Enough of the Halloween shenanigans (until later this evening), and onto a “serious” post.
In the wake of the phenomenon that is Supreme Being Wunderkind Governor Jindal, Vijay Prashad of Little India magazine continues to explore the relationship between ethnicity and political allegiance. We agree that congratulating a political candidate based on ethnicity is silly especially when you want the rest of your society to overlook that factor, but I’ve never said that someone of a certain ethnic group does not have the right to espouse beliefs from either end of the American political spectrum. (An Indian-American voting bloc would scare me, too, mominem.) Many of my relatives who are businesspeople are fiscal conservatives in order to protect their livings, and I have long questioned the platforms and strategies of both big parties. That said, since the emergence of neo-conservatism and its overt racism, often have I asked these same family members how they can continue to support a strong political party which openly conducts racial profiling and mixes a fundamentalist brand of Christianity and state on a regular basis. I’ve never received a straight answer for that one.
That niggling question is why the last two paragraphs of this article stood out for me, even if the others were merely gloss-worthy.
… The GOP did not field any desi candidate who had a ghost of a chance to win. Indeed, the GOP’s Karen Balderston who stood against [Swati] Dandekar revealed the racism of many in her party, “While I was growing up in Iowa, learning and reciting the pledge of allegiance to the flag, Swati was growing up in India under the still existent caste system. How can that prepare her for legislating in Iowa or any other part of our great United States?”
Bobby Jindal seems to be a decent man. Whatever his personal achievements, he is going to conform to the discipline of the GOP and he is going to be used as a false symbol of the GOP’s “inclusiveness.” Let us not promote someone who stands with those who want to make mayhem in our world, just because they share an ethnicity with us. That is the crudest, most vulgar form of politics.
A vehement retort to my statements in the Washington Post was, “But, we have access now!” My reply was, “Who’s we and access to what? Guantanamo?” Nuances (of race, in this case) are completely lost on political parties that present issues in terms of big, ill-fitting frames such as that mentioned above. This is precisely why our support of political candidates has to be more sophisticated and cannot end with the handing over of a check based on skin color or a back-scratch. Over and above that, we have to ask what that politician does with the funds and to promote fairness and unity through his entire constituency. Failing that, you could be the one left out of the process some day.
Speaking of “left out,” the picture/clip at the start of this post is Bobby Jindal being interviewed on Fox News Sunday before a backdrop of downtown New Orleans. Cough up the dough, mac!
