Before he was shot and killed last Wednesday, Srinivas Kuchibhotla was enjoying a regular ritual of after-work drinks with friends. Alok Madasani, Srinivas’ friend also of Indian descent, was injured, as was another man who tried to intervene. Their attacker traveled 70 miles, walked into an Applebee’s, and told the bartender he needed to hide because he had just killed two “Middle Eastern men.”
South Asian Americans have been aware, at least peripherally, about how racial profiling has targeted our identity since 9/11. National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS) was a Bush era program mandating registration, fingerprinting, and interrogation of non-citizens from, among other countries, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Branded as an anti-terrorism measure, the program monitored over 80,000 men but culminated in 0 convictions before it was dismantled in 2016. Meanwhile, reports abound about South Asians undergoing humiliating racial profiling in airports. Hate crimes against brown bodies, especially visibly Sikh and Muslim Americans, have become sad but unsurprising mainstays in the news.
But it’s at moments like this—when we so keenly feel the pistol of white supremacy pointed in our direction—that call our comfort in this nation into question. The father of one of the shooting victims spoke out condemning the xenophobia spewed by President Trump–and begged Indian parents, should they care for their children’s safety, to not to send them to the United States. “Something has changed in the United States,” he said. “Such things are not good for the Indian community living here.”
The ripe, urgent unease we feel today, however, only marks the reveal of an unsavory but longstanding truth: people of South Asian descent have never been comfortable in America. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the first significant wave of Indian immigrant labor was met with unmitigated racism. The Japanese and Korean Exclusion League changed its name to the Asiatic Exclusion League, people rioted, and the California Bureau of Labor Statistics wrote, “the Hindu … is the most undesirable immigrant in the state. His lack of personal cleanliness, his low morals, and his blind adherence to theories and teachings, … make him unfit for association with American people.”
Such nativism was codified through laws, including the 1917 halt on immigration from “the Asiatic Barred Zone,” and the 1923 termination of citizenship rights for all South Asians. These held until 1946, upon which South Asian Americans were once again allowed to become naturalized citizens, and a new quota allowed 100 Indians to immigrate into the US annually. The quota was lifted only 60 years ago with the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965–handily timed to bring in highly educated South Asians to staff Medicare and scientific initiatives.
Behind the scenes, bigotry continued to flourish in high places. In 1971, America assisted Pakistan in inflicting a genocide on the Bangladeshi people, resulting in between 200,000 and 3 million deaths. President Nixon, speaking about Indians supporting millions of Bangladeshi refugees, commented, “what they really need—is… a mass famine.”
These tales of distaste toward South Asians seem to belie modern-day rhetoric around South Asian-American identity: namely, the branding of Asian Americans as the “model minority.” In this narrative, we are championed for our high incomes and education levels, and considered the success stories of immigrants. The discrepancy is clarified when one learns that the term “model minority” was invented by sociologist William Petersen in 1966 to highlight Japanese-American “success,” but only by pitting them against other “problem minorities.” Essentially reprimanding the African-American Civil Rights Movement, Petersen complained that when other minorities receive equal opportunities, they react by “either self-defeating apathy or a hatred so all-consuming as to be self-destructive.” He insinuates: why couldn’t they be more like the Asian Americans—enduring silently, working hard, and achieving success without aid?
This history is rendered even more egregious given that the concept of a “model minority” is false, perpetuated by shoddy statistics. While Indian-Americans’ boast a median income above $100,0000, the highest of all ethnic groups, Bangladeshis earn a median at around half of that. As advocacy organizations point out, the misapprehension that Asian America or South Asian America is a monolith has real repercussions: it creates stigma for struggling Asian-Americans, and tells policy-makers to assume that these communities don’t need attention.
This context is not meant to dishearten but to galvanize: dear fellow South Asian Americans, we have never been able to afford complacency. Moreover, we owe it to America not to be complacent—specifically, to uplift the other historically and currently subjugated peoples who have uplifted us, and continue to resist today. When we were struggling for independence against British colonialism, 80 African-American leaders wrote a letter to President Roosevelt urging him to offer support. Later, the Civil Rights Movement fought to bring the 1965 repeal of 100-person immigration quotas. We have a legacy of stunning cross-ethnic solidarities that we cannot ignore.
Instead, we must interrogate the assumption dormant in many of our self-narratives: if we comport ourselves well, study and work hard, and focus on ourselves, we can thrive without interference. Tragically emblematic of this sentiment’s futility were the moments leading up to Srinivas’ death. When their attacker accused them of being in America illegally, they told the truth: that they were here legally and working. For their attacker, the truth was not good enough.
No, the forces at play here are too insidious to be assuaged so easily. The vilification of South American immigrants in this country, for example, could just as easily be turned directly against South Asians: and has been, recently, with the outcry over H-1B visa workers in the tech industry. The war on drugs produced deliberately disproportionate consequences for Black Americans; the war on terror has surveilled and targeted innocent members of South Asian and Arab communities. Trump’s travel ban may have restricted itself to the seven nations picked by Obama—but what’s to stop another ban that keeps out South Asians and our loved ones?
To advocate for our own rights to live fulfilling, authentic lives, we must realize that we face the same forces that bring down other communities in this nation: among others, xenophobia and white supremacy. If we act alone—or worse still, don’t act at all–we have no chance of dismantling them. It will take a cross-community movement—learning from, uplifting, and organizing with all those striving for racial justice in America–to move forward.