Desi Webs: South Asian America, Online Cultures, and the Politics of Race [Conference Notes]
by Latoya Peterson
These are the notes for “ Desi Webs: South Asian America, Online Cultures, and the Politics of Race.” The notes are from a paper by Madhavi Mallapragada, presented at the Texas A & M University Race and Ethnic Studies Institute’s Symposium exploring Race, Ethnicity and (New) Media.
- How is the web mobilized around categorizes and what are the politics around these identities.
- Derived from “desh” which means homeland
- Term of self and community identification
- 2nd and 3rd gen youth often collectively identify as desi
- While desi is a pan-South asian term, it often means Indian
- Bicultural remixes uniquely reflect the reality of people
- Overwhelmingly focused on bollywood
- Centrality of Indian pop culture and politics
-
In this video titled, “You are not an Indian,” a young male addresses viewers who like him are neither just American nor Indian but desi. Wearing a t-shirt with the word “desi” written prominently in Hindi across it, the young man points out that desis are not South Asians but of South Asia. People of South Asian origin in the United States commonly refer to each other as Desi. The term means “from the homeland” and simultaneously invokes one’s identity as South Asian but also as being “outside South Asia”. As the young man reminds his viewers, the difference is key. Being desi implies being critically engaged with the “realities” of India rather than uncritically celebrating the hype surrounding its contemporary global image as high-tech nation.
- Video is important as it displays the process of reasserting identity against a current narrative – of reclaimation, of identification
- The idea of desi is undergoing a renovation in South Asian community spaces
- Immigration justice program
- Know your rights workshops to counter ICE raids
- Registration requests by US led to mass deportation
-
As part of the Homeland security measures, immigrant men from 25, mostly Muslim countries were required to enroll in a Special Registration program. The result: no evidence of terror, but some 13,000 people are now being deported mostly for expired visas. The Alams were among the many families who believed that voluntarily participating in the Special Registration would show their loyalty. Instead, they face the prospect of breaking up their family, despite a decade of hard work and the raising of two children. Working with DRUM (Desis Rising Up and Moving), the Queens South Asian activist group, the Alams have become activists, organizing to fight for their right to stay.
- Asked men and boys of different nationalities to register
- Portrayed as helping the government, being patriotic
- 82,000 people registered from targeted countries
- 13,000 put in deportation proceedings
(Image Credit: drumnation.org)
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
Xey wrote:
I know a lot of people who self-identify as “Indian” or “Pakistani” (and sometimes even simultaneously as “Desi”) but they were born in the US or Europe and have only been to India or Pakistan to visit for a few weeks at a time (i.e. have only spent about 2 or 3 months in India or Pakistan throughout their entire lifespan). They know very little about those countries and would never be interested in settling there. But they still say they are Indian or Pakistani. I do know one woman of Indian (Gujarati) heritage whose parents were born in East Africa and she was born here, but she doesn’t really feel identifiable with/as “Indian.” Very interesting ideas here.
Posted 10 Jun 2009 at 10:45 am ¶
inkst wrote:
Am I just missing it, or is there not a link to the paper itself in the post? Is it available? I would really like to read it.
I have pretty conflicting ideas about my own identification as Indian… not much more to say at this point, but thanks for taking the notes and putting this together.
Posted 10 Jun 2009 at 5:03 pm ¶
Latoya Peterson wrote:
@inkst –
The papers are not publicly available as of yet. Once they are, I’ll make an announcement.
Posted 10 Jun 2009 at 5:07 pm ¶
sandeep wrote:
interesting stuff heh. my grandparents both were born in punjab-india. my folks were outside the state, within the country. me, i dont even consider myself indian. why? i was born in wales. grew up in england – america. i’ve never lived there. i have no political ties to there. i can’t speak any of the native languages. none of the key moments in my life have taken place within the borders of India. so to me its just an excersize in self-abuse to call myself indian. to me its cringe worthy when these articles i peruse on the net tend to label indians as 3rd or 4th getn. to me at that point youre no longer indian. hell the only real indians were the ones born there. after than youre transitional at best, not completely indian not completely wherever you are now but instead hybrid. for people to overlook this hybridization and constantly label brown as indian or even worse south asian then it just kinda pisses me off.
america is a largely white country in many areas, and i understand asians havent had large waves of immigration until late, due to laws and other reasons. indians for isntance weren’t allowed to immigrate to america between the 20s and 40s. that’s the 1920s. there’s folks that lived through that still alive today. we’re talking more or less one generation old. the policies of what’d be our grandfathers and fathers have been reprehensible, but we’re living in times where its generally accepted that color doesnt matter. to me its less to do with social movements and more to do with the progress of worldwide travel & communication. the social crap just is an effort to keep us in check with what the emerging new reality is, but it’s needless as it’ll happen on its own, it’ll just render many people along the way dinosaurs, ‘less they manage to change along with the rest of it all.
but back to the indian thing. some of these guys and gals i come across are so presumptuous, as to try and derive my country of origin by my skin. terrible. its worse in my mind than the white folk who do so, theyre doing it for ignorance sake, but i feel like the children of, or the immigrants themselves, should know better. unfortunately thats not the case.
ill always find it offensive when claiming im welsh i get strange looks and even claims of lies. there’s some old school old-world backwards views that survive into presant day, unfortunately. uneducation at its finest.
Posted 11 Jun 2009 at 1:55 am ¶
Sobia wrote:
I’m sure I’ll have more to say when I get a chance to think about it a little more but at this time I just want to say that I get a little irritated when desi is used interchangeably with Indian. Many Pakistanis and Bangladeshis also identify as desi and not acknowledging this works to deny us that self-identification. I remember one time telling an Indian guy I was desi and his response was surprise because I wasn’t Indian but rather Pakistani.
Having said that:
@ Sandeep:
I think how we desis identify ourselves is our choice. You choose not to identify yourself as Indian, but there are others who will. If I as someone who was born and raised in Canada and has only visited Pakistan for shorts periods of times wants to identify as brown, South Asian, desi, Pakistani, and/or Canadian (I identify as all) then I feel I have that right.
“but we’re living in times where its generally accepted that color doesnt matter.”
I don’t know what times you’re living in but it seems they are quite different than mine.
Posted 11 Jun 2009 at 8:40 pm ¶
RCHOUDH wrote:
Interesting post. Regarding the term Desi I’ve heard different things about it. Like you mentioned Desi is sometimes used to mean pan South Asian but is most often used to refer to Indians. But even within India, I’ve heard some people discarding that term to describe themselves. I remember someone of South Indian origin once saying that they don’t use the term Desi to describe themselves because Desi is derived from Hindi and that is not their native language (South India has a variety of languages of its own that differ significantly from North Indian languages like Hindi). I also think Desi is a term uniquely used by Indians/South Asians in America. I remember my British South Asian friend never heard of that term before (of course she was just one person maybe other British Asians are familiar with it). It’s interesting how one term can mean different things to different people, all of whom categorize themselves as South Asian.
Posted 11 Jun 2009 at 9:08 pm ¶
TheGoriWife wrote:
One thing I think would be interesting to explore is divisions within the group of people who self-identify as desi. I’ve had exchanges in the past the Pakistanis shouldn’t refer to themselves as desi because desi means “Indian.” The justification was that because (some?) Pakistanis are anti-India, and refer to all things Pakistani as Pakistani but refer to things of India as “desi” (presumably the argument was in order to get out of having to attribute something positive to India- and Indians?) so they shouldn’t get to throw the term out at their leisure.
Of course, I didn’t agree with the commenter, but we never did further our discussion any. I’d love to hear what other have to say about this. Does anyone who wants to get to classify themselves as desi?
Posted 16 Jun 2009 at 12:45 pm ¶