Identity
This is from an email conversation with a friend. It seems to me there's an influence in our life that strongly influences many of our positions.
That is whether one has been a member of the minority or majority while growing up. This greatly influences who one would tend to sympathize with on an issue. The issue may not personally affect one or one may not belong to either community in the dispute.
As for myself, I find myself sympathetic to minorities, probably because of having grown up as a minority member. In every situation, I'm likely to find for the minority, even if I don't belong there, I tend to be able to sympathize better. I'm starting to think that this conditioned instinct is stronger than any other. Consider this - regardless of how we are viewed by Americans and what our status is in US society, Indians with Hindu upbringing are much more likely to identify with whites and follow their logic than Indians with Muslim/Christian upbringing. The latter group tends to identify with the other races. i.e. the "normal" people of India identify with the views of "normal" Americans more easily and "odd" Indians do the same with "odd" Americans. This seems independent of other alignments such as liberal/conservative etc.
I don't particularly like the Christian faith (that of my parents) and am much more at ease with the Hindu point of view. Still, at another level I identify with the Syrian Christian community though I strongly dislike the church doctrine. If it came to conflict between the Hindus and Christians on whether everyone should become Hindus or not, I would readily jump in with the Christians/Muslims/whoever simply on the basis of the belief that homogenization should not be forced and minorities should integrate in normal life WITHOUT having to change who they are. This is not just religion. I usually find this to be the case when people of one language live as a minority among people of another etcetera AND have no recourse to a situation where they can become the majority (counterexample is the Northie living in, say, Chennai. He/She can feel odd and unusual and all the baggage that goes with it. But he/she knows all the while that on the national scale, he is among the majority and the Tamils are the minority. So he can still have a pro-majority line easily.)
Even though Muslims are closer to Christianity, the "normal" religion here, Hindus are much quicker to integrate. They are generally in favor of getting all immigrants to learn English and live the American way, probably having some frustration from back home that some parts of the Indian population does not integrate into the "Indian" lifestyle.
In the case of the second generation, kids of Hindus barely consider themselves Hindus religion-wise, though they might take up the culture, whereas the second gen. Muslims kids often are really Muslims themselves. Second gen. Hindu kids depart radically from their parents on majority vs. minority, having grown up as minority in this country. Perhaps this IS the reason for the phenomenon mentioned in para. above since 2nd gen Muslim kids and their parents both fall on the same side of this fence. (I'm just gathering this from the news and the 'net.)
This phenomenon, is probably correctly generalized to "powerful" group rather than "majority".
That is whether one has been a member of the minority or majority while growing up. This greatly influences who one would tend to sympathize with on an issue. The issue may not personally affect one or one may not belong to either community in the dispute.
As for myself, I find myself sympathetic to minorities, probably because of having grown up as a minority member. In every situation, I'm likely to find for the minority, even if I don't belong there, I tend to be able to sympathize better. I'm starting to think that this conditioned instinct is stronger than any other. Consider this - regardless of how we are viewed by Americans and what our status is in US society, Indians with Hindu upbringing are much more likely to identify with whites and follow their logic than Indians with Muslim/Christian upbringing. The latter group tends to identify with the other races. i.e. the "normal" people of India identify with the views of "normal" Americans more easily and "odd" Indians do the same with "odd" Americans. This seems independent of other alignments such as liberal/conservative etc.
I don't particularly like the Christian faith (that of my parents) and am much more at ease with the Hindu point of view. Still, at another level I identify with the Syrian Christian community though I strongly dislike the church doctrine. If it came to conflict between the Hindus and Christians on whether everyone should become Hindus or not, I would readily jump in with the Christians/Muslims/whoever simply on the basis of the belief that homogenization should not be forced and minorities should integrate in normal life WITHOUT having to change who they are. This is not just religion. I usually find this to be the case when people of one language live as a minority among people of another etcetera AND have no recourse to a situation where they can become the majority (counterexample is the Northie living in, say, Chennai. He/She can feel odd and unusual and all the baggage that goes with it. But he/she knows all the while that on the national scale, he is among the majority and the Tamils are the minority. So he can still have a pro-majority line easily.)
Even though Muslims are closer to Christianity, the "normal" religion here, Hindus are much quicker to integrate. They are generally in favor of getting all immigrants to learn English and live the American way, probably having some frustration from back home that some parts of the Indian population does not integrate into the "Indian" lifestyle.
In the case of the second generation, kids of Hindus barely consider themselves Hindus religion-wise, though they might take up the culture, whereas the second gen. Muslims kids often are really Muslims themselves. Second gen. Hindu kids depart radically from their parents on majority vs. minority, having grown up as minority in this country. Perhaps this IS the reason for the phenomenon mentioned in para. above since 2nd gen Muslim kids and their parents both fall on the same side of this fence. (I'm just gathering this from the news and the 'net.)
This phenomenon, is probably correctly generalized to "powerful" group rather than "majority".
posted by Kurma at 9/06/2006 10:20:00 PM
8 Comments:
yeah i agree with you..i'm indian christian and i feel the same..i identify more with the minorities here in the us than the whites..don't agree with u bout the whole hindu point of view part thoug..where i grew up (bombay)..christians are by far the most liberal and progressive community..
the majority/ minority you talk about is codified in social science as preeveledge (!see your earlier post!)/ oppression, and it is believed that the experience of either is one of the major identity forming factors in one's life.
But there are criticisms of this western mainstream conceptualisation by third world, and "people of color" groups and thinkers. People who belong to more than one oppressed group, and have experienced victimization (I know that word has bad connotations for some people, but maybe that itself is a position of privelege) as a result of such membership argued that they could not separate the different strands of their identity, and choose for instance, between being a woman and being a Syrian Christian minortiy in a Hindu majority nation. They opted for the term "Intersectionality of Oppression", and tried to account for the multiple ways in which different group memberships, and the privilege or oppression experiences it conferred upon one, worked to shape our early beliefs and continuing sense of identity. This gets more complicated when one of these group memberships is one of privilege and another of oppression. For instance, having grown up in the Tamil Brahmin community in Tamil Nadu, I was clearly privileged in a number of ways. However, being a woman disadvantaged and oppressed me in ways that left a deeper impression on me, and has shaped my identity and beliefs to empathise and fight for the underdog.
On another note, it is much harder to come to terms with the privileges (unearned) one has, and to give up some of that power (at least in personal interactions), than it is to embrace one's victimhood and oppression.
goan catholic dude,
Thanks for the comment. I don't get what you mean by "don't agree with you about the whole Hindu POV". My experience too has been that on an average Christians are relatively socially liberal. But in my post, I'm talking about religious faith and not social practices. Esp. what my own views are.
Hey, Soumya. Thanks for commenting. Thanks for laying out the pridvidledge funda too. The majority/minority thing probably falls under that umbrella of issues, but I wanted to just focus on this one without really referring to power/oppression. Syrian Xians for instance are hardly an oppressed group. They are simply "odd" which comes just from being a minority, nothing else. I find this oddness, normalness to be a subtle factor that we seems to acknowledge a lot less than the more open one that comes from oppression (esp. gender, orientation, race). After all, what does majority give you other than a vague sense of "if my people all got together and yours all got together, we could beat you up" which is increasingly a rather rare situation. Power may not correspond to numbers. For instance, some of the more powerful groups in most parts of the world are minorities in these places.
I agree with soumya -- I was a South Indian Hindu in Delhi. Depending on which tag was used at which place, I was either a minority or "normal".
For instance, in school or amongst my peers my southiness stood out. I was forever the outsider and bad at sports :D I think Sikhs felt more at home than I did.
I disagree. As a ABD and a South Indian Hindu, it's been my experience that Indian Christians are much more willing to assimilate, given that they hold the same Christian-influenced world view as the majority here in the U.S. Hindus on the other hand, coming from an Eastern school of philosophy, tend to resist assimilation and preserve their identity more strongly, at least in my experience.
Thomas,
Interesting observations! I think you are right in asserting that American born Hindus are more combative about their minority status in the country. However, to say that they care little for Hinduism strikes me as inaccurate. If anything, they are shy about it, because the culture here views it as exotic and alien - markedly different from the Judeo-Christian tradition, whereas Islam - and even Sikhism - "fit" better.
I think you are confusing socio-economic status with religion.
Forgive me, but you are painting broad, homogenizing strokes over entire communities which are internally a lot more diverse than you think. This post borders on making generalizations and veering into prejudices. Based on what are you making these observations, that Hindus "assimilate" quicker and "adopt their logic" as opposed to others?
Perhaps you are noticing people of a certain socioeconomic status when you say "Hindus" are a lot quicker to identify with whites. There are close to 1.7 million Indian Americans in the US, of which the majority are Hindus. Indian Americans are the wealthiest ethnic group in the United States, according to the 2000 Consensus. If your socioecnomic status is high, there may be a tendency to close ranks with the majority, rather than identify with minorities. I have seen this tendency in all middle class, upper middle class Indian Americans- whether they are Hindu, Sikh, or Syrian Orthodox (with South Asian Muslims, it is slightly more complicated due to post 9/11 racial profiling, whereby all South Asians are initially a suspect).
But speak to an Indian American who is Hindu, and is of a lower socioeconomic status, and see how much they identify with whites and "adopt their logic." It's not so much the religion, but rather the socioeconomic status. I doubt the taxi drivers in NYC or LA who are Hindu, readily identify with whites.
Furthermore, though 85% of India's population is Hindu, a Hindu can still feel like a minority- regionally, linguistically, and even "caste wise." Shashi Tharoor fleshed out all of the possibilities on how every Indian can be a minority. I think someone in the comments above mentioned this.
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