Spring Cleaning Through the Season of Hate

Recently at work I was having lunch with one of my co-workers, and we somehow got on the topic of race relations. She asked me how people of my ethnicity feel about other races. I took a deep breath as I was lining up my response, and another friend quickly interjected something to the effect of "Indians invented racism!" He continued with an explanation of how my people produced an entire system that perpetrated racism among its own people in the name of God, so given that, it is expected that Indians are intolerant of anyone outside of the narrow perimeters that we identify with. He clarified using me as an example. My family identifies with Gujarati Brahmins and that is who we feel equal to. Any other Gujarati, or any other caste, would have my family feeling superior, and we perceive being well above African Americans, Latinos, Whites, and we definitely do not like Muslims.

The caste system is alive and well in India and reports after the Tsunami brought the issue to the attention of Westerners when it was revealed that lower caste survivors were not able to access relief supplies. How cruel do we look to the rest of the world when they send us relief from a natural disaster and our Brahmin-based government restricts lowers castes from obtaining supplies!

My co-worker does not really know a whole lot about Indian culture, so she was sure that this report was a huge exaggeration and she was looking to me for a response. I really did not know how to respond. I mean, much of what my friend articulated was true. I was raised to have a superiority complex based on where I came from and my family does feel that our lineage makes us cut above pretty much everyone.

Being put on the spot, I searched for an explanation that she may relate to. Working for a social service agency, we are often presented with individuals in life situations that we can't judge if we want to effectively assist. And many of those life situations, we can't understand how they came to be without fully realizing all the life experiences that led them there. When another culture comes into play, you really can't judge.

The Asian Bar Association in my city of residence strives to increase awareness on cultural issues in criminal defense. For example, in People vs. Kimura, a Japanese woman attempted to perform "oyako-shinju", a parent-child suicide, when she learned of her husband's infidelity. Through her act, her children did not make it, however she survived and was charged with first degree murder. The Japanese American community produced a petition with over 25,000 signatures appealing to the courts to reconsider prosecution based on the fact that her actions were based on a different worldview.

My response to my co-worker began by putting cultures in the context of homes in a small community. I explained to her that there are many elements within our culture that oppress our people. We are aware and we are working toward reconciling them. Sometimes what happens within your home is difficult to explain to those outside your household. And even when you attempt to explain it, you get cross-eyed looks from people spitting out simple solutions. Such as, why don't you just legalize drugs, and that would solve gang violence. I told her that the caste system is a tradition that goes back thousands of years and my lineage is responsible for executing many of the practices that resulted in various privileges that my family has enjoyed, however there is no easy answer in reconciling years and years of oppression. Just as there is no easy answer to balancing 400 years of slavery in the United States, there is no easy answer to respond to discrimination under the roof I live in either.

I concluded by expressing to my co-worker that this is an issue that our culture is responding to and it can only be dealt with internally. So before passing judgment on me and those that share my ethnicity, let us do our spring cleaning and resolve our differences. My hopes are that our spring cleaning does not last thousands of years and that within my lifetime, I will be able to relate the honest look we take at ourselves and the resulting measures that reconcile the blatant disservice to humanity that we conduct under our own roofs. Will the season of hate change over in this lifetime? I am optimistic that the new generation of Indians all over the world will respond.