Interview with Dr. Vijay Prashad: Some Thoughts on "Black" and  South Asian Connections in the United States

      People of Asian descent and black Americans of colonial ancestry would seem to have the least in common academically and economically-speaking. Asian Americans have been typecast as the "model minorities" while Black Americans of U. S. origin, among other things,  "have been the lowest performing ethnic group in the area of mathematics across all grade levels, and among various levels of mathematics achievement."
      The drop-out rate is 20 to 25% higher than their white American counterparts, and at the 2004 reunion of Harvard’s black alumni, Henry Louis Gates and Lani Guinier pointed out that while Harvard’s undergraduates were 8% black, the majority of them were West Indian and African immigrants or their children (Sara Rimer and Karen W. Arenson, New York Times, 2004 article "Top Colleges Take More Blacks, But Which Ones").
       In fact, African-born immigrants in the United States tend to have the highest performance levels academically-speaking, both here in the United States and other Western countries. According to one source, "African-born U.S. residents are more likely than foreign-born U.S. residents from all other areas of the globe to hold graduate degrees." Apparently a Rice University census also found that in the United States, "Nigerian immigrants have the highest levels of education" in the country "surpassing whites and Asians."  
      Such information is in part also reflective of  the nature of the cultural expectations divide that factor in and influence the human and social connections - or lack of it - where many African or Asian immigrants and black Americans in the United States are concerned. Africans in many regions lay strong emphasis on mandatory education and some have a long tradition of valuing literacy, whereas recently in American black communities probably in all economic levels there has been a tendency to emphasize diametrically opposing values, for reasons that are not probably not always clearly excusable as progressives in the U.S. claim them to be.
       Nevertheless, so many times so-called long-established U.S.  "minorities" - black Americans of U.S. colonial ancestry in particular, have had to put up with seemingly graceless and ungrateful commentary from 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants of various ethnic groups, including other ethnic groups, about the state of black and urban America.
     People of Native American background - a virtually invisible minority in most parts of the country - are simply ignored or don't figuremuch  in the conversation. And, "Hispanics" are often regarded as a monolith of new or relatively recent arrivals.
     Often popular discussion presented through national media about urban America is comprised of  rather simplistic explanations about how one's own immigrant ancestors came to succeed in America, "uneducated" - and as the story usually goes, "with little money in their pockets, proceeded to work their way up the economic ladder through sheer personal ambition, smarts and hard work."
      Rarely have such commentaries included discussion of the fact that America's economic growth has to a certain extent taken place at the expense of other people of color, who - when they weren't being exterminated or slaughtered, lynched or dying by the thousands from mining accidents and so forth  - were otherwise being deliberately exterminated, violently disenfranchised or otherwise deprived of a d excluded from the American educational, economic, and social landscape of opportunities, by both established Americans and later immigrants alike.
      Of course, even prior to and since the Frenchman de Tocqueville's visit to America, there have always been rational - if not always objective, observers of what has gone on in American society with black Americans -  individuals who've seen the folly of a simplistic analysis of the social problems facing the black population in America.                        

Dr. Vijay Prashad

      In modern times we have the likes of Dr. Vijay Prashad who uses a kind of class analysis to assess the ways both useful coalitions and a clash of cultures have emerged in United States, particularly between South Asians and black Americans. Dr. Prashad at the time of this interview headed the department of South Asian History as Chair at Trinity College in Hartford Connecticut, and was also a professor of International Studies there.
      An excellent example of a rational view which takes social history and political developments into account is found in his book, the Karma of Brown Folk. It gives a clue as to some of the pertinent, persistent challenges or obstacles affecting and often constraining the social-political relationships and exchanges between peoples of East Indian and African descent in the Americas in our contemporary times.
       First it should be noted that South Asians have been coming to North America since the 1600s. According to one researcher on the subject there are more South Asians or East Indians mentioned in American colonial newspapers and court records than there were Native American "Indians". They often bore the typically British surnames such as Miller, Fisher, Dunn, Williams. Johnson, Greenwich and the like.  These groups were early on absorbed into the African populations in the colonial Virginia and Maryland regions.
       According to a researcher on the subject of East Indians in colonial America, Frances Assisi, "'East Indians outnumber 'Indians' in the extant colonial records'". In other words there were more peoples in the colonial records from the sub-continent of  India than there were native American indigenes.
     Specialist on free blacks in early America, Paul Heinegg, discovered a number of news articles and court documents speaking of East Indians as indentured servants and runaway slaves. These eastern Indians as in the rest of Britain, were often seen or classified as another form of "black" or "Negro" and treated accordingly.  As intermingling of "colored" and "white" was forbidden for the most part, the majority of early South Asians were absorbed into the African Americans in the colonial population after some time. As with their African ancestors, very  few modern black American familial descendants of these earlier groups retain traditions or knowledge of a possible East Indian ancestry.
     Some East Indians in Early Records of North Carolina, Maryland Virginia
     According to Assisi, "as these south Asians melded into the population, they would be identified variously as 'Mullato', 'Negro,' and 'colored' in the ethnic cauldron that was evolving in America, thus losing much of their racial distinctiveness with each passing generation, merging into African-American community, largely unaware of their Indian roots."
        Later on came a wave of males from India in the early 1900s that also ultimately ended in marriages to women of mainly black American descent.  However, the evolution of social relations that occurred between Africans and peoples from the Indian sub-continent back in the colonial period has evolved and changed to something that would would have been improbable in the past.
         Unlike in the past, many Asians in the U.S. today are viewed as "honorary whites", who have professional and academic achievement levels that are often higher than that of  mainstream "whites" or "Euro-Americans" whose ancestors have arrived here many generations ago.  In more recent times the immigrant East Indian or South Asian communities have in fact tended toward more insularity, more likely to intermarry among themselves, or else into the white community. In some regions,  there has not infrequently been outright avoidance of black America, the latter perceived as having low status.
         

U.S. newspaper advertisement from colonial Virginia

       Prashad explains most "desis" or recent immigrants from India to the U.S. in the late 20th century, like other immigrant ethnic groups, were not aware of the extent to which discrimination had impinged on the civil rights of black Americans when they began to arrive in a new wave during the 1960s. On pages 171-172 of Karma of Brown Folk, he discusses to some extent anti-black racism in the Indian community.
       These newer Indian immigrants he points out, "had not participated in the freedom struggle against the British, so they did not feel the fist of white supremacy, nor had they experienced the vitality of freedom through struggle. They came as techno-professionals to a land that emancipated its state from direct racism, transferred antiblack racism to civil society, and used them as a weapon to demonstrate U.S. blacks inability to rise of their own volition. Racism, in this form, is not simply about culture; it implies biology as well. The 1990 U.S. Census, for instance, reports that African-born immigrants enter the United states with the highest rate of education 
     These Africans are not presented as a model minority, an indication perhaps of the resilience of biologistic thinking among the media and the general population in the formulation of antiblack racism. Where these Africans are discussed, they are used in a manner similar to the Asians, again without any consideration of the INS filtering that only allows techno-professionals to enter the United States."
      In the Karma of Brown Folk (p.171),  Prashad surprisingly and without reservation points out,  "The lack of connection between desi advancement on the backs of blacks and of the use of desis in a war against black Americans comes at the expense of a tradition of solidarity and fellowship that began at least a hundred years ago. The legacy of links between desis and Africans, whether in the Caribbean, in Africa or indeed in the United States needs to be revisited."
     Of course India has had its own problem with caste and color consciousness which has evolved and expressed itself naïvely, yet dramatically through Indian exports such as Bollywood and the prevalent use of skin crème lighteners in that sub-continent. (This is also not infrequently used in parts of the Caribbean and Africa as well.) To a certain extent both the color problem in the U.S., and India's own caste and color problems, has added to the rather unfortunate disconnect between Asian Indians and black Americans in the United States in recent years. It is safe to say such things as the customary tolerance of skin lighteners and seeming obsession with fairness has been probably one of the hardest cultural norms for many Americans - especially black Americans - to fathom or appreciate.
      In another of his many books, Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting: Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural Purity, author Prashad delves again into the nature of black American and Asian relations. The book has been called "a revolutionary reappraisal of Afro-Asian relations". He takes a look at several centuries of cultural and political interaction between peoples of African and Asian descent around the world. He discusses Afro-Asian links or connections throughout history that are not usually dealt with in literature.
      Prashad's own parents are from Punjab and Burma. He studied for his doctorate amongst the Daalit community (formerly known as untouchables) in Punjab. An admitted Marxist historian, Prashad takes note of and makes distinctions between the roots and character of modern racism in the U.S. and that of caste oppression in India, "The character of American and Indian discrimination is different. American racism was grounded on ideas that people can be chattel or property, and that body and imagination should fully be controlled. What developed over time around issues of so-called caste or Jati were not over ideas of chattel, but over distinction that you must stay separate from us. That means you can own cattle but you must not cross my path. It's a different form of oppression... So in that sense I won't say people are discriminated against in the same way."
      Although certain of India's Hindu texts seem to suggest "varna" or caste was once based as much on color as tribal distinctions,  Prashad also believes European ideas and the language of racial distinction in India come in only later adding fuel to the fire. "I think what's important to see is that what happens in the late 18th and 19th century is that European ideas of racial distinction enter India. They intersect with ideas of caste oppression."
      One of his biggest mentors was Bhagwan Das, a research assistant for Dr. Bhimrau R. Ambedkar, India's first law minister who was himself a Daalit - of the so-called "untouchable" castes. (B.R. Ambedkar was born into abject poverty and later earned became a lawyer and earned doctoral degrees, including a degree from Columbia University in New York. He rose in India's government and was the writer of its constitution, as well as the leader of the Daalit movement.)
      He makes a distinction between racism and caste oppression. "In what way are they similar? Across the planet there are going to be kinds of hierarchies that develop over time."  In South Asia, says Prashad, social hierarchy "centered around what the Portuguese called caste and those hierarchies have a very different kind of heritage or lineage. Initially the hierarchy was around who one gets to eat with, who one gets to marry with, you know, that classic distinction problem of all human history..."
     Delving into the greater history of India and the evolution of its society, Prashad adds, "The major element of hierarchy that hit South Asia is initially not around what the Portuguese called caste, but around the people who are civilized and non-civilized. That's the distinction that today we have between tribals and non-tribals. Most of Indian literature, as in the Ramayana or Mahabharat, they are wars against the tribals and conquering their territories."
      This word "tribals", however, is rather similar in connotation to the word primitives, and refers to the indigenous or autochthonous and usually darkest-skinned peoples of India, and it is without doubt many of such 'tribals" that came to comprise India's outcaste or lower-caste peoples.
     I am also not sure if many of the Daalits would agree with other statements Dr. Prashad makes about the nature of oppression in India, particularly in its rural areas. He stated the following,

"Yes, people are deeply discriminated against and deeply oppressed certainly but the oppression is basically on grounds of things like intermarriage, social interaction and certainly entry into education. India is very interesting and this is what Martin Luther King, Jr. was quite amazed by when he visited. The law, the consitution that was written by the Daalit Ambedkar has given a policy called 'compensentory discrimination'.  So half the seats in the University are reserved for backward castes."

     Prashad's comments made clear there is still a great deal of sensitivity over caste origins in India today among India's middle classes.  He states, " people have altered their names. For instance in Delhi, people from the Daalit caste who become middle class, change their names. You might speak to somebody on the train. Some Brahmin will ask you 'where are you from'. They are actually saying when are you going home' (Prashad laughs). 'How is your family?' You know, they are trying to figure out maybe where you are from. Maybe its just common human curiosity, maybe its not - you understand."
     He admits that in India some times on the train, he likes to tease people to see their reactions and if they are caste conscious - doing things like offering a water bottle. "Part of it is nobody can tell anymore. So on the train, I offer somebody water to drink - sometimes just to tease people. If you are an open minded person you will take it and drink it. Some caste-conscious person will be like 'no-no I understand drinking water in India you can get sick very quickly, so its dangerous to drink from anybody's water bottle'".
     Although Prashad likes to joke around with the stuffy upper castes that can afford train travel, the fact is the problem of caste in India today is really no joke, especially in very rural parts of the country. There are still over 200 million Daalits, many of which inhabit very traditional  and rural areas, have no political or economic power whatsoever, and face the most horrific forms of discrimination and oppression - sometimes life-threatening, and all based on traditions of segregation that are thousands of years old.
       In any case, it certainly doesn't appear to be all a problem of who can marry who or who can drink from who's cup. Furthermore, Dr. Prashad may or not know there are not infrequently complaints in the United States about how Indians of supposed higher caste treat or exclude those perceived to be lower in caste.
      As for interaction between peoples of African descent and those post - '60s immigrants of South Asian descent in the United States, Dr. Prashad sees some reason for optimism. "Interaction takes place in the world of art politics and college life. If you are looking in colleges, you'll find a lot more interaction and in the world of art and politics. I am very hopeful that the future generations coming up are much more able to break out of the cocoon of the first generation of migrants."


Dr.Vijay Prashad is author of - The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World, The New Press, (2007); Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting: Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural Purity, Beacon Press (2002); Untouchable Freedom: A Social History of a Dalit Community, Oxford University Press, (2002) and The Karma of Brown Folk, University of Minnesota Press, (2000).