Links – 2009-04-24

Shashwati’s Blog – Manufacturing Outrage – Slumdog and Its Discontents (via DeafMuslim)

Piecing the story together, it seems that the tabloid entrapped the family by posing as an Arab couple (being Arab increases the pathology, get it?), and offered to adopt Rubina and pay $300,000 to the family. This exchange took place via a translator since Rubina’s father doesn’t actually speak English. Rubina’s parents are divorced and the relationship between her parents is far from cordial. The mother wants custody of her daughter, the papers say after the film came out, but it could be an ongoing conflict, we don’t know.

There are a couple of interesting things in this story, firstly everyone is outraged at the father for considering adoption. This is hardly unusual, poor people have often given up their kids up to foster care for a time (the example of filmmaker Stan Brakhage comes to mind, he was in an orphanage for a while), and in India, its not unusual for kids to grow up in places other than their parents house – I lived with my aunt for a while, and my brother grew up at my grandparents place. The ideal of the soccer mom based nuclear family is quite recent. Yes, I get it, the proposed exchange of money is what really bothers people and everyone is sickened by the avariciousness of the family. Now if most people look into their family histories, they’re sure to find that uncle who took everything the other siblings should have inherited a fair share of. Yes, its terrible that people are greedy and criminal, but its hardly the province of the poor. So I wish people would take their outrage to where it belongs – a grossly unjust world where some countries are far richer than they deserve to be, and some people have the luxury of taking the moral high ground without every having to interact with the poor.

Guanabee – Dallas Morning News

The problem is not that Woolley fails to use statistical date or examples beyond the existence of Spanish-language Wal-Marts in her rebuttal… it’s the fact that her column is a rebuttal, referring directly to Linda Chavez’s column:

If, as Linda Chavez seems to think, the intent of those who come to America illegally is simply to raise a family, send the kids to college and assimilate into American society, then where’s the problem? The problem is – that’s just simply not the case.

This doesn’t create a conversation or dialogue about the topic, nor does it seem fair that the Dallas Morning News’ editors chose which columnist would have the privilege of getting the “last word.” So was the purpose of running both articles to present opposing views on the lives of illegal immigrants… or simply to refute Linda Chavez’s points?

Comment is Free – Tamils Have Nowhere to Turn (via Anna)

The Tamils have suffered terribly both at the hands of the LTTE and successive Sinhala-dominated governments. Reconciliation with them will take a government that has greater reverence for secularism than the present one. Sri Lankans have become inured to the pervasive Sinhala-supremacist racism and religious bigotry that the present government has brought to Sri Lanka.

It is this racism and bigotry more than any passionate belief in the LTTE that has now pushed a desperate Tamil community towards the LTTE.

Indeed, it is an insult to the Tamil people that all they have to represent their cause for emancipation are the Tamil Tigers. A group that not only systematically eliminated the political leadership of the Sri Lankan Tamils but wiped out the entire moderate Sinhala leadership and prevented Tamils from voting in elections.

Siditty – The Fear of Minority Rule

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