seedhi Posted June 29, 2010 Posted June 29, 2010 A sort of pointless article in Time about Indian immigrants, seems to have xenophobic shades ..? Decide for yourself. 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.htmlI guess it is the season's flavor to lampoon Indians. I dont think one is going to see a similar article on Chinese immigrants or West Indian dominated townships.
Rajiv Posted June 29, 2010 Posted June 29, 2010 Its Eh-dee-sun, proper gujju style..where saris and pan paraag rules
IKnowU Posted June 29, 2010 Posted June 29, 2010 tbh I would hate to live in America let alone visit. What kind of developed nation allows its citizens to walk around the streets carrying guns and have different laws for every state? Poor health and education system, even though they are one of the best in those industries worldwide. I think America is bit overhyped, and no wonder Indians flock to amereeka like its goldiggers haven thinking money can be made like as if its growing from the trees. Even back in India, it seems to be more prestigious and to be superior if you have settled in America instead of any other western nation like Canada, Australia, England etcc.
Nova Posted June 29, 2010 Posted June 29, 2010 It's personal opinion, but shocking to see this published in a reputed magazine. This author clearly has a bigoted view of Indians....may be enough material there for a stand up comedian. The demographics are changing fast in the US. By 2050, the whites will be in minority...not surprising!
punjabi_khota Posted June 29, 2010 Posted June 29, 2010 Funny!! :woot: :rotfl: :rotfl: ..he is spot-on about almost every thing. He is right about merchant cousins, he is right about guidians (every university has the indian-american population with some guiduians..).
punjabi_khota Posted June 29, 2010 Posted June 29, 2010 tbh I would hate to live in America let alone visit. What kind of developed nation allows its citizens to walk around the streets carrying guns and have different laws for every state? Poor health and education system, even though they are one of the best in those industries worldwide. I think America is bit overhyped, and no wonder Indians flock to amereeka like its goldiggers haven thinking money can be made like as if its growing from the trees. Even back in India, it seems to be more prestigious and to be superior if you have settled in America instead of any other western nation like Canada, Australia, England etc. You don't have any idea about what you are talking about, do you ? ****ing didn't even visit it and you have already made the "10 things I hate about you" list :((
Clarke Posted June 29, 2010 Posted June 29, 2010 I guess it is the season's flavor to lampoon Indians. I dont think one is going to see a similar article on Chinese immigrants or West Indian dominated townships. Americans like the Asian chicks :giggity: Any racism against West Indians will bring back memories of segregation and maybe slavery owing to the color of skin, hence it must be a taboo. If u look @ the positive side of it, ur still better off as an Indian than being an Arab or Latino in terms of the narrow minded opinion towards u. BTW funny article :--D I wonder how someone in Eastern India must feel if his city has a big presence of Bangladeshis . The legality aspect aside, it will bring a cultural shift to the overall atmosphere for sure.
IKnowU Posted June 29, 2010 Posted June 29, 2010 You don't have any idea about what you are talking about' date=' do you ? ****ing didn't even visit it and you have already made the "10 things I hate about you" list :(([/quote'] :hitler: You ruined it. :hitler: I thought nobody would notice. :eyedance:
cowboysfan Posted June 29, 2010 Posted June 29, 2010 this is a racist article coming from a jew(who have had trouble assimilating for millennia in other countries and formed ghettos everywhere they went) .he is expressing his despair now because one or two generations of indians have decided to congregate at a certain city? .Time should be ashamed of publishing this article let alone employ an obvious racist.i am saddened to read this.
Desi Cartman Posted June 29, 2010 Posted June 29, 2010 brb, reading comments tweets on the article http://tweetmeme.com/story/1454402260/my-own-private-india-time
Ram Posted June 29, 2010 Posted June 29, 2010 Lol, I have actually spent a few weeks living in Edison so I can actually give a you guys a first person account. Here's where I agree with the author - The place is simply sprawling with desis (Mostly Indians, some Pakistanis as well..), mostly comprising of Gujjju and the Southie IT crowd. I once went to the Swaminarayan temple in Edison with an acquaintance (not because I wanted to pray, but they told me you get free Gujrarti food after the prayer and I wanted to see how Gujrati food was like :giggle:) and I was simply taken aback by the crowd there. There werent a handful of people there, there must have easily been atleast over 200 people. I dont know if that is the regular crowd or some special darshan that day, but I have rarely seen that big a crowd in a temple even in India. Even the nearest Walmart Super Center at Piscataway is manned mostly by Gujjus. The local BoA branch manager located at Kilmer road is Desi as well. The IT crowd stays there because NYC has a big concentration of the Financial/Insurance companies and most families prefer to stay in the suburbs of Edison, Metuchen, Metropark and commute to work by the NJ transit. If my memory serves me right, its a crisp 35 min ride from Edison to NY Penn station. But jeez, why is the dude whining so hard? Has he forgotten America's history so soon? This country was effin built by immigrants. Unless of course Mr. Joel Stein is a native American himself (which is highly unlikely), there's an excellent chance his ancestors were European settlers themselves, so whats he complaining about? Did a Native American get to write a similar article complaining about how his town is being over-run by white people in the 18th century version of the Time magazine? Immigrant communities form the VERY backbone of America's past, it is an undeniable FACT of history. Unless of course you have a completely xenophobic/racist view like the one held by the British National Party and want to cleanse America of all its immigrants, its better to reconcile with the realities of the present, than be a prisoner of the past and indulge in some useless wishful thinking. In this globalized world, a multi-religious, multi-racial population is inevitable in any free, prosperous society. Anyone who tries to stop it or reverse it is simply fighting a losing battle against the forces of nature. To draw a comparison, its a bit like the most primitive land animals watching as new species evolved and started breeding in front of them, millions of years ago. Sure, the ancestor would have been slightly taken aback by the slightly different looking yet similar being in its environment, but there's nothing it can do about it, nor can it make the new species to go away. Darwin provides us all the with answers to some of the most complex social issues today! And finally, couldnt this guy have not picked a different community besides Indians? Seriously, we must be like the most well-mannered immigrant population ever. Studies show the immigrant Indian population are generally more educated and earn more than the average American and commit less crime. What more do you want? Besides, you like it when the world around is more efficient because some Indian dude somewhere in his office cube in NY is writing a piece of code that helps you pay your bills easier or your train systems run more efficiently, but you dont want Indians to live in your community? It doesnt work both ways. The Indian workforce in America helps run a significant portion of the Engineering and IT ops in many companies. There are many Indian doctors as well. We dont spend money on drugs and hookers, but invest it back into the community, creating real jobs. We bring over our families for vacation, siphoning even more money back into the system. But for us, America will be a significantly poorer and less efficient country. These people should be thankful to us.
coffee_rules Posted June 29, 2010 Posted June 29, 2010 If you knew Joel Stein, you wouldn't get offended to anything he writes. He is a humorist.
punjabi_khota Posted June 29, 2010 Posted June 29, 2010 Morris as always writing a critique bigger than the ****ing orginal article, which in all probablity was supposed to be funny (the article, not the critique). :rotfl:
Ram Posted June 29, 2010 Posted June 29, 2010 Morris as always writing a critique bigger than the ****ing orginal article' date=' which in all probablity was supposed to be funny (the article, not the critique). :rotfl:[/quote'] Mr. Khota, I knew the article could have been written in satire, but i was trying to address the larger point of immigration because its such a hot topic in the American media these days. :finger:
suraj Posted June 29, 2010 Posted June 29, 2010 Geez does no one get humor here??? The article is not making fun of Indians- it is a satire.
Rajiv Posted June 29, 2010 Posted June 29, 2010 My recent visit to NJ was something similar, I think it was Pavonia station in Jersey City and my cuz lives in one of the nice condos there and he was telling me how the other buildings belong to Infosys etc etc, the place seem very nice and mod..but at 5 PM -my god...a whole barrage of desis came out and easily recognizable as they had the typical trousers and sneakers - I was like here we go, the Indian IT crowd - this was a pure first hand experience and I think everyone was from the South. I was like vow, Indians rule this place
THX_1138 Posted June 29, 2010 Posted June 29, 2010 am i the only one who feels that seedhi has sunk to levels where he prowls the internet for anything that is not effulgent with admiration for all that is indian and hindu and then 'exposes' the xenophobia and the bias? seedhi are you seriously offended by this article? or just in the need for something new to hate?
Texy Posted June 29, 2010 Posted June 29, 2010 am i the only one who feels that seedhi has sunk to levels where he prowls the internet for anything that is not effulgent with admiration for all that is indian and hindu and then 'exposes' the xenophobia and the bias? seedhi are you seriously offended by this article? or just in the need for something new to hate? he has every right to be offended albeit this incidence he probably didn't realize it is a satire. At least he's more passionate than all of pseudo secularist axis of evil icf brigade put together
THX_1138 Posted June 29, 2010 Posted June 29, 2010 he has every right to be offended albeit this incidence he probably didn't realize it is a satire. At least he's more passionate than all of pseudo secularist axis of evil icf brigade put together yeah he is... and that helps the country so much.
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