By Fatemeh Fakhraie

Welp, we knew it was coming and now it’s here. It only took a little more than two minutes for Shahs of Sunset to pique my interest – and make me nervous.

Producer Ryan Seacrest’s “Persian Version” of Jersey Shore will follow MJ, Reza, Asa, Sammy, Mike, and GG through their fabulous lives as Persian-Americans in Los Angeles (known as “Tehrangeles” in the Persian community). I’m interested because it’s hitting the air at a time when saber-rattling between Iran and the U.S. is ramping up again and because the show features an openly gay cast member (Reza), when homophobia is just as rampant in the Persian community as it is any other.

While Reza’s inclusion doesn’t behoove him to break every gay stereotype in the book, his visibility alone could be encouraging and comforting to LGBTQ Persians. There’s a chance that he could shore up gay stereotypes, but there’s also a chance that we could see some honest intersections of sexuality and culture. However, I realize that this is asking a lot from a Seacrest reality show, especially given that Ryan has a history of using Middle Eastern characters to boost his show’s ratings.

How will a program featuring first- and second-generation Iranian-Americans (or Persians, as they prefer) affect public opinion on Iran? On one hand, Iran is presented as evil, nuclear, and menacing in news reports and pop culture. On the other hand, Shahs features a bunch of vapid, rich Americans with Iranian ancestry—many of whom are refugees from the 1979 revolution. In the opening credits, cast members relate that, “When the revolution happened, we all had to pick up and flee the old country,” and “I’ve been a refugee since I was eight.”

The contrast itself is interesting, but the likely outcome won’t be positive. Just like Sara Yasin wrote about the differences between herself and her cousins last week, this group of Persians couldn’t be more different from people in Iran—the very fact that they volunteer their private lives for television consumption would never fly in “the old country.” Especially since Iranian censors actively works against things the regime considers criminally sinful, like booze, sex, and ostentation.

I worry that the show will set up this cohort of Persian-Americans as “good” Iranians (i.e., Americanized ones without traces of religious or cultural baggage) and “bad” ones (the ones “over there”). If this happens, the show will likely stress the disconnection between the two on a regular basis. And while it may be politically beneficial in the short term to distance themselves from Iran, it’s harmful in the long-term—not just for politics’ sake or for these kids’ individual “branding,” but for the sake of every Iranian-American or Persian-American who still visits Iran, who still has family there, and who identifies his/her ethnic heritage publicly.

Instead of improving Persian-Americans’ image, it seems likely this show will instead subject viewers to more examples of the “Persian Princess” stereotypes W magazine featured in an article on Persian Jews a few years back. It looks like GG has made it her mission to embody the trope, and I’m sure we’ll be taken along on her husband hunting expeditions and temper tantrums. In fact, several of cast members revel in it: “To outsiders, it probably looks like we live a very glamorous life,” she says at one point. “And, in fact, we do.” Reza explains that “We’re all about cash, flash, Cristal …”

I’m also worried that this will turn out to be a terrible mash-up of Jersey Shore meets Keeping Up with the Kardashians, with a more ethnic spin on privileged, rich jerks. While Kim Kardashian has a vague ethnic “otherness” about her, it’s just that—vague and non-threatening. Snooki has harnessed her vague Italian-ness into a successful narrative, but a hollow one with no substance.

In the sneak peek above, the only ethnicity used in the show is superficial: the santoor plays over shots of incense burning that are intended to elicit a “look at those kooky ethnics!” from the audience. I doubt that any Persian culture will seep in – Reza’s point about how “we’re always there for each other” may hit on some of the collectivism and closeness in Persian culture, but will more likely be chalked up to vague “ethnic-ness” and get discarded in a show of who has more designer sunglasses and wears more cologne.

Given that most Americans already have Snooki and the Kardashians to go to for dramatic behavior and wealth without the ethnic baggage, the Persian-American community may be the only one to have interest in a show like this. But by solidifying Persian stereotypes, Shahs of Sunset may likely alienate the only audience that could keep it on television.

By Guest Contributor Anurag Lahiri

During my four months of funemployment after grad school I became hooked on a list of TV shows. A couple of my queer desi friends had been raving about The Chicago Code a while back and when I finally watched it I enjoyed it. So of course when the same friends started tweeting about The Good Wife, and specifically about one character, Kalinda Sharma, I decided to take the hint and marathon it.

The same things drew me to both shows: aside from the suspense and drama, they’re both set in Chicago. As a girl from the Midwest, I enjoy watching a show whose city politics I can relate to.

There is a difference between the two shows though: Chicago Code was mostly special for me because Jennifer Beals was in it and, for an L Word fan, she will always be Bette Porter. Yes, even if she is playing a superintendent of a police department. On the other hand, I will gladly embrace Archie Panjabi as Sharma, a queer, desi, private investigator on The Good Wife.

When there are so few reasonable representations of South Asians in the mainstream media, my first reaction was pure excitement to see Panjabi playing a queer character. I am still extremely impressed that a TV network as mainstream as CBS came up with this character when many more underground producers haven’t been successful, in my opinion. Furthermore, the show hints at the complexity of South Asians with only one desi character/actress, which is more than shows like Outsourced have done even with a whole cast.

On the show, Kalinda’s personality is presented as being multifaceted; she is tough and opinionated. While these attributes are not often paired with Asian women on TV, they are often the reality for women who grow up being underestimated and under-appreciated.

Kalinda’s position–the very opinionated, privately queer, guarded desi girl–resonates very loudly with me:  when I was interning as a social worker in a criminal justice setting, much like her, I tried to stay private while others shared stories about their personal lives. Staff at my internship made heteronormative assumptions about me. The show challenges such assumptions about brown women, and people in general, while offering reasons for why women, regardless of sexual orientation, are often private in the workplace.

While I don’t necessarily believe that Kalinda’s work–digging up dirt for her boss’ law firm, Lockhart/Gardner–was ever underestimated, I would argue she was still under-appreciated. She regularly goes above and beyond to help the firm, yet she struggles to ask for a raise. I know that it takes a lot of thick skin and hard work to prove oneself in that type of environment.

I admire Kalinda for discussing race at work and her immigrant family background, yet refusing to be tokenized. She uses her knowledge and experience to enhance her work and her job, yet she remains in control of her identity. It’s very easy to be turned into a token when you speak up as a minority, so I have looked at Kalinda to see how she does it.

In real life, this balance is very difficult and tiring to maintain. In the U.S. it is especially difficult because South Asian women struggle to find appropriate mentors in the workplace. There are some peer support systems for women in professions like engineering, medicine and law, but it is a struggle if you feel you have no one to turn to for advice and a mentor. Being able to visually relate to a brown woman on TV is helpful for me and, I assume, other desi women who are trying to establish themselves in a workplace.

Aside from her professional character, I am also impressed with the treatment of Kalinda as a personal and sexual character. Kalinda’s sex life is exhibited as much as the other characters and, while the manner of it tip-toes around exoticism at times, it is impressive considering the frequent shaming of brown women’s sexuality on TV. The show speaks to me by creating a South Asian character in the media that does not feel the responsibility to prove her sexuality and womanhood to people. While Kalinda confidently told one interested woman that she “follows through” when she flirts, she pulled away from another as soon as she found out she is married.

I’m still struggling with this unnecessary need to validate my sexuality, since queer desis’ existence has so often been denied and mistreated. Healthy and realistic media representation, like in The Good Wife, can certainly help queer women like me. I now have a character on TV who is reminding me, each episode, to just be. These types of reminders help us come into our smoother, more natural identities. They also remind others that there is more than just tragic queer desis living double lives, and triumphant queer desis marching in Mumbai Pride.

With Kalinda, the show gives the U.S. public a chance to see how an adult desi can be confidently queer whilst handling her imperfections. Her personal vulnerability is not portrayed in a way to make her seem like the “weak Asian girl” archetype, but rather, it is acknowledged as a major part of her complex history. Her vulnerability is always bubbling under her surface, in her extremely rare smiles and tense stature. Her strength is also evident, and it took an extremely dramatic plot twist – which I won’t spoil here – for Kalinda to cry even once. Her mysterious past serves to complicate her character beyond her appearance and challenge the audience. Just like any woman of color, I hope people realize that while Kalinda’s strength is admirable, it may not have been gained out of choice.

From death row to deportation, the show takes on some difficult issues in a way that is accessible. I appreciate watching the characters challenge each other personally and politically, because they each add something meaningful, but I am clearly partial to Kalinda. I’m so accustomed to the media being an exaggeratedly unhealthy version of reality, especially for queer and minority people, so Kalinda makes me really happy. Panjabi has come a long way from playing “standard” desi roles to opening doors for much more.

Graphic courtesy of Sepia Mutiny

The citizenship rate of foreign-born Asian Americans has also increased, from 50% in 2000 to 57% now. India has one of the greatest number of legal permanent residents eligible to become citizens and 57% of foreign-born Pakistanis have been naturalized. Yet, there are still language and cost barriers associated with citizenship and this remains a hurdle to full civic engagement.

These results and more can be found in the report. But as an electoral advocate, these findings are the most fascinating in how they pertain to civic engagement. As part of the federal Voting Rights Act, Section 203 requires bilingual voting assistance to be required to particular populations, based on Census data. 2002 was the last time an assessment was determined. Due to the results of the 2010 Census, Section 203 now covers Asian American populations located in 22 counties, boroughs, census areas or cities, including 17 new population areas. For the first time South Asian languages are included as a mandatory language for particular counties. The South Asian jurisdictions covered by Section 203 now include:

• Los Angeles County, California – Asian-Indian
• Cook County, Illinois (Chicago) – Asian-Indian
• Queens County, New York – Asian-Indian
• Hamtramck City, Michigan – Bangladeshi

As can be inferred from the above charts, the increase in South Asian populations as well as the higher proportion of naturalized South Asians means that more South Asian Americans are eligible to vote. Providing bilingual assistance will allow the South Asian community to get fully engaged in a process which they wouldn’t have otherwise.
- From “It’s Confirmed – Desis Are Growing,” by Taz

With the timing and awareness of the new Harold and Kumar movie, everyone in America who likes to smoke out will be watching the episode and even better–they’ll be too wasted to find the remote and switch the channel even if the show sucks. I noticed on your upcoming schedule that no host has yet to be confirmed for either the October 29 or November 5 episodes—either date would be perfect to take advantage of the Harold and Kumar synergy.

You also have the added insurance of two hosts so if one of them sucks, you still have a good shot that the other can carry the show. ‘Cause I’ve seen episodes where the lone host sucked and it was not a pretty 1 ½ hours. At the least, two Asian guys have to be worth one Matt Damon, right?

And lest you mistakenly think that having an Asian host will negatively effect the ratings and a segment of the audience (i.e. in-bred racist hicks in the South) will not tune in, Let me remind you that one of the highest-rated episodes in ALL of SNL’s history was when Jackie Chan hosted on May 20, 2000. That show received a 7.3 audience share. Compare that with the Justin Timberlake-hosted episode from this past May, which was considered one of the highest-rated in recent years. That outing “only” netted a 7.0 share.

Now that I’ve addressed your business concerns, let me turn to the artistic ones. Having both John and Kal co-host will definitely open up your creative options because between these two guys, you’ve pretty much got everything covered. You can do ethnic jokes, you can do stoner jokes, you can do 3-D jokes, you can do Star Trek jokes, you can do political jokes (remember Kal worked for the Obama administration), you can do musical comedy (John fronts his own band)—the possibilities are endless. Hell, you can finally do sketches like this with actual Asian people in them.

- From You Offend Me, You Offend My Family

In some ways, The Monogamy Experiment is very much a comedy “in the moment.” Like many modern comedies, it hinges on ultra-dry awkwardness – so much it almost seems like a Britcom at times. And there’s a few compelling elements to this webseries, but five episodes in, it’s still not quite clear how they all fit together.

The trailer, and slight spoilers, are under the cut.

The show’s first episode introduces us to Amy (Amy Rider) and Nigel (Brayden Pierce) in home-movie style, in the aftermath of a caffeine malfunction instigated by an (unsuccessful) wedding proposal. As an unseen friend films the scene, Amy is inspired to begin a documentary on monogamy.

“I think the whole reason why I said no is because I don’t really believe in monogamy,” she explains. “I was told my whole life that monogamy is, like, a lie. My friends are all telling me that I shouldn’t get married, that I’m too young or something.” In the midst of her epiphany, the most refreshing thing about the show comes out right away: TME is build around an interracial relationship, but it’s not strictly about interracial dating – at least not for our protagonists.

Amy’s idea gains another layer not long after the spill, when a therapist (Tohoru Masamune) recommends the couple open their relationship for a month – he wants Amy and Nigel to stop sleeping with each other for 30 days, while still pursuing “intimacy” with other parties. Pierce and Rider do a good job showing us Amy and Nigel’s emotional shift here, a change that accelerates once Amy comes across an early prospect to, uh, work out her issues on.

Since then, most of the series has focused on Amy’s misadventures in dating, which have been complicated both by the kinds of guys you’d see in reader Caitlin’s video and her assistant (Liisa Evastina), who makes a costly error on her online dating profile. For the most part, Rider and company play it with the right amount of deadpan, even if one joke veered perilously close to Hangover II territory.

All the while, maybe the most compelling part of the show is taking place away from Amy and Nigel. For reasons yet to be explained, Amy is apparently making her documentary in the midst of her trial separation. Footage from a number of interviews are mixed into each episode, and she appears on-camera in a few of them. But while they’re interesting, these mini-segments bring up questions that threaten to disconnect the viewer from the story: is Amy the interviewer the same Amy who came up with the idea? If so, how will the insight from these conversations play into her new dating life? And how did she and her invisible friend wrangle James Kyson-Lee into appearing?

So far the show’s been savvy enough to avoid playing either Amy or Nigel as a villain, but we still haven’t gotten to see Nigel really enjoy his newfound freedom, so that might be about to change. In fact, the upcoming stretch of episodes might be the most crucial to the story, as we will presumably see whether Nigel and Amy “get theirs” with each other or somebody else, and, hopefully, where Amy ends up on her other journey as a budding documentarian.

Welcome back to the final South Asian Panel on Interracial Dating. Our panelists are:

RB, long time reader and friend of the blog; Anna John, Sepia Mutineer and friend of the blog; Honey Mae, friend of the blog; Lisa Factora-Borchers, blogger at My Ecdysis, Neesha Meminger, YA Author and occasional contributor; Harbeer, Racialicious reader and friend of a friend of the blog; and Rohin Guha, author of Relief Work and a blogger.

Rohin: I think you’re right, in that there’s a notable scarcity of accurate depictions of South Asian Americans, with Mindy Kaling’s character on The Office serving as one of the more accurate depictions.

I also think you’re on-point with those observations. And I think the reason South Asians are presented as “hopelessly single” is because making them asexual makes them an easy fit for the model minority archetype. “She’s too busy for love because she pursuing her M.D.!”

But maybe all of these representations are sending any number of irresponsible messages to the effect of, “You might not be American enough unless you fit either of these prescribed roles.” Scarier: There are South Asian Americans who are currently buying into these characterizations.

RB: First of all, I would disagree that depictions of South Asian Americans are rare. Considering the fact we constitute less than one percent of the population, I would argue that we’re increasingly well-represented in the media industry. With that being said, the quality of those depictions is still open for debate. Yes, many South Asians on-screen still end up in the arms of white folks, especially attractive women. It seems obvious that this is because 1. Most American TV shows and movies are marketed towards white people and 2. Indians are slowly being viewed as one of the more “acceptable” candidates for interracial relationships with whites, likely because of our generally above-average socio-economic status.

But I don’t think you can blame Hollywood for the fact most Indians would prefer a white partner to one that’s black or Latino. Preference for fair-skin is deeply ingrained in Indian society, a remnant of thousands of years of occupation and a lasting colonial hangover. Watch any Bollywood movie and the actors could pass for Persian, Latin or even white in some cases. I’m sure there are Indian kids sitting at home watching these shows and thinking that finding a hot white guy/girl would constitute success. That is tragic, but sadly also brings them in line with most of the U.S. population.

Anna: Well it certainly benefits the fair and lovelies. The female protagonists are never as “black” as I am. It’s interesting, in Bollywood, female stars are pasty. On “E.R.”, when they finally got an Indian doctor on that show, Parminder Nagra was fabulously brown. I love America. Incidentally, I believe her character married a black doctor, not a white person.

Honey: I really think it depends on generation, geography, and community. And I don’t agree that the depictions of SAA are always partnered with White people. I often see them partnered with another Asian person — which is just as annoying as seeing them patternly partnered with a White person.

In my communities and family, there is no “ideal partner.” It’s understood that our diaspora is complex, our dreams our complex, therefore dating is tremendously complex.

Neesha: See, dating is a huge issue in the South Asian community as a whole. The big question is still, “Are you allowed to date?” whether you’re an adult, or a teen still living at home. More parents are okay with dating, I think, now than ever before, but the dating – as far as I know (it’s been ages since I’ve even had to think about dating) is still pretty monitored and the parents still have a lot of input. But I do have a younger brother and he is dating – mostly white women because of where he lives. My parents are surprisingly okay with this. It could be because he’s the youngest of three and they’re getting older and mellower. Because for my middle brother it was still a colossal battle to date white women.

Harbeer: I ignore pop culture and people who are heavily influenced by it. (I’m old! And I like nerds who’ve lived wild lives.)

Rohin: Honestly, people like who they like. Sometimes that might be you, but most of the time, probably not!

RB: I think a lot of South Asian people come to the dating issue with a lot baggage. When you are young there are only so many opportunities to interact with large group of your brown peers and after a certain age those interactions inevitably come accompanied by a certain amount of appraisal and sexual tension. Being rejected from a group you expect to accept you as you are is probably one of the most traumatic experiences one can go through.

Still, my general experience is that most Indian people seem to prefer to date within their race but are sometimes held back by their perceptions of what “other” desi folks are like. Almost every Indian kid thinks they are somehow “different” and that other Indians would never “get them.” My experience is that those are the people who 1. are mostly like to date outside their race and 2. have the least experience in India or among large groups of Indian people, which are inevitably more diverse than one would ever expect.

Neesha: Like Anna, a lot of my partner choice all throughout my dating years had to do with the way I grew up. The light/dark thing. I hated feeling like the ugly dark girl. I was that in my family. I was that in my community. I didn’t want to be that with my partner. The first time I ever even considered the possibility that I might actually be attractive to anyone was when I visited Jamaica. The first time anyone ever told me I was pretty was there – an immigration official. And he was looking at a picture of me as a little girl, when I was facing the most hostile racism I’d ever experienced in Canada from white folks, and when I was feeling the ugliest within my family and community. I think partner choice is incredibly complex – who we’re attracted to and why is based on so, so many factors.

Harbeer: I think Desi parents who want their offspring to partner up with Desis do themselves and their cause a big disservice by having us all grow up with this conception that we’re all each other’s de-sexualized “brothers and sisters.”

Welcome back to the South Asian Panel on Interracial Dating. Our panelists are:

RB, long time reader and friend of the blog; Anna John, Sepia Mutineer and friend of the blog; Honey Mae, friend of the blog; Lisa Factora-Borchers, blogger at My Ecdysis, Neesha Meminger, YA Author and occasional contributor; Harbeer, Racialicious reader and friend of a friend of the blog; and Rohin Guha, author of Relief Work and a blogger.

What I do have misgivings about, though, is what a centerpiece skin color remains in contemporary gay culture and what that means for South Asians who are dating within this community. A conversation I had out in a bar in Chelsea not too long ago:

Random Man: Hi!
Me: Hello!
Random Man: What are you?
Me: I’m sorry?
Random Man: Like, where are you from?
Me: I live in Brooklyn.
Random Man: No, I mean, where were you born?
Me: Just outside of Detroit, actually.
Random Man: I mean, where are your parents from?

I ultimately gave him the answer he had been trolling for–”India!”–and then cast him the sharpest daggers I could. Not because I was ashamed of saying, “India!” but because he didn’t clearly stop to consider how bizarre it sounded to ask a complete stranger where his parents emigrated from.

RB: Honestly, I have dated a bit interracially when I was young and it was never that big a deal. Part of it is being brought up as one of the only Indian people in my area I was used to being mostly friends with white and black people, so I didn’t think it unusual. I’m sure there are girls that have been less interested because of the fact I’m Indian but they were smart enough not to say anything about it.

Anna: In my nearly twenty years of dating (!) I’ve only dated interracially twice; both times it was a disaster. I was nervous each time, because it was outside my comfort zone and yet in a way, it wasn’t. The first situation, in 1998, involved a Persian guy that I had known throughout college. While he was fair-skinned, he was definitely not “white”. The second situation, in 1999 almost doesn’t count, because I had a mild crush on an “Indian guy in scrubs” for weeks before I met him…only to discover that he was Palestinian, not South Asian. So I tend to have a rather strict type: dark hair, dark eyes, olive or brown skin. Still, it felt like unknown territory, after exclusively dating only Desi men.

1998 taught me about the nasty strains of racism within the Persian community towards South Asians and our dark, dirty, skin, our crude, uncivilized ways. This guy, who had been a friend for years, who “coded” white the entire time I knew him (which, to be accurate, I did, too, with my sorority, lack of membership in the Indian students club etc) suddenly defaulted to the ugliest dynamic possible. A lot of it had to do with my skin, which had been appealing as he flirted with me constantly for four years until we actually dated– then I was…dark.

1999 was a similar situation. Both of these men felt like Indian girls were somehow “easier” or more disposable. We didn’t deserve love or respect. I don’t know where the fuck this stereotype originates from, but it’s disgusting. Neither “relationship” survived for more than two weeks. My spine kept interfering.

My peers didn’t care about the interracial aspect of my entanglements, they were more concerned about the excessive assholery. Their peers didn’t treat me with the same respect they accorded women who were their “own” kind. Classy. Assholes.

Honey: I fear being exoticized. That was interesting what you posted about an asian woman’s fear of being good enough to fuck but never taken seriously as relationsip material. I always wonder about that. At the same time, because I’ve lived half my life outside of the Philippines, my value as a “good Filipina” to more traditional Filipinos seem diminished. Conversations among male friends who still live in the Philippines indicate that because I am (proudly) sexually active, that I’m no longer marriage material. It’s pretty ridiculous. I fear that someone dates me as a status symbol for “progressiveness.” It’s the same as exoticization in a way. The idea that the person dating me feels ‘progressive’ because they are ‘not-racist’, colour-blind, etc. Because look, they are dating a non-white. I’ve only dated one white guy who was very interested in exploring what the politics and ramifications were of interracial dating, specifically between us. I never thought of it as a problem, and in some ways expected our peers, friends, family to treat me as a person rather than as a person of colour. For a while, it was the combination of being Asian and young-looking that was particularly annoying because I would never get taken seriously, or was often treated patronizingly.

Lisa: I was most apprehensive about the friends and family of the person i was dating. Racism, ignorance, and “just a joke” kind of attitudes would often bleed into the relationship. And a white boy just doesn’t understand what the world is like for a brown girl. At the end of the day, IR dating sometimes meant falling in love but with extra vulnerability and more defensive armor in your back pocket. And you could never mention same sex attraction – that’d be a “sin.”

Neesha: I had misgivings when I started dating girls – I was worried that my parents would freak out because I was dating girls. But they were SO much more okay with that than with me dating black guys. Ha! Imagine my surprise. But it made sense – with the girls, they could hide me. They could pretend we were nothing more than roommates, or bffs. But with the guys, there was no hiding. No pretending. When I dated white guys I worried that people would think I was a sellout. When I dated black/latino/Asian men/women, I worried people would think I didn’t embrace my South Asianness – that I somehow rejected who I was. Or that I didn’t know who I was.

Now that I’m married (to an African-American man), I worry that my kids aren’t as connected to my culture as I was. Of course, they wouldn’t be (for sheer logistical reasons), but it makes me sad that they won’t get to experience some of the beauty and joy of it that I did. They don’t speak the language (also makes me sad. In fact it’s one of the things I miss most – speaking Punjabi at home, as my husband doesn’t speak it.).

However, and this might come off as cliche, in terms of core values, everything that I feel strongest about in life has nothing to do with culture. And that was what attracted me to every partner I ever dated, hooked up with, hung out with, etc. Anyone I had any kind of intimate interaction with had to be a feminist, first and foremost, and they had to believe in social justice. And those values are particularly strong in my kids, even if they don’t speak Punjabi. Would I want kids who spoke Punjabi AND espoused those values I hold dear? Not particularly. I think there’s something really special about being in that in-between place. I’ve been in it many times – as an immigrant, bilingual, culturally, etc. There’s a perspective you have when you’re in that in-between place that people in either camp don’t have. It’s a kind of objectivity and compassion that comes with outsiderness, I think. I kind of love that about my kids, even if they don’t speak Punjabi >grin<

Harbeer: Nope. When you say “peers,” you have to understand that I generally avoided friendships with fellow South Asians well into my 20s, for a number of reasons.

RB: As I said, White, black or latino was pretty much the same in my parents’ eyes. If they were from “good” (read: well-educated, professional) families they were negotiable. Middle Eastern and Asian people were slightly more favorable based on the perception of common cultural traits. Muslims were the only group I was warned against, and again that was as much due to my now-deceased grandmother as anyone. I’m sure if I wanted to date a Muslim girl my parents would judge her as an individual.

Anna: As is done in many South Asian families, we were taught that Black or Muslim partners were forbidden and very undesirable. As for current reactions towards me and my partner, I think it brings people great comfort that I have such a nice, brown, Indian boyfriend. We’re “like” dating like. Convenient, and non-threatening!

Lisa: People treated me and my partner like a delightful homegrown chemical experiment. Countless times we receive comments wondering how our features will combine when we have children, how they’ll be raised, how we’ll be contributing to the “post racial” generation. It’s nauseating.

Neesha: South Asians are almost ALWAYS put off when they see that my husband is black. When people meet me and my girls (they can pass for having two South Asian parents), they assume my husband is also South Asian. When they meet him, things change drastically in the vibe. And it’s not just South Asians who react like this. A lot of white folks respond the same way. It’s like things are one way when people assume we’re a nice, Indian family, and then everything changes when they realize we’re not. We’re a nice, mixed family – with narry a white person among us. I have no doubt that most South Asians (and white folks) would have an easier time with us if my husband were white. And my mother would think my kids were cuter because they’d be lighter-skinned and closer to whiteness. As it is, my kids are totally adored by my parents, but they’ve had to do a lot of work (read: we’ve had a lot of loud “discussions”) to get there.

Harbeer: I’ve only brought one of my former partners into my family/community in any meaningful way. She has always been welcomed. She’s pretty bad ass–everybody can tell that from the get-go. For some strange reason (stuff I did as a kid?), unless I’m delusional, I’m pretty well-regarded in my home community and my parents’ friends all trust my judgment. Or maybe I just self-select the company of people whom I project this onto…I don’t know.

I have a ton of privilege. At this point in my life, I do what I want–openly. Maybe people talk behind my back, but I don’t know or even care.

Anna: There are two factors:

1) the two disastrous experiments I detailed earlier

2) this is going to sound way harsh, Tai…but I’m just not that in to it. I don’t care to be someone’s cultural tourguide. I don’t want to be a fetish, a line item on a bucket list or a way to expand horizons. I don’t get down like that. Hold your rage– I am well aware that all interracial relationships aren’t so tawdry; many of them are beautiful works of art. But people have very specific, very personal tastes in art. I’ll never be a fan of Gaugin, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be!

I’m attracted to South Asians. I always have been. Beyond phenotypes, I love that I don’t have to explain that curry smell to them, or even that curry is a problematic term. I don’t get asked a million questions about my past, my family, my values. To me, dating another brown person is like using a Mac. They’re sleek, intuitive and elegantly easy. They just work and they’re less likely to get a virus. KIDDING. Does that make me a narrow-minded, lazy person? No, it makes me a fan of an excellent user experience and great design.

Comedy aside, I’ve never considered marrying out– and that has nothing to do with my uber-strict parents’ issues with it. Though my sister and I were both born in California, I was always the “Indian” kid in our house. I spoke Malayalam before I babbled English. Unlike my little sister, I wanted Indian clothes, books and music. I wanted to major in South Asian Studies. I dreamed of a hazy, far-off day when I’d have brown babies. I have always been this way. Just like how my only sibling has never spoken our “mother tongue” and has always dated interracially, despite being raised in an identical environment. To each, their own.

Maybe it stems from an adamantine core forged during the isolating experience of being the only brown kid, everywhere, for years. I don’t want to feel that way at home. When I walk through my front door after negotiating all the bullshit I do on a daily basis, I just want to exhale and look at brown eyes that relay pure understanding back at me.

If I call my mom “Mommy”, I don’t want an eye-roll; that’s what she prefers to be called and I don’t mind. If I worry about what intangible debt I owe my superhero parents, for all they sacrificed for me, I want someone who commiserates with me about living on the hyphen. It’s not productive to hear well-meaning platitudes about living my life for me. Nursing homes are not an option. Ever. I don’t know if non-Desis would find that fair or understandable– and I don’t blame them. It’s not necessarily how they were raised.

I also don’t feel comfortable with asking someone to walk away from themselves or their past for me; some of the most successful interracial couplings I’ve observed– a few in my own family– involve that level of super-human denial of self. These spouses become Desi, in every possible way. I’m happy for them, but it makes me a little bit sad, and I always find myself thinking, “if that’s what it takes, why not just date brown?”

But you know what? It’s none of my business. All I really hope is that people find a partner who loves, cherishes and respects them, no matter what their color. After all, dating someone Indian isn’t a guaranteed way to find love and respect; I’ve dated plenty of jerks who look like me. Brown gets their foot in the door, but it doesn’t keep it open.

Am I missing out by not considering loyal, kind, smart, funny, compassionate, feminists who are not Desi? Quite possibly, but my South Asian, South Indian boyfriend is all that anyway, so it doesn’t matter. I got mine. Here’s hoping you get yours, too. And if I can give an unsolicited tip: get you a corn-fed Midwesterner. After being born and raised on the West coast, and choosing a home on the East coast, people from Michigan are like an invigorating, sweet gust of thoughtful, fresh air. They’re so nice! Whee, stereotypes!

Our panelists are:

RB, long time reader and friend of the blog; Anna John, Sepia Mutineer and friend of the blog; Honey Mae, friend of the blog; Lisa Factora-Borchers, blogger at My Ecdysis, Neesha Meminger, YA Author and occasional contributor; Harbeer, Racialicious reader and friend of a friend of the blog; and Rohin Guha, author of Relief Work and a blogger.

Rohin: Well, it depends.

For heterosexual interracial relationships, there really were no messages. And that is probably for the best. When I was younger, I’m sure there was probably the expectation that I would date and ultimately marry someone who was not only Indian, but also Bengali too. But as I grew older and my interests diverged from those of friends I knew through cultural circles, it became more realistic to expect otherwise. I grew up around writers, musicians, and artists. This meant many of my friends simply weren’t Indian.

I also noticed that older members of my generation were then beginning to date and marry non-Indians. And their parents frequently appeared welcoming. I feel like there was a tacit agreement: My family and our relatives settled in a land where predicating the terms of marriage on a single race could’ve literally spawned a generation of spinsters. With a little time, many learned to curb their expectations.

But then I came out, so the stakes the changed. The more trying part became tackling the construct of interracial same-sex relationship. Nobody in my family spoke about it because nobody knew how to talk about it. There just too much “otherness.” While a heterosexual interracial relationship isn’t exactly the stuff of heartbreaking scandal, a homosexual interracial relationship apparently was.

RB (28-years old, South Asian American, Male Racialicious Reader): It wasn’t really something that was discussed much in our house, or dating generally. There was always the unspoken preference for one of “our people”, but what that meant exactly would be difficult to pinpoint. My parents are both South Indian, but speak different languages. Both sets of grandparents eloped and married out of their communities. So finding someone who has exactly the same background as myself would be fairly difficult to begin with.

With that being said, my parents never explicitly told me not to date any particular racial group. Our family doesn’t subscribe to some of the more antiquated notions like color prejudice so black or white amounted to basically the same thing. Interestingly, they seem to think North Indians are basically just as foreign as other Asian countries. Mostly it was emphasized to me that education, character and family background are far more important than someone’s ethnicity.

Anna: “Don’t even think about it.” I grew up in a very strict, Orthodox family; my parents were Malayalee/South Indian immigrants. Interracial relationships were forbidden, disrespectful, ungrateful and in the case of one of my cousins who married “out”, a sure-fire way to get disowned. My father railed for days about his disobedient, immoral niece. The subtext of his rage was clear: “this better not be you in a few years”.

Honey: I grew up in the Philippines. At the time, there seemed to be this understanding that interracial relationships had a certain kind of status, depending on the race of the spouse.

• marrying white/fair-skinned leads to social/class mobility. This seems to be the most desired combination. Probably vestiges of Spanish & American colonization. You can still see this in the current obsession for skin whiteners and pop culture celebrities endorsing these products, or looking white in the Philippines.
• marrying foreigners can lead to opportunities to leave the country (Philippines), and earning currency that is at least double that of the Philippine peso. Remittances to the Philippines via migrant workers/immigrants to family is a billion dollar industry.
• hapa children have a kind of cache, esp bet. Filipino/White couples. They are the standard of beauty esp. in pop/celebrity culture. Fair skin, more caucasian features, etc.
• alternately, filipino/black hapa children (esp bet filipina and black “G.I.’s”) are discrimated against. This is consistent with a pervasive internal racism in the culture that considers dark skin as lower class. I’ve had to deal with all sorts of discriminatory remarks for having dark skin.

I am not aware of discussions around interracial relationships within the Filipino culture that examines these messages, except in academia and outside of the Philippines.

There is also discrimination towards “those women” that choose to marry foreigners.

When I moved to Canada as a teen, I didn’t meet a lot of Filipinos. We lived in a predominantly white suburban area.

Lisa: I was raised in Catholic schools and in predominantly White areas. There weren’t messages because there weren’t any alternatives or options. You had one choice and one choice alone. Same sex crushes or even curiosity was unheard of. As a brown girl, I didn’t see any other options – not in school, not in media, not in peer circles. It was the same face for me growing up – from celebrities to the boys who made my heart flutter : they were White because I wasn’t exposed to other alternatives. There were such strong messages about race, religion, status, class and education and, as a young girl, I believed them to be true. I didn’t question it despite that tiny voice inside me that knew something was wrong.

Ironically, it wasn’t until highschool and a mentor told me that she didn’t believe in interracial dating that I woke up. She said she just didn’t see it as right, good, appropriate for any person of one race to be with another person of another race, no excuses. I looked at my Brown skin and felt humiliated. I wanted to ask, “What about me?” I could count the number of non-White students in my highschool and they were all friends, but no one I wanted to date. It was my breaking point. I screamed inside and knew that there was more to life, and dating, than what was around me, but I had to figure it out on my own. The message was that interracial dating was countercultural and to do that, I’d have to do it on my own.

Neesha: I was not allowed to date. Period. I was expected to have an arranged marriage to an Indian, Punjabi, Sikh boy of the appropriate caste. Interracial dating/marriage never even entered my parents’ radar*, never mind forbidding me from it. They were so worried I might actually TALK to an Indian, Punjabi, Sikh boy of the appropriate caste who was not related to me by blood, that they couldn’t even fathom the idea of me dating a girl, or dating a boy who wasn’t even Indian, let alone of an entirely different racial category.

(*The only time/s it did were as cautionary tales: “Gurpreet [not her real name] ran off with a white boy and her father and uncles hunted her down and shot her in the face.” I heard many of these sorts of “honor” stories growing up. And the stories were always about Indian girls and white boys. It was almost as if there was no expectation that I could possibly date a black boy/girl – because you’re supposed to move up on the social ladder, right? Why would anyone want to move down? And in places like the Caribbean, parts of Africa, Britain, etc., where South Asians and black people are often in close quarters, there is a lot of trying to differentiate between “us” and “them” to the powers that be.)

Harbeer: My experience was much like what Neesha describes. My parents had an arranged marriage and assumed that they would pick (with our input) spouses for my two older sisters and me. We were expected to study, do our chores, have a little wholesome fun like sports or TV (but none of those kissy shows like soap operas) and study some more.

There were a couple of uncles who’d married white women in our community–one, a German immigrant, and the other a Jewish American. I bet those two aunties would have an interesting perspective in this forum…but to us kids, at least in our family, there were regular aunties (and even a bit cooler than “authentic” aunties because they were a little more laid back). They made efforts to assimilate and, as far as I could tell as a child, were treated as full members of the community. The kids from those two families were fully integrated into our community, but I have no knowledge of their lives in their respective German-immigrant and Jewish communities or their mothers’ sides of their families. I know that at least some of those kids have gone on to marry South Asian spouses from various parts of South Asia, but I can’t tell you about all of them (lots of kids in those families!)

There were other uncles who married Chicanas and African-American women–for love or for papers or both, I couldn’t tell you, because those women were not present in any public spaces that I can recall, nor were any aunties who may have married outside the Punjabi Sikh ethnicity present. There were some inter-caste couples, to be sure, but that’s about as crazy as it got.

Oh, wait! There was another couple that sometimes came to our gurudwara–but they were a special exception altogether! They were a Punjabi Jatt Sikh man and a white Sikh convert woman–both followers of Yogi Bhajan’s branch of Sikhi. Because they were so orthodox in their beliefs and practices (not to mention their all-white clothes, including turbans on both!) they were almost mythical, idealized creatures. Theirs seemed to be held up as an angelic, holy union.

There was always some kind of background noise about how it would be hard for your children if you married out. I had one secret girlfriend in high school–she was from a different state in India. My mother found out about her later and acts now like she knew all along–she still asks about her and regrets that we hadn’t lasted and will still say things like “She was such a nice girl,” even though she made no effort to get to know her when we were “friends” (i.e.dating).

Rohin: There definitely is the preference among Bengalis to settle down with other Bengalis. But again, growing up in the U.S. has made it so narrowing my dating pool down by cultural background, caste, religion, or any other attribute that a person really has no control over counterproductive to my end goal of not wanting to end up like Little Edie in Grey Gardens.

I always count it as an added blessing if I’m dating a man who I can converse with in Bengali, but never a dealbreaker otherwise.

RB: Like I said above, we view South India as basically its own country. North Indians are OK, but no more preferable most other Asian countries. There is an exception for Hindus, since my family is fairly religious. Faith would likely take precedence over race with regards to a future partner. I have an uncle married to a Sri Lankan Tamil lady and her background fits almost perfectly in Chennai, given the similarities in language and food among other things. I was warned by my grandmother to never marry a Muslim, but I think that would be more of a problem for a woman seeking a husband than myself.

Anna: My parents were very specific about what they wanted for us– Malayalee, Orthodox Christian husbands. Not Catholic, not Protestant, Orthodox. Considering the granularity of their religious preference, someone outside of our community was out of the question. Other South Asians were not an option. Other Indians, especially North Indians were not an option; “what do we have in common with them?”, my parents would ask. The four states which make up South India are linguistically, “culinarily”–yeah, I totes just made that up– and culturally similar, but that was irrelevant. My parents wanted someone exactly like us. Their respective families had been endogamous for centuries. Who the hell were we to deviate from that?

Once my father passed away, a hierarchy did emerge. “Orthodox Malayalee” was still top-gun, but Catholics and Protestants (Mar Thomas) came next. Pentecostal Christians were last. Interestingly enough, Tamil or other Christians from different Indian states were never considered.

Now that I’m ancient for an Indian girl and in my mid-30s, any Indian person will do. South Indian is preferable to North. Indian trumps all other South Asian nations except for maybe Sri Lanka…they “feel” a bit South Indian, especially the Tamils. The two taboos are (and always have been) African-Americans and Muslims.

Honey: It depends who you ask. Some of my Filipina friends in Canada would never date foreigners. It’s a shared values & culture thing. Filipinos have a very different approach to relationships that can be seen as conservative by white “mainstream”, western culture. My parents taught me that what is important is how the guy treats me. Who I dated depended on the various subcultures I ended up in in various stages of my life.

Lisa: It’s a slippery slope. In my Filipino family, all my cousins that lived in the Midwest fell in love with and married White women and men. My cousins on the coasts married all different kinds of people: White, Chinese, Filipino…It’s not so much ethnicity or one thing, it’s a combination of values that makes someone right/acceptable. I also think it’s about geography. What groups you submerge yourself in will have an enormous factor on who you are attracted to.

It’s especially different for Filipino Americans who are born in the United States but raised by Filipino standards. Marrying another Filipino was seen as ideal because it was parallel to marrying someone who would understand the racial and cultural factors of marriage. There wasn’t a hierarchy, but it certainly was a case by case basis of what was deemed acceptable or not.

I married a German/French/Irish man raised in a small country town in western Ohio. Despite my urban loving, Filipino blood, I have more values in common with him than anyone I’ve ever met.

Neesha: To my parents, dating even among South Asians, there were may hierarchies. Religion was a big one. Class, caste, region, language – all of these were factors. The ideal mate for me would have been a Punjabi, Indian, Sikh boy from the same caste. God forbid I ever dated a Muslim, for instance, and that meant I couldn’t ever date a Pakistani, a Bangladeshi, or anyone else from a predominantly Muslim country. Even though we’re all South Asians in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, the Caribbean, etc., there are definite no-nos when it came to dating and marriage. Even in terms of culture, my brother married a South Asian woman from Barbados and my mother is still grumbling about “See? She’s not really Indian – how would she know our customs and culture? If she were Indian, she would treat her mother-in-law with more respect.” Which, of course, is sheer crap because there are plenty of Indian women who treat their mothers-in-law with disdain and plenty of Bajan women who treat their mothers-in-law like gold. But it’s this idea that somehow the culture is preserved–that there’s some sort of purity–if you marry “in.”

Harbeer: Are we still talking about our families’ ideals when we were coming up, our families ideals now, or have we moved on to our own, actual experiences?

Within my family–well, at this point I am ancient and my parents are desperate for grandchildren (I mean, they want me to be happy!) so they would accept any woman who is capable of bearing children. Growing up, the hierarchy would have been Jatt Sikh, non Jatt Sikh, South Asian other, East Asian, then “Americans” (white, black, latina) on a case-by-case basis. My mother has suggested, in the past five to ten years, suggested that I find an East Asian wife because they are submissive and she’ll take good care of my mother’s darling son.

Culture was and is a big consideration–ideally, you’d want to bring someone into the family who would understand the jokes and the rituals. But my parents are hard core social justice activists and community leaders in their own right, and that is another facet of my partners they have taken pride in.

My two sisters were held to completely different standards. Being not just a son but the only son gives me extra leverage. And I’m still talking about marriage, not dating. There is no dating, except maybe (now) as a first step towards marriage.

As far as my own experiences go, I am so ornery and idiosyncratic that if some unlucky woman passes all my other tests (intelligence, politics, humor, kindness, courage, generosity, spirit, conviviality), well, there’s really no room left for any kind of ethnic discrimination. I am attracted to (very few!) whole individuals, not to any particular attribute, but I was really surprised to learn recently (at 35!) that hearing spoken Punjabi makes my ears perk up and my heart skip a beat. As for my history, like Honey, the people I’ve dated has depended on the various subcultures I’ve inhabited over the course of my life. They have all been individuals rather than members of an ethnicity to me, but only one has been an active part of my family life (and I part of hers) and differences in cultural background certainly became apparent in that case, but it was never anything insurmountable.

By Guest Contributor Anurag, cross-posted from (Gaysi)

When queer women are first coming out or becoming involved in the mainstream queer community they are often becoming subject to misogyny and objectification at the hands of other queer women. However, in a lot of cases queer women are bred into a heteronormative lesbian culture where they feel they should be the misogynists, although they probably don’t recognize it as such.

White queer women often feel subject to this objectification and misogyny in the queer community. However, South Asian queer women and other queer women of color have a level of exoticism, or some may experience it as tokenization, that we have to deal with that most white women do not.

This misogyny that exists among queer women is the result of misogyny by heterosexual men, which is set as the norm. Misogyny in the heterosexual community plays out as men’s both overt and covert disrespect for women. Their attitudes and behaviors may affect their relationships. Furthermore, this is created by a larger culture in which women are disrespected and degraded, especially in the media.

Misogyny that is prevalent in heterosexual spaces pervades and spreads into queer spaces, where queer people become objectified on a daily basis in personal interactions. Queer women may feel that it is not the same disrespect since they are both women. However, there is still the possibility for the same power dynamics between people of the same gender, whether in a relationship or otherwise. Queer women often degrade other queer women emotionally, physically and sexually.

This same process happens with exoticism; the queer community replicates a version of exoticism from heterosexual communities. Exoticism in heterosexual communities has been a contributing factor in violence against South Asian women such as human trafficking. South Asian queer women are also objectified by this idea of South Asian women as an exotic, foreign endeavor to be sought.

While South Asian queer women are exoticized, objectified and oversexualized, they may feel a tie to their culture of origin, which may result in feelings of guilt. South Asian queer women may already feel a sense of guilt from being queer, identifying as queer, and exploring their sexuality. As South Asian queer women explore their sexualities in an environment that is viewing them as hypersexual, exotic beings, they may feel flattered, disturbed, and/or confused. To be hypersexualized for coming from a culture that is often experienced as sexually conservative can be confusing.

However, South Asian women inside and outside of the queer community undoubtedly feel that they have sexualities that are not always out of their hands. Furthermore, South Asian queer women are not always the passive objects of misogyny.

This discussion of exoticism is not to discount legitimate feelings of sexual empowerment that South Asian women may feel when exploring their queer sexualities. South Asian queer women often feel that they have positive experiences in the queer community, free of exoticism where they can enjoy, celebrate and explore their sexuality. Some times, in regards to sexuality, there is a freedom that South Asian women feel they could not find until they came into their queer selves.

Simultaneously, while vulnerable to exoticism, South Asian queer women may also perpetuate the misogyny in the queer community. South Asian queer women may not always have the power to be able to exoticize South Asians in a way that is detrimental, however they can have the power to objectify queer women.

South Asian queer women do not have one assigned role in any discussion of sexuality. Freedom, repression, power, control and so on; these words all have relevance in any discussion of sexuality regarding South Asian queer women. This shows that women can not solely be described as powerful or weak in discourse surrounding sexuality. When it comes to misogyny and exoticism among queer women, it can be said that South Asian queer women are often in a complex tug of war.

By Guest Contributor Ay-leen The Peacemaker, cross-posted from Beyond Victoriana

In California at the turn of the 20th century, a community grew in southern California with an interesting history: Punjabi-Mexican families of the Imperial Valley. This unique community stemmed from the effects of British colonialism, transnational labor immigration & American economic opportunity (and American anti-Asian discrimination laws). Many multi-generational families in the area today can trace their multicultural and multiethnic histories back over a hundred years, and refer to themselves as “Mexican Hindus”, “Hindu” or “East Indian” today.

During the 19th century, many Punjabi families sent their sons abroad to earn a living outside the British Raj; most of these sons had served as part of the British army and police force in China. Eventually, these men saved enough for passage to America to work in manufacturing, lumber, or agriculture, with a majority of this immigration happening between 1900 and 1917. These bands of travelling workers were known in America as “Hindu crews.” Others from the middle to upper-middle classes sough educational opportunities in American universities. These Punjabi immigrants typically entered America through Angel Island, the entry point for overseas immigration on the US West Coast. According to Professor Karen Leonard, “Some 85 percent of the men who came during those years were Sikhs, 13 percent were Muslims, and only 2 percent were really Hindus.”

At the time of immigration, these men hoped to bring over their families once they’ve settled in America. But because of changes in American immigration laws, they were unable to send for their families. Many Punjabi immigrants, however, soon formed their own communities with the other ethnic group that shared the farming work with them: Mexican laborers. In 1910, refugees fled the violence of the Mexican Revolution and sought out a new life across the border.

Despite cultural and religious differences, both groups shared similar working lives and their communities became integrated with each other. Additionally in California, miscegenation laws preventing racial intermarriage existed until 1948, but that applied to only white and non-white unions; thus marriage between other non-white groups wasn’t prevented.

Many of these marriages were arranged by Mexican families to Punjabi bachelors; the brides were mostly considerably younger than their husbands. Not only were there marriages out of love, but Punjabi men were seen as more financially stable, since by the time of Mexican immigration, most Punjabi men have become successful businessmen. Mexican-American women were allowed to own land, while Punjabi men were denied US citizenship and could not, and a compromise was constructed that allowed Punjabi-Mexican families to own land for themselves. Women who married lost their land rights, but legal loopholes were worked out with white landowners who would hold their property in trust until American children were born and the land agreements could be placed under their names.

Unlike expectations of assimilation, Mexican-Punjabi families had difficulty being accepted by Mexican-Americans and formed a distinct community of their own. Because of different religions, these marriages were civil unions, and most wives kept their Catholic heritage and passed it onto their children. Spanish was predominantly spoken in the home and most Punjabi men added Spanish nicknames. They passed on little of their Punjabi heritage to their families with exception to funeral customs and food. Another aspect that impacted the evolution of Punjabi-Mexican culture is the fact that many Punjabi fathers were denied US citizenship and legal rights, despite being successful businessmen and firmly established in America. As a result, many Punjabi fathers chose not to pass on their cultural heritage on which they had been discriminated against:

The original Punjabi immigrants refused to transmit elements of Punjabi culture that they judged inappropriate in the United States, according to their children. Many fathers felt that the immigration laws and other discriminatory policies against Asians had made it useless to teach the children Punjabi, or even to tell them about Punjabi society. Social practices from the Punjab, life cycle ceremonies, and caste and religious distinctions and observances, were consciously discarded; when interviewed, several children remarked on their father’s refusal to talk to them about the Punjab, refusals justified by the uselessness of such knowledge and by the need to become American. (Source)

Nevertheless, many Punjabi-Mexican families found ways to express their background in ways that celebrate the hardship and determination of their immigrant ancestors, and this community still thrives in California today, especially as later generations have come to call themselves the “Sikh pioneers of North America.”

More information:

Punjabi-Mexican Americans on Wikipedia

Half and Halves: The Punjabi-Mexican-Americans of California

Roots in the Sand: a PBS documentary

Excerpt from California’s Punjabi Mexican Americans by Karen Leonard

More info on Karen Leonard’s book California’s Punjabi Mexican Americans

Photo courtesy of Steven Williamson

By Guest Contributor Monique Jones, cross-posted from moniqueblog

Before I get to the huge review of “Charlie Curries a Favor from Todd”, I figure I should have a post where I analyze Outsourced as a whole, particularly becasue the show has been cancelled. Will NBC listen to what I have to say and use my suggestions as valid input on what to do or not do in their next culture shock office sitcom? No. In fact, I’d be shocked to pieces if someone from NBC even knows I, and Moniqueblog, exist. But at least my opinions will be here for the record.

I’ll tackle this in four parts, starting from the broadest to smallest of issues: 1) How the premise of the show was tackled, 2)How the characters were developed (with a subset on the sartorial choices the characters made, as the clothes also tell a bigger story-and perhaps one of the most egregious mistakes-of where the show veered the wrong way), 3) How relationships were handled, and 4) The character of Todd: how his characterization could’ve been saved mid-season. Let’s jump in, shall we?

Part One: The premise of the show

I’ll start the analysis by quoting  the official synopsis of the show from NBC:

“Outsourced” is NBC’s new workplace comedy series centered around a catalog-based company, Mid America Novelties, that sells American novelty goods including whoopee cushions, foam fingers and wallets made of bacon, and whose call center has suddenly been outsourced to India.

After recently completing Mid America Novelties’ manager training program, Todd Dempsy (Ben Rappaport, off-Broadway’s “The Gingerbread House”) learns that the call center is being outsourced to India, and he is asked to move there to be the manager. Having never ventured out of the country, he is unprepared for the culture shock. Overwhelmed, Todd discovers that his new staff needs a crash course in all things American if they are to understand the U.S. product line and ramp up sales from halfway around the world.

The sales team Todd inherits includes Gupta (Parvesh Cheena, “Help Me Help You”), a socially awkward employee; Manmeet (Sacha Dhawan, BBC’s Five Days II), a young romantic who is enamored with America; Asha (Rebecca Hazlewood, BBC’s Doctors), a smart, striking woman who finds herself intrigued by Todd; Rajiv (Rizwan Manji, “Privileged”) the assistant manager who wants Todd’s job; and Madhuri (Anisha Nagarajan, Broadway’s “Bombay Dreams”), a wallflower who suffers from extreme shyness.

Todd also discovers other transplants working in his office building, including an American expatriate, Charlie Davies (Diedrich Bader, The Drew Carey Show), who runs the All-American Hunter call center, and Tonya (Pippa Black, Neighbours), a beautiful Australian who runs the call center for Koala Air.

On paper, this show seems not only like a sure bet, but an easy task. How can a show about an American transplanted in India not be good? The culture clash alone would be entertaining. So it would seem.

However, just like how some conversations between Todd and his Indian workers might have become convoluted from a language barrier, something got lost in translation when the show went from the pitch phase to the pilot/filming phase. Several elements rubbed the majority of people (and critics) the wrong way:

1. Todd and other Western characters had an air of entitlement, while the Indian characters were secondary in an Indian/American comedy; the Western characters were the foreigners needing to learn about Indian society, but the native Indians were treated as sidekicks, or worse, like children needing to be educated in the Western ways.
2. India was treated as a backwater country, whereas America was held on a slightly higher pedestal. Possibly, this is because many of the writers might be more familiar with America, and also, it be a tone that’s a carry-over from the film version of Outsourced. But still, it’s highly insulting to a country that has the tenth largest economy by nominal gross domestic product (GDP), fourth largest economy by purchasing power parity, has become a newly industrialized country and is one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, boasting such industries as automobiles, software, biotechnology, aeronautics, and other scientific areas,  aside from their fast-growing IT and business process outsourcing fields.In Mumbai alone (the place where I believe the tv show Outsourced is set), there are fast-paced IT, engineering, healthcare and  financial career fields. Mumbai is also the financial center of India due to being the location of both of the country’s major stock exchanges. Mumbai is also the home of Bollywood, so acting opportunities are also big. Many major ad agencies are also located in Mumbai. Sure, India has a very large group of people who are unskilled and still faces the upward challenges of eliminating poverty, illiteracy, and less-than-favorable public health conditions, but India is not as backwards and out-of-touch with Western society as Outsourced makes it out to be.
3. The humor of the show–particularly the pilot–was crude to both countries involved. The humor made Americans look like self-absorbed idiots and the Indians look like simple-minded country folk. Neither of which is true. The joke that Indians no nothing of Western culture is null and void in the first place–does India not have India’s Got Talent, a show that is a spin-off of the original Britain’s Got Talent? Do they not have Indian Idol, a version of (again) the original British show Pop Idol? (Keep in mind America also borrowed the models for those two shows for America’s Got Talent and American Idol.) And what about the huge market they have for American television shows and films? The idea that the Indian characters in Outsourced have never seen an American movie is almost impossible to imagine. The reverse is also true for America. On the whole, we are intellectually and culturally-stimulated people, too–do we not have the Bollywood-esque Broadway show Bombay Dreams as well as a growing market for Bollywood films? And did we not have American made films like The Namesake? Each culture has their own set of jokes and idiosyncrasies, sure; not every expat knows everything to expect from a foreign culture. But that doesn’t mean that two countries’ popular cultures can’t overlap at any point. And lets not pretend that America doesn’t consume their fair share of Indian cuisine. For Todd not to have eaten an Indian dish or snack ever is almost preposterous in today’s society. The same holds true for the Indian characters on the show; there are McDonald’s restaurants in India.

There might be a few more issues in the pilot and the show as a whole, but these are the biggest ones I can think of. Am I holding the cast at fault? No. In all of the reviews I’ve done thus far, I haven’t held the cast at any fault because they aren’t the ones to be blamed. The main problems were created below the surface, during the show’s initial planning and writing stages. Here’s how the people behind the show could have fixed said issues, though:

1. Make sure to eliminate any part of the Western characters that would give the characters that odious air of entitlement. One of way of fixing this, aside from doing through characterization of Todd and co., would be to have more Indian writers on staff. Out of the 17 writers hired to work on Outsourced, a very small number are actually Indian. I think hiring more Indian writers would have helped even out some of the script problems. Also, the writers needed to make sure they were well-versed enough in Indian culture to make jokes about it. I’m not saying some weren’t well-versed, but if we’re speaking in generalities, the whole writing unit should have had not only the standard show bible, but an Indian bible–a book put together by the producing staff and head writer(s) that outlined both major and little-known facts about Indian culture, a list of contacts on Indian culture for research, and various movies, television shows, food items, and other forms of pop-culture in India. Also, if it could’ve been worked in the budget, the entire team should have gone to India as a research trip, similar to how Disney would pay for its team of animators to go to faraway locales to sketch, sight-see, and do background research in order to bring the local flavor back to their animated films such as  The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Paris, France), Mulan (China), and The Lion King (Kenya, Africa), to name a few. Pixar and Dreamworks also did this for Ratatouille (France) and The Prince of Egypt (Egypt, Africa), respectively. Also, Dreamworks head Jeffery Katzenberg utilized the minds of the top biblical scholars, Arab-American leaders, and Christian, Muslim, and Jewish theologians in order to create the best possible (and least-offensive) movie, since the film, much like Outsourced, had the potential to alienate several cultures, ethnic groups, and religions.
2. Understand India fully. I touched on this with the suggestion of an Indian bible already. This is where such a book would come in handy for writers, as would that trip. In order to write about a certain group of people and their country, you have to have immersed yourself in it for quite a long time. In order for the show to really be both hilarious and hard-hitting, the writers could have not only used the lighthearted parts of India, such as Holi, but also the dark parts, such as the high poverty rate, the illiteracy, and the health issues. Other parts of Indian society, such as the latent colorism, the residual caste society, and the argument over arranged marriages could have been talked about, or, in the case of the arranged marriage issue, talked about more often and in much greater detail. Perhaps the writers were saving some of their Indian knowledge for later seasons, but if the show was to be a success, they should have put some of their heavy guns in the first season. Similarly, the same type of treatment could have been done for America, particularly Kansas, where Todd is from. While the lighter side of America was always talked about on the show, the darker issues could have made its way into the show as well. Issues like racism and discrimination against people from the Middle East and India due to the fear of terrorism, the theatricality and “horse-race” quality of our political system, race relations issues, our own healthcare issues, fear-mongering, etc. If the show seriously dealt with both sides of both countries, Outsourced could have been a very well-written, possibly controversial, but very successful dark comedy. Also, placing the show in a more believable setting than a soundstage (or perhaps, just a more believable soundstage) could have helped immensely.
3. With the above research suggestions completed, the humor would have come naturally. There’s a bevy of things in both countries to choose from that would make compelling television. Such a rich bounty of harvestable material should have provided scores of ideas. And, coupled with the right amount of knowledge, the jokes could have had some substance other than something as simple as Jingle Jugs.

Again, some of the tone of the show, might be from the film, but where the film stops, the tv show could have picked-up and become even better than the film.

Clueless was a film, and the television show was, in many cases, much better and zanier than the film (which, if we’re being honest, was already fantastic, except for the squicky stepbrother-loving part. I know they’re not related, but it still grosses me out!) M.A.S.H. was a film, and whereas the film was a gritty take on life as a medical officer in Korea, M.A.S.H. the television show was serious, funny, tinged in Vietnam-era sensibilities (so much so that I thought it was about Vietnam) and engrossing that it became much more popular than the film ever was. Hogan’s Heroes was based on Stalag 17, a classic Billy Wilder film based on a play about American soldiers in a German POW camp, but the show, also showing a more contemporary sensibility than its film counterpart (though not as much as M.A.S.H.), became much more popular than the film because of the humor involved.

In short, stuff could’ve been done to make the easy premise work and develop the show into a hard, scathing, slightly satirical, funny comedy, the comedy I think it was supposed to be, instead of the slightly-unfocused, soft-hitting show it turned out to be.

This is the first in a multi-post series, which will continue at moniqueblog

Not that I know of anyway – no one’s said that to me in my face. I don’t even know if I’ve been called a harlot or a whore or any other synonym for a loose promiscuous woman.

People don’t often tend to associate me with sexuality, at least when they just see me and don’t really know about what I get up to. “Unattractive” or “ugly” would probably be more common insults, asides from “you Bangla”.

But the biggest reason though is because I spent all my life in a society and culture where people didn’t even talk about sexuality. That thing about how women are sexualised in society through ads and media and all that? Not where I came from! You were meant to be pure, innocent, untouched, sweet…”sweet” was actually a word that got used a hell of a lot as a compliment, come to think of it.

If you wanted to denote someone as slutty, trashy, harlot-like, you know what you’d call them?

Sexy.

Yes, that trait people in the rest of the world spend tons of hours and dollars achieving? That buzzword in company mission statements? That marketing aim? Undesirable. You’d get it in a sneer from your school classmate, that admonition from your boss, that behind-the-back bitching from the neighbours – all for wearing a tank top or having your hair out or putting a strut in your walk. People knew that in some contexts it was meant to be positive, which made the word a double-edged sword; if you accepted the word as a compliment, you were proving how degrading you are, and deserved the insult.

Here’s an example of how intense it could get: Sometime in the mid 90s, some lad mag classed Malaysian pop superstar Siti Nurhaliza as one of their sexiest women. Now Siti is massive popularity-wise – when Britney Spears first got started people were trying to match up their potential careers! She’s likely still going and won’t stop for a while. So she’s a very big deal in Malaysia – even if you don’t follow her music (pop-Malay-folk ish) you still followed her career one way or another.

She had to release a press statement declaring: “I’m not sexy!”

The Western-eduated folk found that amusing and pointless, but the “sexy” declaration was really a potential career-breaker for Siti. She was the epitome of Malay femininity, which meant she was supposed to be well-mannered, poised, clean, polite, family-friendly. Accepting any level of “sexy” inferred that she was a wild child, a rabble-rouser, loose morals, had no respect for culture or elders, no shame or dignity. And that just would not do.

Shame and dignity. Two words that get used a lot to suppress sexuality.

As I mentioned, there’s not a lot happening in Malaysia sexuality-wise (which is a bit surprising considering birth control is over-the-counter and apparently Malaysian abortion laws are a lot more liberal than some American cities) or even physically (PE is a joke). No one will talk about it, plans to introduce a sex ed curriculum keep getting stalled, and if you want to ask the only answer you get is “don’t think about it”. How are you going to learn anything about good consent or owning your bodies or good vs bad touch if you weren’t treated as someone with a body to begin with? You were just a brain, there to get good grades, don’t worry about the rest of you.

That was certainly my experience – I had to get my sex ed from books and CD ROMs and the Internet, and somehow I managed to get enough to know that it could lead to unwanted pregnancies or STDs, was messy and icky, and my paranoia made me feel that I would be that rare 0.01% who’d get sick & pregnant even with a condom AND birth control AND a lesbian or something strange like that, so I ended up going asexual most of my life. What’s the worry anyway – there’s the rest of the world!

Then I got Mark The Boyfriend and suddenly got to find out for myself what the big deal was. And it was great! Physicality was awesome! A few years later, after finishing uni and dealing with some personal changes, I found the space and courage to really take on my sexuality – andboy what a ride that’s been! I found a love for eroticism in performance (art is my kink!), embraced the display and enjoyment of my body, spent time reconsidering and reconciling the differing (sometimes conflicting) paradigms I learnt about sex, love, relationships, intimacy, friendships. There were down times too – being assaulted, having hearts broken, still not being completely capable to communicate what I would like without holding myself back nor imposing myself on others, not feeling strong enough to speak up for my own boundaries because I’m so used to “be accommodating!”.

All of that I’ve had to do pretty much on my own – not completely alone, because there were the burlesque classes and the lovers and the discussion groups and the art directors and so on. But I did have to build my own definitions of sex and intimacy and relationships and so on, having not found too many that resonated with me and my experiences. And yet I could not find support from the culture of my origins, from myfamily.

“Don’t you have any shame?!”
“Why are you giving up your dignity!?”
“Why does Mark let you do this?!”
“Can’t you change your passions and give this up?”
“Why are you bringing shame onto the family?”

It’s never just me. What I do affects my family, my culture, my background. I am seen as a representative, a synedoche, a microcosm. Even if my parents have been long dead I’ll likely still have my actions be considered as that of XYZ’s Daughter, rather than that of my own agency.

And it is this self-same agency that has led me to passionately embrace causes like SlutWalk. The agency that marks the fact that my body is my business, that it’s not owned by or representative of anyone else, that I have every right to seek & build support for my body my way.

I do have a sexuality, I do have physicality, I am sexy damnit. And that is not a shameful thing, that is not a loss of dignity. It’s reclaiming ownership of what is rightly mine from the start – and making a stand to assert that no one has the right to abuse, insult, malign, harm, or attack anyone AT ALL, including me, for making our own damn bodily choices. Even if they are the slut-version of Voldemort. Even if they are “cheap STD-infected hookers”. Even if they’re not sexy. Even if they are sexy.

No ifs, no buts, just NO.

My body, my business.

Image credit: yegslutwalk

By Guest Contributor Vijay Simhan

There has never been a shortage of television shows, particularly comedies, built on stereotypes. In fact, there’s something we find comforting about stereotypes in that it confirms some of our (often unspoken) assumptions or makes us feel like we’re in on the joke.

The Big Bang Theory (TBBT) follows a circle of four friends who are scientists that “understand how the universe works” but do not know how to “interact with people, especially women.” The characters’ lives change when a beautiful free spirit, Penny, moves in next door. In other words, the show extends the oft-used stereotype of nerds or geeks or dorks that split the atom by day and spend their nights with Dungeons & Dragons and Star Trek, or more currently, World of Warcraft and Battlestar Gallactica.

In most cases a show such as TBBT would not really elicit more than an initial glance. However, with the increasing presence of Indian and Indian-American characters on television, the TBBT character Raj Koothrappali and the Indian stereotypes he represents are worth considering. (That and everyone I know notify me whenever they see any Indian on television.) Particularly curious is Raj’s inability to speak to any attractive girl or to act as his own agent in matters of love coupled with the (un)intentionally ambiguous depiction of his sexuality.

In one episode, an FBI agent running a routine background check arrived at Raj’s apartment. Played by Eliza Dushku, the agent’s beauty left Raj tongue-tied and unable to articulate his thoughts unless he got “drunk on rum cake.” Similarly, in all his interactions with Penny, an attractive blonde, he is unable to speak more than a few words and is often represented as a nonentity in her eyes. Even with girls who are considered less attractive and desirable, such as with Howard’s girlfriend, Bernadette, Raj is not able to express his true feelings unless it’s through dream sequences and Bollywood musical numbers. One particular episode ends with Raj day-dreaming a Bollywood musical about Bernadette and mumbling, “Dance number aside, I’m definitely not gay.”

Alongside this voiceless representation of Raj is his ongoing, “ersatz homosexual marriage” with Howard. While they are best friends, there are repeated instances of physical, sexually-charged contact between the two followed by awkward exchanges usually reserved for couples in relationships. In these cases, Raj typically takes on what would be considered the stereotypical role of the woman often accusing Howard of not calling or ignoring him “the morning after.”

This representation of Indian males as passive, childlike, and submissive is not uncommon but is significant because of the rich colonial history behind it. During the British Raj’s rule of India, colonialism stripped away the Indian male’s strength and virility and, in turn, as Ashis Nandy stated, they suffered from “emasculation and defeat in legitimate power politics.” Nandy, in The Intimate Enemy, goes on to suggest that the British viewed many Indian males as “childlike” which included an innocence, ignorance, and passivity but with a willingness to learn masculinity and loyalty at the hands of the British.

Raj’s depiction contrasts with his sister Priya’s representation. Priya, who is not a regular character on the show, aggressively pursues Leonard, and the current story arc examines their burgeoning romance. As to be expected, the show uses this as an opportunity to play up the expected Indian stereotypes in rather typical ways. In all honesty, the stereotypes used are the same stereotypes that you would expect friends to employ when making fun of each other and are nothing that I haven’t heard from my own friends. In many ways, I found this to be an endearing quality of the show as it represents how friends really behave around one another rather than sterilizing interactions to what is politically correct or acceptable.

In any event, some of the common exchanges during this series of episodes included the requisite mocking of Hindu cow worship (which is factually incorrect), the representation of women’s subservient status to men (purposely undercut by Priya’s dominance/contrast over her older brother Raj), and the expected references to the Kama Sutra. None of these stereotypes are particularly unique and are in fact, all too common in how Desi characters have come to be represented in the television landscape.

In TBBT, you see the pitfall of stereotypical humor regarding characters of all ethnicities, sexualities, and backgrounds. It’s an easy laugh that touches on the familiar and the safe at the expense of the Other. It becomes easy for shows to play up the stereotype for laughs, but by utilizing such stereotypes, the possible representations for Desi characters become limited and their Indian-ness becomes the way in which the audience defines them. These representations don’t challenge the limits of comfort the way incisive takes on race, gender, sexuality, or ethnicity often do. The result is that the viewers are left shortchanged and are not asked to stretch their preconceptions of others, while the Other is left with yet another clichéd representation of self.

By Guest Contributor Filmi Girl

I was beyond thrilled when I got word that the first African-American actor to have a major role in a Bollywood film, Jonnie Louis Brown, was willing to speak to me for this interview series. However, when I mentioned to some friends that I was going to be interviewing Jonnie, the responses I got were all some variation of, “He’s so scary!” In the United States, Jonnie is best known for his portrayal of the sadistic Officer Eddie Walker on HBO’s The Wire, a standout performance on a show packed with talented actors. Bollywood fans will know Jonnie from Apne, in which he played the toughest, fiercest boxer in the world.

Jonnie laughs when I tell him of my friends’ reactions. “You want to hear something funny?” Filmi Girl always wants to hear something funny. “What’s funny about all those roles is that I almost did not land any of them because the directors and writers thought I was so nice that I could not do it!” The good-natured man on the other end of the line certainly doesn’t sound as if he would steal money from kids, as Officer Walker did on The Wire. “It was just completely ridiculous, they were like, ‘He’s too nice, too clean looking! How can he… I don’t believe it.’ And then when they see me perform it’s like, ‘OH MY GOD!’”

By Guest Contributor Karen Chau

“What’s happening, hot stuff?”

The answer is … not much.

Since the appearance of Long Duk Dong in Sixteen Candles, representation of Asian men in popular culture – and specifically comedy – hasn’t really changed much. They’re mostly still nerdy, socially incapable background characters. Still, primetime TV has shown us that Asian men can be more than just quiet contributions to set dressing. They can be funny in their own right. But being the funny bro doesn’t really mean you’ll have any more success with the ladies. Just ask Lester Patel from Chuck, Raj Koothrappali from The Big Bang Theory, or Tom Haverford from Parks and Recreation.

Lester (Vik Sahay) works at the Buy More as part of Chuck’s Nerd Herd team and occasionally performs as part of the music group Jeffster! with his best friend, Jeff. Raj (Kunal Nayyar) is an astrophysicist at Caltech who suffers from a case of selective mutism in which he can’t speak to women outside of his family (except after the consumption of alcohol). Tom (Aziz Ansari) is a member of the Pawnee Parks and Recreation department team, often serving as Leslie Knope’s right-hand man.

The Asians have gotten cooler, but they still aren’t quite cool, yet.

We got a chance to talk to them about what they think:

Raj: Listen, I know everyone is quick to talk about stereotypes and all that, but the fact is … I can’t talk to women.

Tom: Whoa, whoa, wait.

Lester: Dude, that’s a rough blow.

Raj: I mean, I can when I’m drunk. And when I’m drunk, I’m smooth.

Lester: Yeah, buddy. Sure.

Tom: There’s a quick fix to all this, Raj. If you can’t talk to women, just hit up the club like your boy, T-Dog here.

Raj: Who is -

Tom: Me, it’s me. You roll up in the club, looking slick and the ladies will come to you.

Lester: Or you can just do what I do.

Raj: What, work at the Buy More doing menial labor?

Lester: You can look at it like that. Or you can see it as a prime opportunity to access dozens of high-tech audio-visual equipment at any given moment, where the women flock to you to solve their computer problems. And, you know, maybe a camera slips down someone’s shirt. Accidentally.

Raj: Ohhhh. But isn’t that illegal?

Lester: [snort] Legal schmegal. We’re talking about a prime opportunity for babe scopage.

Have any of you ever had long-term relationships?

Lester: Listen, I’m in a band. We have groupies. We don’t settle.

Tom: I hook up like every night. Pawnee chicks, man. What can I say? They dig the Tom-meister.

Raj: You guys are lying out your asse. Lester, man, have you ever even hooked up with a girl?

Lester: At least I can talk to them.

Raj: Uncool, man. Uncool.

Representation of Asian men has moved away from the glasses-wearing, lisping, slightly effeminate portrayal, though the new representation it has gravitated towards isn’t much better. They might still be nerds, but they’re the cool nerds. Cool in the sense that they’re slightly more suave, even if they still have trouble getting dates, still have trouble talking to women, and overcompensate for that sense of inferiority by going in the complete opposite direction. Rather than the innocent foreigner portrayals of the past, the comedic Asian male representations of today lean towards the sleazy: guys that want a girl so badly that they ruin it for themselves.

Lester, along with his buddy Jeff, spend their time creeping on female customers at the Buy More, compared to their equally nerdy but less socially awkward coworker, Chuck. They’ve run the gamut of verbal harassment to video taping women’s cleavages as they shop. Raj’s attempts to be suave are often hindered by his selective mutism – he can’t speak in the presence of women – but when he’s had a few drinks, he can get a little carried away. One time when Penny tries to take him back to his apartment because he’s too drunk to get himself home, he tries (unsuccessfully) to seduce her.

Tom, perhaps, is the only exception, but he’s recovering from a green card marriage where he talked about the attractive factor of his wife at every possible moment. Lester is known for being a bit skeevy, and Raj is generally well-meaning but also infatuated with the idea of sex, with the occasional drunken rude remark. Still, the general trend seems to be that these cooler-but-not-cool Asian guys still can’t find satisfying romantic relationships at all. Even Sheldon gets hit on. Raj just hangs out in the background.

Why do you think you’re not in a relationship right now?

Raj: My parents want me to get married to an Indian girl. It’s a lot of pressure.

Lester: This wild animal cannot be tamed by any single person.

Tom: I just got out of one with Wendy. She’s hot, but she’s not that hot. Yeah.

In Western portrayals, Asian masculinity has been posited as a lesser kind of masculinity, something that was weaker and closer to the feminine or the homoerotic. These characters address the problems of Asian masculinity as represented so far, but we’re still not being shown functional Asian male characters in relationships. These comedy characters aren’t really a step forward until something progressive is done with them, until their behavior grows beyond simply a penchant for sexual harassment.

This change in representation may perhaps stem from the success of the Harold and Kumar franchise, which did a lot to reverse stereotypes about the studious, effeminate Asian male. But now we’ve gone so far in the opposite direction that it’s hard to find any real sense of change. They’re not studying, they’re not doctors, but they’re still socially incapable. Lester, Raj, and Tom are characters whose dating faux pas are there for us to laugh at as they play off their awkwardness as an awkward, overtly sexual attempt at James Bond charisma.

We hope one day comedic Asian male characters can move past being solely defined by their social awkwardness and social anxiety and become leading man material. Or, you know, just have sex once in a while.

By Arturo R. García

Based on the pilot episode, Outsourced has the potential to be something rare: a show that’s pissing off people on both sides of an issue, but in reality is too bland for its’ own good.

As things stand, it mostly pussyfoots around its’ premise: Todd walks into work one morning to find out the novelty product call center he’s supposed to lead has been shifted to India – no city is named on the show’s website, by the way – and staffed by locals.

Now, there’s comments on the show’s page expressing offense that a) the network would air a show about Americans losing jobs to “those people;” and b) that South Asian actors would willingly take part in a show that reduced them to Funny Minority backdrop roles for yet another clueless American character. Somewhere in the middle of both stances, there’s room for a comedy that can address both sides of the issue. But so far, this doesn’t look like it’s gonna be it.

The problem starts with our protagonist. As a character, Todd is so “average,” he looks like he’s on the wrong show; he really should be the lead in The Office: The Next Generation, as he looks like the son Jim Halpert and Pam Beesly never had. But he lacks both Jim’s snark and Pam’s spark, making it hard to believe it, let alone root for him, when both Asha and Tonya start making goo-goo eyes in his direction.

As for the POC cast members, most of their characters are indeed as badly drawn as many people suspected they would be. Besides Asha, though, there’s promise for the American-obsessed Manmeet and Todd’s openly traitorous second Rajiv to score some good lines in the future. Too bad for them they don’t have a more capable foil to bounce off of. Actually, they do, but it’s anybody’s guess as to whether the creative team realizes it.

If Outsourced really wanted to dig into the topic at hand, it might have had a better time of it looking at it through the eyes of Charlie, the Ugly American character. Not only is Diedrich Bader the type of comedic specialist who can lift this kind of material, but it gives you more potential for a true character arc. The same principle seems to have worked for Eastbound & Down.* And Bader delivering a line like, “you guys have got some pretty crazy-looking hats yourselves” would give both the joke and the ensuing punchline – the center’s only Sikh employee storming out – more of a punch. I can’t say I didn’t want to join him, but not for the reasons NBC might have preferred.

* Yes, I know the show is based in Mexico this season; but I can only take so much.

I suppose when you come across a writer so engulfed in snark, so above the tide, so cutting edge that it is almost impossible to touch their well thought out and clearly obvious humor that you find yourself paused, unable to dissect with the surgical precision of cutting analysis you have come to expect of Feministing, you have to at least stop and acknowledge that the author was kind of intelligent, had a strong point of view and at least made you LOL. I really think Joel Stein was hoping he would get that kind of reaction about his column in this week’s TIME about his painful realization that his town was overrun by “Indians,” a deeply sad look into his psyche, almost reminiscent of the Michael Richards moment, only Stein was writing…so you would think he had more time to do just that. There are few things sadder than reading a writer that is so caught up in their own ego, racism and bad writing that they don’t even have the foresight to see how poorly their piece has not only come across but will be received. The only thing sadder is that TIME chose to run it.

- From No Hee Hee, Ha Ha, For Me Joel Stein, by Samhita Mukhopadhyay

Over at Slate, Nina Shen Rastogi points to the rise of South Asian characters on television. In an article titled “Beyond Apu: Why are there suddenly so many Indians on television?” Shen Rastogi examines the changing opportunities for South Asian actors:

Why are Indians suddenly the “it ethnicity,” as Ravi Patel put it to me?

This, too, is at least partially a function of changing demographics. More Indians in the fabric of American life means we’re more likely to be a source of inspiration for non-Indian writers, like the two Jewish guys from suburban New Jersey who wrote Harold and Kumar—the title characters are based on their friends. Reshma Shetty, who stars as Divya on USA’s hit dramedy Royal Pains, told me that her character was based on a Divya that creator Andrew Lenchewski grew up with on Long Island.

But according to Karen Narasaki, who heads the Asian Pacific American Media Coalition, the rise in primetime Asians is also the result of advocacy. Her organization and its partners have been working with the networks to develop diversity initiatives for the past decade, ever since 1999′s infamously “whitewashed” primetime season, in which not a single freshman show had a leading minority character.

Narasaki’s group doesn’t track all the various Asian-American subgroups, so it’s hard to tell if Indians are rising in Hollywood at the expense of, say, Chinese and Koreans. But there are a few reasons why Indian actors might have more opportunities. America’s growing fascination with Bollywood—and relative ignorance of entertainment industries in other Asian countries—may be opening some doors. Narasaki notes that TV executives tend to have a mental barrier that prevents them from seeing Asians as “stars” who can carry shows. But “Hollywood is intrigued by Bollywood,” she says. It’s not so much that Los Angeles wants to start aping Bombay’s storytelling style, but when executives are thinking about diversifying their shows, the allure of Bollywood—and, more recently, the runaway success of Slumdog Millionaire—may mean that Indians seem more attractive than members of other Asian groups.

To float another, more radioactive theory: Are Indians getting a boost from America’s interest in the Middle East? Do Indian characters—and it does seem to be mostly Indians, as opposed to Pakistanis, or Bangladeshis, or Nepalis—function as what film actor Satya Bhabha jokingly called “diet Muslims”?

Whether or not Indian characters are a way of safely avoiding the specter of other, more “dangerous” brown people, the fact that South Asian actors can easily pass for Middle Easterners may very well be contributing to their professional development. Performance historian Brian Herrera theorizes that South Asian actors may have gotten a boost from the flurry of terrorist-type roles that followed in the wake of Sept. 11. A one- or two-episode arc as a featured character on, say, 24 would represent a solid credit line for a young actor, potentially opening the door to more interesting opportunities down the line. It’s a trend Herrera has noted with other minority groups, though in less-accelerated forms. “So many of the elder statesmen of Latino actors got their start doing gang stories in the ’80s,” he notes.

With the possible exception of Outsourced, there are no shows with true South Asian leads yet. It’s therefore hard to completely dismiss the sense that mere tokenism is at work here—that Indians are just the newest a la carte option for making TV casts more colorful. But the optimist in me notes that there’s an encouraging range of character types emerging.

Shen Rastogi brings up some major ideas within the course of her article – what’s the line between representation and tokenization? Does the success of one group in Hollywood have to come at the expense of another? If so many minority actors get their shot by playing to stereotypes, why are we still stuck in so many of the same stereotypes decades later? And even if we get more minorities on screen, does it mean that the writers will develop their characters the same way they will white characters? (It may be useful for us to go back and examine some of the plotlines on major shows, particularly the evolution of Tara on True Blood and the plot lines for Raj on The Big Bang Theory.)

Or, if we want to summarize all these ideas into one major question, how do we measure progress on television?

After watching her Facebook news feed fill up with links to articles adoring the politics of Gaga, Thea emailed her local sex/race/gender/pop culture expert: Andrea.  Thea was puzzled by the wild adulation heaped upon Gaga as “transgressive” and “binary-breaking” by the gender studies crowd…not because Gaga is without merit, but because Thea could think of lots of other mainstream artists who had tried to play with appearances and femininity, and not gotten the same love.  When those adulations started to slide towards race, suggesting that Gaga’s work could be read not just as gender subversive, but also questioning and decentering whiteness, it was time for a Racialicious convo.

Thea: I was reading some articles over the weekend about how trangressive the video for “Telephone” is, and I couldn’t help but feel that people are reading things into her work. Not that there is anything wrong with that (especially considering what I do on Racialicious), but it seems as if people are giving her credit for being deeper than she is, rather than saying, oh look what this work could represent, regardless of the artist’s intentions.

There’s this article, which beyond seemingly giving Gaga way more credit than she deserves, makes a gratuitous comment in the article about how the positioning of Beyonce vs Gaga in “Telephone” is a reversal of the black/white dynamic. But I don’t think so at all. For example, in the video Gaga addresses Beyonce with a silly, cloying nickname with is a little condescending, and the video ends with Gaga definitely being the Decider. The article says that Beyonce breaking Gaga out of jail shows that black/white reversal, but the video ends with Gaga “taking care” of Beyonce: the reversal (which I’m not sure I buy in the first place) effectively nullified.

I do get the Gaga mania among queer and feminist theorists, but I also feel like there have been artists before her who were doing interesting things with gender in their work — like M.I.A. who really does not fit easily into either poptart or rock goddess categories. (And M.I.A. has gone so far as to call out the racist-sexism of the music industry, even at the risk of alienating key collaborators.) Even the evolution over the years of Beyonce has been fascinating, in terms of how she went from being this ideal of hetero desire (and also being a blond, light-skinned black lady who was accessible from a white point of view) to making these crazy-ass videos. Like the video for “Video Phone” is just weird.

So why does Gaga get all the love? How much of it is because, as a small young blonde woman she appears to be trangressive in a way that artists like M.I.A. or even Trina cannot be transgressive, because to begin with they are already seen as non-normative, simply because they aren’t white? Is it because the feminist model is predicated on whiteness, so that is what it is drawn to untangling?

Clearly Gaga is not oblivious to her own “normativity”; she actually uses it as a weapon, drawing in the viewer with the expectation that she will be blonde and submissive, and then upsetting those expectations by doing intentionally weird, gross things.  But while she’s playing with her whiteness, she (& her critic fans) seem somewhat oblivious to her white privilege. And the attendant attention she gets, while women of colour’s contributions to redefining music and gender performance are marginalised.

Or does Gaga get the props because she really is much more transgressive and interesting than any modern pop star, and I’m just too bitter to admit it?

Andrea: If I had to analyze her, I see Lady Gaga as the latest in a line of white women who use the paradox of white womanhood to gain attention and, through that, fame.  She does this by using the tropes of idealized white womanhood (various shades of blonde), her “minority” status of being a woman, and 1st-tier-school artiste (her outrageous outfits), so she’s seen as being able to “relate” to other marginalized people, like PoCs (especially the educatarati) and white queer folks and white feminists.  Through her blonded-out whiteness, she stands on the assumption of default whiteness as baseline for “racelessness.” She puts on the outfits to make her stand out, to make her “different,” which gets read as her signifying that she “understands” people with marginalized–especially visually marginalized–identities and/or politics.  For those folks who society makes to feel different via “looks,” LG is viewed white pop-cultural ally.  And the fact that LG does sincerely seem to stand up for non-hetero sexual and gender identities helps her gain a fan base, too.

Depending on the type of song, LG can affect an R&B melisma (“Video Phone”) or choppy dance-pop singing tone (just about all her other songs).  And the fact that she can, dancing-wise, keep up with R&B princess Beyonce–and that Beyonce and she guested in each other’s video–gives LG extra cred. Of course, her being all interracially “taboo” with Kanye–as ridiculous attention-whoring obvious as those various pairings appeared–just burnishes her cache.  She adds to the mythos of the “complexity” of whiteness via her image which, as you astutely pointed out, simply isn’t accorded to MIA.  MIA–for all her pretty right-on international politics and funky gear–is simply seen as an “exotic.”

My generation had Madonna and Cyndi Lauper, two white women who affected white womanhood and visual difference with famous results.  Cyndi Lauper, unfortunately was 1) a better songwriter than singer (can’t tell you how many version of “Time After Time” I’ve heard!) and 2) her one-note Noo Yawk squawky-punky schtick lasted for but so long.  Madonna rode her wave much longer by constant visual metamorphosis, but 1) she was still within confines of certain ideals about white ciswomanhood and 2) people called out the fact that her constant changing was really based on constant culture-vulturing.  And now, she’s simply seen as a middle-aged woman trying too hard to be relevant to young people.  Comparatively speaking, Lauper seems to have become a bit of an pop-cultural elder stateswoman, Celebrity Apprentice gig aside.  LG seems to have picked up on Lauper’s and Madonna’s outre white womanhood with more talent than Lauper and without the same culture-appropriation embodiment squick that Madonna causes.

Then, a couple of days later…

Andrea: I may have to (sorta) take back what I said about LG not taking from women of colour. This article says she bites Kelis’ style.   Gaga just doesn’t culture-rake, unlike Madonna.

Thea: Hoooweeeeee!

Hm, do you think this is a fair allegation? I do remember that Kelis had over-the-top sexuality and that that whole “I hate you so much right now!” stuff made a bit of a dent, but was she as surprising and challenging of gender norms as Lady Gaga? I don’t see them as being that parallel…even though Kelis’ “Caught out There” video also features a dead (drugged?) man. It’s interesting also to think about cultural support – maybe Lady Gaga came onto the scene more at a time when people were willing to see her art/music as confronting gender normativity, than they were able to recognise that in Kelis.

But at the same time, I really do think we have to weigh the role of race in this – why have all the gender studies academics gone mad for Lady Gaga, and there was nary a spike over M.I.A.’s, Kelis’, and Beyonce’s evolution? I think you see the same thing with MCs like Foxy Brown or even Trina; within their art there is a bold attack and a pushback on a certain idea of what makes a woman – often in fierce and creative ways – but they are not getting the cred or the recognition that these virginally blonde women, like Gaga, Madonna and Cyndi Lauper.

Which I think both has to do with the fact that women of colour are already non-norm, but also just the fact that racist media gives much less time to women of colour than white women.

And then a few weeks later…

When two of the most original singers of color back up your opinion, you get a whiff of the minty lemon scent of vindication.  At least that how the two of us felt when none other than Grace Jones and M.I.A. recently gave Lady Gaga direct side-eye in the press.

Perhaps what we made explicit is what Jones implied to in her comment about Gaga:

Has she copied her? “Well, you know, I’ve seen some things she’s worn that I’ve worn, and that does kind of piss me off.”

Is she talented? “I wouldn’t go to see her.”

So, did she ask to play with her? “Yes, she did, but I said no. I’d just prefer to work with someone who is more original and someone who is not copying me, actually.”

And M.I.A. said this:

Again, there’d Lady Gaga – people say we’re similar, that we both mix all these things in the pot and spit them out differently, but she spits it out exactly the same! None of her music’s reflective of how weird she wants to be or thinks she is. She models herself on Grace Jones and Madonna, but the music sounds like 20-year-old Ibiza music, you know? She’s not progressive, but she’s a good mimic. She sounds more like me than I fucking do!

M.I.A.’s comments seem particularly spot on: while the spectacle of Gaga is dazzling, ironically as a singer, her music is the least progressive thing about her. Especially when you contrast it with M.I.A’s bonkers rhymes and bold call-outs to volatile political conflicts.

Is this just a media-fed beef of two women of color against a white woman who reached out to at least one of them (Jones) because they want to create some buzz for their projects?  (The color-coded dynamics of that set-up alone…)

Perhaps. But, within their individual complaints, is the very real observation of how the media (again) marginalizes the innovations of female entertainers of color by exceptionalizing or otherwise exoticizing them as they hail the white woman who copies their style all the way to the bank and back to the pedestal.

Photo credits: WireImage

On her blog, Deepa D. posted about what she calls the “Slumdog Shooting technique,” using this video from Greenpeace about climate change:

Deepa says,

Ishan Tankha, photographer…sitting in casually imperial isolation on one of the many historical monuments peppering Delhi…

Meanwhile every other shot? The gaudy, public, and exotically poor street life of Delhi. At most we get some middle class women shopping, some Metro commuters, and Ishan riding his bike in front of the Rashtrapati Bhavan.

But even as he is saying climate change spans all classes, there are no other young, upper class people like him, no rich people, no half-naked out of fashion rather than poverty women, no fat cat industrialists or cavalcade-riding politicians, no indication that there are any of the Westernised English speaking people on the streets, even though Ishan has been chosen spokesperson.

I’m calling this the Slumdog Shooting technique – use English because you don’t want to alienate your Western audience with subtitles, but keep the local colour full of attractive yet needy children, crowds that look struggling, and picturesque poverty.

Also check out our posts on “starving African kids,” juxtaposing wealth and poverty, the white woman’s burden, the “we are all African” campaign, making charity recipients look gross, tourism in Brazil, us and them, Burger King’s Whopper Virgin campaign, India needs western technology, and de-racializing the modern/traditional binary.