“America’s greatest strength, in my opinion, is its ability to swallow up all its immigrants and create an inimitable blend of Americanness and individuality. The reason that so many of us come here, and then want to stay, is that we can be both American and something else — Indian, Italian, Sikh, Mexican. We can have our feet in two different cultural milieus and feel comfortable in both. I can be part of the American mainstream without having to forsake my heritage.”
– Riddhi Shah
On Sunday night I turned on the TV to find that only CNN was covering the Sikh temple shooting in Wisconsin that killed six. Fox News had a program about a prison in Latin America, and MSNBC, something else that was equally irrelevant.
Compare this with the coverage of an incident that happened only two weeks ago, the shooting that killed 12 people in Aurora, Colo. Networks devoted themselves round-the-clock to the attack: Who was the shooter? Why did he do it? There were entire segments dedicated (rightly) to covering the vigils and a community in mourning.
This time, there was none of that. Instead, TV commentators asked tentative questions about a religion that few had heard of. There was none of the sense of outrage that followed the Aurora massacre, none of the national heartbreak and grief that seemed so pervasive only two weeks ago.
On the Sunday after the Aurora shooting, I’d taken a taxi to see The Dark Knight Rises. The cabbie told me to “be careful” when I stepped out and headed to the theater. This time around, even the man behind the counter at my neighborhood Indian grocery store found out about the incident several hours after it had happened. “We only knew when people from India began calling us,” he told me.
So, 
obviously, the question is: Why is it that the American people, and the American media in particular, care less about this attack?
The Aurora shooting was purportedly the handiwork of a mentally disturbed young man. The attack says a lot about the lack of gun control in the U.S. but ultimately little else. Shouldn’t this attack, with its label of “domestic terrorism” and possible political agenda, spark off a larger discussion about the dangerous insularity of American society? Shouldn’t we be talking about why white-supremacist ideology would find a favorable recruit in a man with a military background?
Consider, for a minute, a situation in which the skin colors of the victims and attacker were reversed. What if, instead of a white supremacist, the attacker had been a Muslim fundamentalist, and the place of worship a synagogue or a church? Would Fox News have aired a segment about a Latin American prison just hours after the shooting? Would we be talking about the Olympics right now?
I’m not American. I’m Indian. But in the three years that I’ve lived here, I’ve come to love this country. I love the freedom and meritocracy that allows me, an immigrant, to work at one of the country’s most well-known Internet news organizations.
I also love that America lets me, in theory, practice the faith I was born into — another small, lesser-known Eastern religion called Jainism. Like the six people who died at the Gurudwara in Wisconsin, I have woken up early on weekends to go to a temple, mine being a Jain temple in Queens, N.Y. Jainism, like Sikhism, broke with Hinduism over the caste system. We’re not as physically conspicuous as Sikhs, but we’re a racial and religious minority all the same. Just like the hundreds of Sikhs who’d gathered at that Gurudwara in Oak Creek, I’ve marveled at this strange immigrant experience that allows me to feel at home while living in a foreign country. And when I read about the shooting on Sunday, I thought of all the people I know who were engaged in a similar pursuit at the Jain temple in New York.
America’s greatest strength, in my opinion, is its ability to swallow up all its immigrants and create an inimitable blend of Americanness and individuality. The reason that so many of us come here, and then want to stay, is that we can be both American and something else — Indian, Italian, Sikh, Mexican. We can have our feet in two different cultural milieus and feel comfortable in both. I can be part of the American mainstream without having to forsake my heritage.
Today, if we don’t ask why a small religious community in the Midwest was targeted by a 40-year-old white man, if we don’t make this discussion as loud and robust as the one that followed the attack on Gabby Giffords or on those young people in Aurora, we’re in danger of undermining what America stands for. – HuffPost, 7 August 2012
» Riddhi Shah is the editor of HuffPost Good News, New York.
See also
- Why the Reaction Is Different When the Terrorist Is White
- The Sikh temple shooting and the sleeping giant of white supremacy
Filed under: india, USA | Tagged: christian terrorism, communalism, current events, domestic terrorism, globalisation, gun control, gurudwara, human rights, india, media, multicultural, newspaper, NRIs, oak creek, PIO, racism, religion, religious bigotry, sikh, sikh temple, sikhism, temples, terrorism, tv, USA, white supremacy |
BHARATA BHARATI 
Thank you for this. You have now given yourself away. Either you are a brown Christian or a Marxist of the kind usually found in London or Kolkata.
Caste is not racism. That is a perversion of meaning that white racists have projected onto the Indian social system that you have swallowed whole. Do you agree to all interpretations the white man gives to Indian culture to serve his own interest?
No doubt the caste system has been perverted. That started with the Moguls when they turned Hindu society upside down. But Hindus have made great efforts to correct a degenerate social system that is not easily corrected for a variety of reasons, and there has been some success.
Caste saved Hindu civilization from the predatory Portuguese, French, Dutch, Danish and British colonisers. Whatever damage they could do, and it was quite a lot, they couldn’t break the social system which manifested Hindu culture.
Caste is a system of INCLUSION, not exclusion. Change your perspective from that of your white masters and you will see the positive side of caste.
Caste today thrives in Christian, particularly Catholic, institutions. Dalits which form over 90% of Christian congregations are treated abominably. There are two papal bulls sanctioning caste in the Indian Catholic Church. How is this justified unless one accepts Paul’s advice to Philemon to return to his slave master as he is already free in Christ.
What a load of sanctimonious crap! And the slave ideology of the apostle Paul was fulfilled when Bishop Da Casa wrote his thesis defending the Christian white man’s slave trade out of Africa.
Muslims the brotherhood of all men who accept the Prophet’s diktat, have some 17 caste divisions in their community. How is it justified?
Hindus convert to Christianism and Islam supposedly to get away from caste. But they find even worse social divisions in their new society.
Hindus make a great effort to correct the wrongs that have crept into caste, but Christians and Muslims don’t make any effort and instead use caste as a lever to get more money out of the government.
Even the famous St. Thomas Christian designation is a caste designation introduced into Kerala by a Catholic bishop in the 18th century to distinguish upper caste Syrian Christians (the St. Thomas ones) from lower caste converts. In fact Syrian Christians are the most caste concious community in India today.
So please don’t do your caste is racism number here!
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Oh come on, IS! What’s colonialism got to do with it?
Quite honestly, as a Brown Indian, I’ve observed racism in its worst forms among Asians–Indians included. India practised a highly-organized form of racism for 3,000 years. They made it ‘respectable’ –or, as you describe it, ‘complex’–by calling it the caste system. They certainly didn’t need any White colonialist to teach something that was systemic to Indian culture long before the British arrived.
I lived in Africa, where I witnessed blatant racism on the part of Indians against Blacks. Which is why I cringe at the hypocrisy of hacks like Ms. Riddi Shah when they complain of the racist nature of US media, .
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You point is appreciated. Nevertheless racism is very much there in US society and it has to be pointed to.
Brown racism (of which this writer has been a victim) is more complex because Indians and other Asians have suffered centuries of white colonialism. Their dislike and distrust of the white man and his (often ulterior) motives is very deep. The problem is exacerbated because western imperialism continues today by the agency of missionaries, NGOs, MNCs and the aggressive promotion of what is euphemistically called democracy and human rights when in fact the objective is acquiring oil and political influence.
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Yes, IS, but she’s complaining about the media–not the shooter who dosn’t know Sikhs are not Muslim. Call it misplaced ‘racism’ if you wish.
I wonder what you think of Black racism or, for that matter, Brown racism.
That mainstream media doesn’t do its job properly may or may not be based on racism.
But I believe continued use of the race card (usually by liberals) to explain away evils within our society reveals the existence of a certain intellectual wilderness in the mind of MS Riddi Shah.
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No 14 and Celtic cross tattoo: This numeral represents the phrase “14 words,” the number of words in an expression that has become the battle cry and rallying slogan for the white supremacist movement: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” This expression was coined by white supremacist David Lane while in prison serving essentially a life sentence for his role in The Order, a 1980s white supremacist terrorist group that conducted armed robberies, bombings, and assassinations.
The shooter has been identified as a white supremacist. White supremacist are racist. So Riddhi Shah is correct in pointing to the racist motive in the shooting.
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The answer as to why the media was silent is not as complicated as one might think.
This kind of incident has been happening with depressing frequency and is probably not newsworthy anymore–as US media continues its downward spiral.
And then again, a lot of Americans put Sikhs and Muslims in the same category, so much so, Sikh groups are going through a lot of trouble to educate the public on the difference.
For that matter, the media is still downplaying the Fort Hood murderer, not least of all because he’s Muslim. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1225627/Fort-Hood-shootings-Army-major-Nidal-Malik-Hasan-kills-12-injures-31-shootout-troops-army-base.html).
So don’t take media ‘silence’ so personally.
Finally, shame on you, Riddi Shah, for following the Jesse Jackson line of thinking in putting a racial spin on this tragedy.
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