wonder he changed his name to Bawb or was it Bawbie? As for the conversion thing, read the Esquire article. No comment needed.Oh, Pee-Whoosh? Ha Ha Ha Ha! Do you drink pee, Pee-Whoosh? I hear your parents are smelly Indians who eat curry? Yeeuuuwww!
By that logic we could benefit from more Pakis and Arabs in the US govt as well.Shreeman wrote:I do like the idea of having the exotics in positions of power, eg -- a sikh in charge of california (preferrably not leaning towards khalistan), and a brownie in LA. Politics has so few brown people that one has to look at Tulsi types to represent.
What is lost is the arguments you make are more scathing to the society that bred Piyush into Bawbie!UlanBatori wrote: No wonder he changed his name to Bawb or was it Bawbie? As for the conversion thing, read the Esquire article. No comment needed.
Of course, the consequences of any and all personal choices are up for scrutiny, good or bad, but as in his case, changing religions to be one of the local crowd is one that helps his career and can withstand scrutiny.And your personal choices are totally up to scrutiny (only kids are exempted). If you dont set a good example by divorcing, having extra marital affairs (hello, carolina!), then every other aspect being argued is part of public scrutiny.
) and the provisions made in there of regarding freedom of expression.Most whites are not governors of a southern state. Jindal is not trying to assimilated, he is a brown guy--unmistakable fact--already reaping the benefits of what assimilation is supposed to bring. He is careful to say it is his own point of view, but what he is doing is setting the parameters of the contentious hyphenated-american debate.johneeG wrote:Well, I think the basic question is: Idea of America. What is America's identity?
If America is defined as a white country, then the non-whites will be hyphenated. If America is defined as a country of its locals, then all immigrants(including the europeans) would be hyphenated.
Let us see who are hyphenated:
African-Americans
Indian-Americans
Latin-Americans
Is there an European-American? No. But, note that even the original Americans are called 'native-americans', so even they had been hyphenated. What does that mean? It means when there is no hyphenation, it refers to white Americans. For non-white Americans, there is an explicit hyphenated tag. That means, America implies white implicitly.
Is the message of Jindal is that non-whites(i.e. non-Americans) should stop wearing their culture on their sleeves and instead try to assimilate(imitate) the American(i.e. white) culture? If so, then he must realize that as long as America is defined as white, a non-white can never be completely assimilated.
Well, let's tie it back to the conversion debate and Obama's "advice" to Indians, and the way most Indians read it.Guddu wrote: ..
Problem with Piyush Jindal is that he is ashamed of his Indian roots, he converted his religion, all so that he could in his mind be indistinguishable from Americans. I imagine if Piyush bhai was to run for prez, someone would ask about his pagan religion and sdre background.
While he is running from his roots, most white immigrants are proud of their roots. I don't think Piyushbhai would be caught dead visiting his relatives in India. This is no commentary on his skills and ability as a governor.
Yeah...Indian Americans need to give up the "ghetto-ization" that has led to their emergence as America's top earning community @ $86K per family to become more like the Pennsylvania Germans earning half that amount: List of Ethnic Groups by Household IncomeKLNMurthy wrote: Bobby Jindal, in using his very high position to propagate the rejection of the Indian-American hyphenation, and hyphenation in general, is sending out the message that Americans of Indian, Irish, Italian, Polish, Greek and such formerly or currently despised ethnicities should reject the separation and ghettoization which is mostly forced on them, and the apparent loss of ethnic pride is a price worth paying. Apparent loss, not real loss, since you still see Norwegian-Minnesotans or German- or Dutch- Pennsylvanians or Ohioans still retaining aspects of their ancestral ways and observances like eating lutefisk or celebrating oktoberfest, except the way they do it is as though they pretty much owned Minnesota or parts of Pennsylvania or Ohio or whatever, not as a kind of hunted minority that alternates between being apologetic and defiant.
Huh? Not following your logic, I'm afraid.Arjun wrote:Yeah...Indian Americans need to give up the "ghetto-ization" that has led to their emergence as America's top earning community @ $86K per family to become more like the Pennsylvania Germans earning half that amount: List of Ethnic Groups by Household IncomeKLNMurthy wrote: Bobby Jindal, in using his very high position to propagate the rejection of the Indian-American hyphenation, and hyphenation in general, is sending out the message that Americans of Indian, Irish, Italian, Polish, Greek and such formerly or currently despised ethnicities should reject the separation and ghettoization which is mostly forced on them, and the apparent loss of ethnic pride is a price worth paying. Apparent loss, not real loss, since you still see Norwegian-Minnesotans or German- or Dutch- Pennsylvanians or Ohioans still retaining aspects of their ancestral ways and observances like eating lutefisk or celebrating oktoberfest, except the way they do it is as though they pretty much owned Minnesota or parts of Pennsylvania or Ohio or whatever, not as a kind of hunted minority that alternates between being apologetic and defiant.
Brilliant Suggestion !
re. aka, I noted berkeley since this would be more familiar, and because of the jodi stecher types.matrimc wrote:Shreeman ji: Ali Akbar Khan's sarod school is in Terra Linda a burb of San Rafael.
FWIW, my second hand information regarding Chinese/Koreans (S and more so N) changing their names was to let everybody know that they are not the "hated" communists. They would change their names to one of the apostles and promptly join their version of the church. I know some neighbors of mine who had two religions - korean church and both budhdhism and xtianity at home. Tough.
Bharatiyas were much more likely to be confused with "dirty" hippies, but then at one time - woodstock - hippies were all the rage due to the four from England.
The system is evolving. How many people in the US go to church Sunday morning or vespers on a weekday? My informal observation is that it is small fraction of the populace.
Please take a look at the link I shared, and explain to me once again why Indian-Americans need to reject hyphenation and in what way German Pennsylvanians are presumed to be at the top of the American totem pole.KLNMurthy wrote:Huh? Not following your logic, I'm afraid.
I don't really have a strong opinion whether Americans of Indian background have to reject hyphenation or not. Please read my post in context--it was an attempt to parse and interpret Gov. Jindal's statement about hyphenation. I tried to make the case that hyphenation of ethnic groups is more or less inversely related to their being accepted as "default group" when we talk about America. If you are disputing my point there, you sure haven't said so.Arjun wrote:Please take a look at the link I shared, and explain to me once again why Indian-Americans need to reject hyphenation and in what way German Pennsylvanians are presumed to be at the top of the American totem pole.KLNMurthy wrote:Huh? Not following your logic, I'm afraid.
Not really true. Every immigrant group that came in to the US retained its own distinctive culture and thought of itself as distinct from the settlers coming in from other parts to the New World. If there is a dominant culture in America today, which is also supported by demographics - it is the Anglo Saxons (English, Scotch). Even the Germans came later - and settled into their own "ghettos" if one can term it that, which subsequently grew into states like Pennsylvania.KLNMurthy wrote:I don't really have a strong opinion whether Americans of Indian background have to reject hyphenation or not. Please read my post in context--it was an attempt to parse and interpret Gov. Jindal's statement about hyphenation. I tried to make the case that hyphenation of ethnic groups is more or less inversely related to their being accepted as "default group" when we talk about America.
There has been an upsurge of research and books in the recent past on the precise question that you raise. Many do see this as perhaps one of the more important issues of the current times - directly related to how social capital of groups can be leveraged for success.It is not clear to me to what extent Indian immigrants' prosperity and success in America is related to them seeing themselves as hyphenated americans. At the ground level, they have been able to work well with their technology peers from various other backgrounds in America. Did they do it as Indian-Americans, or just as highly-skilled hardworking professionals who caught the technology wave in collaboration with their colleagues from other ethnic communities, in an environment that mostly respects skills and disregards ethnic differences? I haven't a clue, and I don't know whether the question is even all that important or relevant.
German Americans, after the World Wars, were for a number of decades not keen to mention their ancestry for obvious reasons. And the Anglo-Saxons are probably better representatives of the established American elite and demography. As mentioned earlier - no Anglo-Saxon would be disowning or hiding the facts of their ancestry.The German-American analogy was brought in to point out the relative degree of belongingness, acceptance-as-default, and comfort that German-Americans take for granted in America to the extent that they don't need to bother with the hyphenation. I am at a loss to understand why you think it follows that I want Indian immigrants' incomes to drop to that of Americans of German heritage.
Have no idea where you derived that highly simplistic reading of my argument. Rather than generalities, let me address the specific issue you raise below.UlanBatori wrote:Ah, SO! Per Arjun, the reason to be 'hyphenated' is to become rich.
British Americans number even more than the 50 Mil that German Americans account for - but their average income is considerably higher. Indian Americans are no small group either - at 3 Million they would probably be among the top 15 demographics in the US. You could also look at other metrics - leave aside average income. Look at latest parameters in education at the elite levels - which is considerably correlated to income. Typically - the technique used in such cases is to compare representations in these lists to actual population proportion.Arjun: There are 50 million German-Americans. If they were all in the Top 3%, the US population would have to rise quite a bit like in India, hain? If they spent all their time doing that, they wouldn't have much time to work. So I don't see your logic. Also, to get to your example: The communities in Pennsylvania and West Virginia have mainly one resource: Coal. Coal-mining tends to take all day, and happens underground. People come out covered with coal dust, coughing with coal-dust building in their lungs, and when they come out it is already getting dark, and they go back to work underground at daybreak. They are also dead-tired, exhausted every day. They tend to spend any remaining working hours imbibing a few drinks and cheering for their favorite boxer or football team.
Does not leave a lot of time or funds to speculate on Wall Street like their coujins in Noo Yoik. Honest, hard-working folks who spent their lifetimes working in the mines and the mills.
Or they used to have steel factories. Bethlehem, Pittsburgh. All went under as competition from first Japan, then Korea then China and finally India wiped them out. They are NOT poor by the standards of steelworkers in, say, Bhilai or Rourkela or Jamshedpur, but in purchasing power in the US they are not rich.
The communities may now be poor, since the steel industry in Pennsylvania collapsed. But their children do not live there after they grow up - they go to the best universities on the East Coast and become rich and live in cramped apartments in New York making and spending billions - and you would not recognize them because they don't have hyphenated names.
KLNMurthy ji, +100 to this post. Most of educated and familiar people in USA never talk of this aspect of formation of state, formation of nation state of America and subsequent preaching and advising others to civilize.KLNMurthy wrote:Most whites are not governors of a southern state. Jindal is not trying to assimilated, he is a brown guy--unmistakable fact--already reaping the benefits of what assimilation is supposed to bring. He is careful to say it is his own point of view, but what he is doing is setting the parameters of the contentious hyphenated-american debate.johneeG wrote:Well, I think the basic question is: Idea of America. What is America's identity?
If America is defined as a white country, then the non-whites will be hyphenated. If America is defined as a country of its locals, then all immigrants(including the europeans) would be hyphenated.
Let us see who are hyphenated:
African-Americans
Indian-Americans
Latin-Americans
Is there an European-American? No. But, note that even the original Americans are called 'native-americans', so even they had been hyphenated. What does that mean? It means when there is no hyphenation, it refers to white Americans. For non-white Americans, there is an explicit hyphenated tag. That means, America implies white implicitly.
Is the message of Jindal is that non-whites(i.e. non-Americans) should stop wearing their culture on their sleeves and instead try to assimilate(imitate) the American(i.e. white) culture? If so, then he must realize that as long as America is defined as white, a non-white can never be completely assimilated.
What we observe is that, even among whites, the lower you are (or have been) in the old Gobineau race hierarchy (nordics and teutonics besht, Italians worsht, and Irish and Polish outlier savages) the higher the propensity to cling to hyphenation. In time, Irish and Italians and Greeks got more or less proper white status, but the hyphenation stayed as a vestige, now considered charming.
No such luck for the actual browns and blacks, the lowest in the racial hierarchy (along with Indians mostly there but sometimes audaciously claiming caucasianhood (see Bhagat Singh Thind ). They had no choice but to cling to their hyphenated status for solidarity and safety, all the while taking heat from the white society for trying to be "separate" and not full Americans. For these groups, whose only goal was to be as American as everyone else, hyphenation was not a choice, though they had (and have) to embrace it and find in it what pride they can in it. Note that the deliberate adoption of "African-American" in place of "black" or "negro" was itself a step towards asserting Americanhood, albeit incrementally, by claiming the same status as previously despised whites like Irish and Italians.
Most Indians in the US don't exactly consider themselves white, but they don't exactly feel the pinch of racial discrimination either, at least not to the extent of African-Americans or Hispanic-Americans. Bobby Jindal, in using his very high position to propagate the rejection of the Indian-American hyphenation, and hyphenation in general, is sending out the message that Americans of Indian, Irish, Italian, Polish, Greek and such formerly or currently despised ethnicities should reject the separation and ghettoization which is mostly forced on them, and the apparent loss of ethnic pride is a price worth paying. Apparent loss, not real loss, since you still see Norwegian-Minnesotans or German- or Dutch- Pennsylvanians or Ohioans still retaining aspects of their ancestral ways and observances like eating lutefisk or celebrating oktoberfest, except the way they do it is as though they pretty much owned Minnesota or parts of Pennsylvania or Ohio or whatever, not as a kind of hunted minority that alternates between being apologetic and defiant.
Question is, why would it a bad thing for the children of today's Indian immigrants to have a status in American society that is analogous to that enjoyed by Minnesota's Norwegian-Americans? {emphasis mine}
Again, thank you for the message KLNMurthy ji.'Sometimes we have to balance'