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
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