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I think, therefore I am. - René Descartes
Joel Stein is a regular contributor to Time magazine who specializes in humor writing. His articles are usually seen every other week, or once a month, on the very last page of the magazine, which leaves the readers something humorous to relish when they finish their reading – the effect is sort of like having a piece of mint after a delicious buffet meal. I have been enjoying his writings, only sometimes not quite sure how to take in his quirky sense of humor.
In his recent article My Own Private India, he talks about the rampant growing of the Indian community in his hometown, and subsequently all the changes, cultural, economic, political, and psychological, it brings to the area and its people. When I read it, I could sense that in his reminiscent, jokey account of his mischievous adolescent years in Edison, where now is dominated by the Indians, there is something smoldering underneath, something more than the nostalgic feeling he tries to express. The article triggered a flux of criticisms and all the hell break loose. The Indian community in this country exploded with anger, and Stein has been called names by “a racist", or worse. Under the pressure both Time magazine and Stein himself issued an apologetic statements to quench the heat, yet not seem to the Indian’s satisfaction.
I am not sure Stein becomes a racist only because his article touches on, in a humorous way, one of the hottest issues in this country. But here’s the thing: whenever race becomes the subject of joke, there's a fine line between a sense of humor and the respect for other people’s dignity, that you have to walk carefully.
My Own Private India
By Joel Stein Monday, Jul. 05, 2010
I am very much in favor of immigration everywhere in the U.S. except Edison, N.J. The mostly white suburban town I left when I graduated from high school in 1989 — the town that was called Menlo Park when Thomas Alva Edison set up shop there and was later renamed in his honor — has become home to one of the biggest Indian communities in the U.S., as familiar to people in India as how to instruct stupid Americans to reboot their Internet routers.
My town is totally unfamiliar to me. The Pizza Hut where my busboy friends stole pies for our drunken parties is now an Indian sweets shop with a completely inappropriate roof. The A&P I shoplifted from is now an Indian grocery. The multiplex where we snuck into R-rated movies now shows only Bollywood films and serves samosas. The Italian restaurant that my friends stole cash from as waiters is now Moghul, one of the most famous Indian restaurants in the country. There is an entire generation of white children in Edison who have nowhere to learn crime.
I never knew how a bunch of people half a world away chose a random town in New Jersey to populate. Were they from some Indian state that got made fun of by all the other Indian states and didn't want to give up that feeling? Are the malls in India that bad? Did we accidentally keep numbering our parkway exits all the way to Mumbai?
I called James W. Hughes, policy-school dean at Rutgers University, who explained that Lyndon Johnson's 1965 immigration law raised immigration caps for non-European countries. LBJ apparently had some weird relationship with Asians in which he liked both inviting them over and going over to Asia to kill them.
After the law passed, when I was a kid, a few engineers and doctors from Gujarat moved to Edison because of its proximity to AT&T, good schools and reasonably priced, if slightly deteriorating, post–WW II housing. For a while, we assumed all Indians were geniuses. Then, in the 1980s, the doctors and engineers brought over their merchant cousins, and we were no longer so sure about the genius thing. In the 1990s, the not-as-brilliant merchants brought their even-less-bright cousins, and we started to understand why India is so damn poor.
Eventually, there were enough Indians in Edison to change the culture. At which point my townsfolk started calling the new Edisonians "dot heads." One kid I knew in high school drove down an Indian-dense street yelling for its residents to "go home to India." In retrospect, I question just how good our schools were if "dot heads" was the best racist insult we could come up with for a group of people whose gods have multiple arms and an elephant nose.
Unlike some of my friends in the 1980s, I liked a lot of things about the way my town changed: far better restaurants, friends dorky enough to play Dungeons & Dragons with me, restaurant owners who didn't card us because all white people look old. But sometime after I left, the town became a maze of charmless Indian strip malls and housing developments. Whenever I go back, I feel what people in Arizona talk about: a sense of loss and anomie and disbelief that anyone can eat food that spicy.
To figure out why it bothered me so much, I talked to a friend of mine from high school, Jun Choi, who just finished a term as mayor of Edison. Choi said that part of what I don't like about the new Edison is the reduction of wealth, which probably would have been worse without the arrival of so many Indians, many of whom, fittingly for a town called Edison, are inventors and engineers. And no place is immune to change. In the 11 years I lived in Manhattan's Chelsea district, that area transformed from a place with gangs and hookers to a place with gays and transvestite hookers to a place with artists and no hookers to a place with rich families and, I'm guessing, mistresses who live a lot like hookers. As Choi pointed out, I was a participant in at least one of those changes. We left it at that.
Unlike previous waves of immigrants, who couldn't fly home or Skype with relatives, Edison's first Indian generation didn't quickly assimilate (and give their kids Western names). But if you look at the current Facebook photos of students at my old high school, J.P. Stevens, which would be very creepy of you, you'll see that, while the population seems at least half Indian, a lot of them look like the Italian Guidos I grew up with in the 1980s: gold chains, gelled hair, unbuttoned shirts. In fact, they are called Guindians. Their assimilation is so wonderfully American that if the Statue of Liberty could shed a tear, she would. Because of the amount of cologne they wear.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1999416,00.html
I’m little surprised to know the provincialism like that is still at work on the day to day basis, not even your SuZhouish PuTong Hua can neutralize it?!. I had this naïve thought that it should’ve much dwindled, if not totally gone away, as the living standards between different areas get leveled up. Guess not.
However, I didn’t feel it much last time I went back in the cities like Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hong Kong and Beijing – Macau is a different story since I don’t speak Portuguese, nor Spanish. And on the contrary I was amazed by the level of professional service they could offer, especially in Canton and Shanghai. Well, stereotype is one of the culture things that may not be directly subject to the advance of commercialism as it’s deeply rooted in people’s mind. This is why we see it, too, in the much developed countries, both tangible and intangible.
“Tolerance is a winner in this case, and it takes both sides.” I like that!
So the conversation with those taxi drivers, they have resentment against the migrant workers who swamped the urban areas? If so, that’s a similar situation that can ignite negative feelings between the “insiders” and the “outsiders”, the early comers and the latecomers, except it’s not a racial issue.
Well, I really feel for Joel. If I am the one who witnesses my hometown's being transformed by the people who look different, speak and behave differently and smell different – good thing we Chinese don’t wear that kind of cologne – I would probably harbor the same feeling. On the other hand it’s one thing that you can think whatever you can, yet it’s another when you voice your opinions in public. It’s his wording, I think, that got him in trouble, like “dot head”, “Guindians”, and “the not-as-brilliant merchants brought their even-less-bright cousins”.
But surprisingly, everytime I turned my PuTong Hua into SuZhou Hua with a native driver, immediately, I am no long an "outsider"! That was how I sensed their voice and attitude towards outsiders: mingled with some indignation and helpless。 About latecomers, though speaking in a native tone, my parents have also been categorized as latecomers which made them pretty sad sometimes :))
轉移話題了~~~不過，嚴重的排外主義者也不乏攻擊和歧視性，還好，這次沒遇上這類人。
To me, that feeling is closely associated with "a sense of loss and anomie and disbelief" - that their hometown is no longer the one it used to be, the accent, food, customs and ownerships are replaced by that of strangers. I could certainly understand their pain and even resentment during our conversation whenever it occurred. I laugh and agree, that’s about all I could do.
Just like Joel, some senior taxi drivers, they try to be honest and open-minded, they joke while they work, what can they do besides joking, oh, maybe praying? hoping for a more harmonious society, ha :)))
Tolerance is a winner in this case，and it takes both sides.