White people are not gods, they bleed: Razib makes important points about class and race.
In contrast, even South Asians who grow up poor in the United States, usually have an ancestral class background which is somewhat elite. While black Americans and South Asians may share common physical features as dark-skinned people of color, most black Americans descend from slaves, while most South Asian Americans are more likely to either be the scions of a genuinely elite family or a prosperous lineage from a rural backwater. If you buy Greg Clark’s argument in The Son Also Rises: Surnames and the History of Social Mobility, then you know that he makes the case that social status is highly heritable when you look across many generations, as opposed to focusing on single generation correlations.
The Universal Law that differentiates an Immigrant from an Expat. An Immigrant goes one social class lower when moving to a new country and an Expat goes one social class higher upon moving to a new country.
So an office worker in the US will be an office manager in Uganda. An office manager from South Asia won’t hold the same position upon emigrating to the US because the cultural adjustment will have to take place (unless it’s Facebook or Googles which is essentially Indian).
At BP our world is very narrowed back to the Desh but Diaspora issues are extraordinarily important. Race intersects with class and the non-Muslim Asian minority is rapidly ascending the ranks. Even among the Muslims one can distinguish certain sub-ethnicites (Mirpuri, Sylethi) as being the more backward variants.
As a final thought privilege can have a deadening effect on the soul. When I contrast myself to my white friends of a similar background; I notice the speed, grit and alacrity which I have is a gift of my immigrant background. The 9-5 paradigm and pub after work paradigm simply does not apply to my life and that’s a big asset. I’m constantly “on” all the time as opposed to alot of my white friends who seem addicted to leisure..
Mind you I don’t know if it’s a good thing that I don’t have an off button.
Other Links:
https://twitter.com/ranimolla/status/1024680943666257922
- Molla Caste: I don’t know if it’s a high caste since they are traditional potters but also scions of one of two historic Telugu poets.
- White, and in the minority: This is the article that’s alluded to by Razib and Rani (they rhyme).
Social connectedness index for every county in the US paired with (a) every other county and (b) foreign countrieshttps://t.co/TCw1xoDRVA
(The @TheEconomist made a combined figure, but with a terrible headline, so not including that part.) pic.twitter.com/G2eSxcgcsf— Dean Eckles (@deaneckles) August 8, 2018
Social connections are such an important of life and basically that’s what the Ivies + Oxbridge are all about..
- One Town’s Fix for Latinx Disenfranchisement: Letting People Vote More Than Once: The article here seems to forget the “White Solidarity” is now a thing in the West. What we knew in the 90’s (demographics were a-changing) is now the reality and the majoritarian liberal Western democracies (including India & Israel) cannot be simply “gamed” through demographic transition. Something will have to give either Hispanics become white, immigration comes to an end or we may see Apartheid-like conditions (in the Eastern less liberal countries) emerging to disenfranchise minortiy voters.
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India & Pak would have stayed united but for Nehru: Dalai Lama: If India had let Quaid and Pakistan let Sheikh Mujibur Rahman become PMs in 1947 & 1971 we might have seen fewer states in South Asia.
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Boris Johnson accused of ‘dog-whistle’ Islamophobia over burqa comments: BJ is a clown. I don’t like bad dressing in general but I don’t much Gucci or Chanel veils; they’re quite sexy. What I dislike about the hijab is how badly it’s worn. If you are brown and you are going to wear something always be Beautiful..
Hello Zack Zavidé,
I’m sure other Telugu people who visit this blog will be more knowledgeable and will let us know more but as far as I know, there is no connection between any community with either a surname or caste-name sounding like Molla and the great female Telugu poet Molla. The Telugu word “molla” is said to mean ‘jasmine’ (her father, a potter as you have mentioned, is said to have named her after the flower because it is considered a favourite of their family deity, the Mallikarjuna of Srisailam) and is the poet’s given name. Her family name came to her from her father and is “Atukuri” (meaning ‘of Atukuru’, “Atukuru” being the name of the family’s ancestral village) and she seems to have never married. Also, I personally am not aware if there is any Telugu surname or family name titled “Molla” but I’m sure that even if it exists, it is likely not connected to the poet Molla because Telugu surnames or family names are considerably rare to be transmitted based on given names of people. If that sort of a Telugu family name exists at all (which I quite doubt), it may just be connected to the word for ‘jasmine’. And I have personally never heard of any Telugu endogamous caste named “Molla” before and my inclination is to think that such a thing does not exist.
“If India had let Quaid and Pakistan let Sheikh Mujibur Rahman become PMs in 1947 & 1971 we might have seen fewer states in South Asia.”
The small difference is Mujib did win the election, while Jinnah didn’t. Dont think anyone takes all this Jinnah-better-than-Nehru thing seriously(Patel thing is different). Similar to Advani/Jaswant all this Nehru bashing has nothing to do with Jinnah supposedly better-ness, but to pull Nehru down. Just like the whole congress-partitioned-the-country (Akhand Bharat) bullshit.
Quaid-e-Azam would have died within the year.. of course Nehru had no way of knowing that but even so Quaid would have been a good leader of a united India; minority, secular etc..
The fact that the most brilliant Indian Muslims (Quaid & Allama) goes to show that something was off with the whole
independent movemntt #justsaying
I dont disagree that there was something off with the independence movement, but i don think Jinnah would have been either secular or votary of united India. Had he lived and after getting voted out (internally) after some years, he would have returned back to his former “two nation” self. The cabinet mission gave the option of seceding from India every 10 years. One historian remarked rightly had Partition not happened then multiple partitioned of India would have happened every 10 years.
Iqbal in my view is overrated, just like Vivekanand is in India
The fact that these brilliant people could win no elections – even among their own supposed constituencies – should tell you something.
“The fact that the most brilliant Indian Muslims (Quaid & Allama) goes to show that something was off with the whole independent movement”
I am reminded of a line about Eric Hobsbawm by Pratap Bhanu Mehta, “He chronicled marvellously how communism hit the iceberg. But he could not resist the thought to the effect that it must have been the iceberg’s fault.”
Ho ho lol qaid-e azam and iqbal were not communists..
Besides qaid looked a lot better and more dapper than gandhi and nehru. Iqbal was a true handsome dude. Look at his moustache. Looks are very important. Qaid and iqbal were the best. Long live Pakistan and Central Asia. Free Kashmir. #IWantKashmiriGF
Didn’t Edwina pay equal attention to qaid due to his good looks?
#Turanistan4ever
Hoipolloi
Qaid was above frivolous women of questionable character like edwina. He was a serious chap. Very handsome and had many hindu women admirers.
#StanisInDaHood
Vikram,
It is always the iceberg’s fault with ideologues. LOL
Yup, its also strange that Maulana Azad is not considered as smart (if not smarter) than Jinnah and Iqbal.
Iqbal especially.
Vikram,
Iqbal writes this beautiful poem about India, saare jahan se accha Hindustan hamara. We in the south commit this to memory and get great solace during times of war with Pakistan, not knowing the author was the guy who co-founded Pakistan. What an unstable personality and what an irony?
We go through lot of discussion on Partition on BP. All most all parties are blamed by someone or the other for the act. Readers are familiar with it. But there is one thing every body agrees on: No body in 1947 or before asked the Muslims go out of future India, that is if they wanted to continue to stay. A radical faction of them “kicked themselves out” as the expression goes. Since then they want to conquer India. India is theirs to begin with like every one else’s. This is where the expression it is the ‘iceberg’s fault’ comes in. Thanks for introducing the expression.
A “radical faction” of Muslims “kicked themselves out”.
Wow! Please do continue to ignore the fact that East Punjab was ethnically cleansed of Muslims. Trains arrived in Lahore with nothing but dead bodies on board.
People from UP and Hyderabad mostly moved for ideological reasons but in Punjab, most people moved because they heard that in the next village over Hindus were massacring Muslims.
As for people wanting to “conquer India”, no serious or rational person wants this. Pakistan has a claim on Kashmir not on any part of mainland India.
On Allama Iqbal, I have two points:
1) He was not the “co-founder” of Pakistan. He died in the 1930s and Pakistan was not even a serious idea until after the Lahore Resolution of 1940. Even then it was a vague concept. He has been co-opted by the Pakistani State but that is a different matter.
2) I do wish that Iqbal had remained a secular nationalist as is seen in “Saray Jahan Say Acha Hindustan Hamara” and not written “Chin-o-Arab Hamara, Hindustan Hamara/Muslim hain ham, sara jahan hamara”. I don’t know what happened to him when he went to Europe. Lots of Pakistanis don’t share his politics, while admiring him for being one of the greatest Urdu poets.
@hoipolloi, thank you. Indeed, there was no small amount of overreaction in the Muslim politics towards the latter stages of the British Raj. The biggest evidence for this by far is that the vast majority of the Urdu Ashrafi stayed back in India, in proportional terms there was very little movement of Muslims from UP to Pakistan.
Kabir
Don’t mind my Indian freinds. We are from time immemorial fed this myth (for political reasons ) that Pakistan was a fringe demand and not the overwhelming demand from Indian Muslims. When you are fed this myth of “mutthahida qoumiat “ people start believing that somehow Azad was some Great leader. This also leads them to bullshit theory like since many Indian Muslims stayed back that means Pakistan demand was a fringe demand.
Every country / community needs its share of myths to sustain its nation hood
Saurav,
I don’t know on what evidence anyone can say that the Pakistan demand was a “fringe demand” . The Lahore Resolution calling for separate Muslim states (which didn’t necessarily mean Partition) was in 1940. Pakistan was a vague idea until 1947 but it was what the Muslim League campaigned on in 1946. I don’t think that the number of Muslims who stayed back determines whether something was a fringe demand or not. The British certainly felt that the League represented the Muslim mainstream.
Maulana Azad was a Congress Muslim and there were great areas of disagreement between members of the ML and those Muslims who were in Congress. For what it’s worth, Maulana Azad did recognize that Partition was not really going to improve the lot of the average Muslim. Certain social classes did benefit from the creation of Pakistan but overall living standards for Muslims didn’t change much whether they were in India or Pakistan. Perhaps those who went to Pakistan had a sense that they would be in charge of their own destiny in a Muslim-majority country and would not be replacing British Raj with Hindu Raj. Hindsight may lead us to make different judgements but the current atmosphere in India seems to make a strong case for Pakistan. It is a different matter that such a political atmosphere may not have been possible in an undivided India.
I do find the denial of the ethnic cleansing in Punjab and (to a lesser extent ) Bengal to be quite offensive though. Partition was a humanitarian disaster for those refugees who found themselves on the wrong side of the Radcliffe Line. Some of my own relatives had to leave Amritsar for Sialkot. They were lucky in that my grandfather was already living there and they had a place to stay and someone to help them rebuild their lives.
“I don’t think that the number of Muslims who stayed back determines whether something was a fringe demand or not. ”
What can you do, this is the myth which is fed to us in India.
Razib’s article has hit the nail on the head. Conversation on white privilege is contextual. The main context is that a white felon is likely to be hired while black felon is not… as a construction laborer. The context is while having a run in with law enforcement a white person is less likely to have a fatal encounter than a black person. South Asian Americans for the most part do not operate in this domain at all. Chances of police encounters are speeding related. Chances of having a life that leads to felony even less so. Whites and blacks are a bread and butter type of “local” stock of Americans. These ideas of privilege or lack of is between the two of them. They are like Hindus and Muslims in Indian subcontinent. So you can say there is Hindu privilege in India, Muslim privilege in Pak and BD. But imagine how out of place it will be for a Parsee or some other numerically insignificant but prosperous microminority to weigh in and try tie themselves to those narratives (say a Parsee in India says I too am non Hindu and hence don’t benefit from Hindu privilege in India and in same boat as Muslims). This is how out of place Desis are feeling a sense of similarity with blacks. We can feel sympathy but from an external eye. We should respect their struggle and not seek to appropriate any of it by lumping ourselves into some poc label. It is not genuine and not fair to either the blacks or the whites.
hey, there is a website where you can see who is related to do through public records. fwiw, i think rani molla is bangladeshi america going by relative names. also, i don’t think she grew up affluent (you can find addresses and property values).
Is there a theory behind Bangladeshi Muslim naming children both Muslim names and Hindu names I don’t see that in pakistan / India apart from few names like sameer etc
a lot of bengali muslims use a bengali name for their dak name. so it’s not a ‘hindu’ name. the systems gets confused in the west. my youngest siblings just have a ‘muslim’ name since they were born here. i was not born with the legal name ‘razib’, it’s a modification of my dak name, which is the conventional bengali ‘rajib.’ (that’s what my parents call me)
anyway, some more secular bengalis pick a bengali name instead of a muslim name.
Is ‘rajib’ like a bengali version of rajiv as in rajiv gandhi?
yes saurab 😉 in bengali u often replace “v” with “b”
eg ‘bikram’ not ‘vikram’
also in bangladeshi bengali the “j” can become a “z” so “razib” is always muslim i think. but my switch actually happened due to a grade school teacher. the j to z switch in words is perceived by my parents as low class so they don’t do it.
Saurav, you are right that Rajib or Razib are Bengali pronunciations of “Rajiv”. Bengalis with Sanskrit exposure are well aware of and embarrassed by this. Which is why many Bengalis quietly spell words the standard way to prevent non Bengalis from laughing at them. Not that it works. Bengalis are often laughed at by non Bengalis. Not just because of pronunciation. West Bengal and Bangladesh are widely ridiculed as economically backward (and too socialist and too anti business) by the rest of India too.
Vivekananda is highly under rated. It is hard to understand the greatness of Vivekananda unless someone is a meditator or very intelligent. Vivekananda is one of the most impressive homo sapien moderns born on earth in the 1800s. [Meditation is one of many methods to increase intelligence.]
AnAn, Please let me say I agree with you quick. Vivekananda is highly under rated in India. I can go on but you and I have made our point on this matter. Thanks.
PS: Some one on this thread or some where else said Vivekananda is over rated in India. It was sad. 🙁
100% agree with Dalai Lama on partition, Nehru and Jinnah Zack.
I don’t know enough about BJ to comment too much. I would say that there is no edge to not dressing nicely, beautifully and sharply. Woman have every right to do this. Including with fashionable hijabs and burkas. Note that wearing beautiful fashionable hijabs and burkas is also a way to resist intolerant Islamists. And maybe a more effective way of resisting them.
I am not a super fan of “White Solidarity”, caucasion identitarian ethnocentrism and all identitarian ethnocentrisms. We are all humans. Our only language is the language of the heart. Our only religion is the religion of love. Our only caste is the caste of humanity. Why not shatter all glass walls, including all identitarian ones? Many caucasions have a deep fascination with the East, eastern philosophy, ancient pyrimid civilizations, ancient Latin American civilizations. We need to welcome caucasions into our ranks with open arms. They are part of us.
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Many economists do econometric studies of connectedness and how it is correlated with many things. Would you like me to write about this?
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The universal law about immigrants and expats is breaking down. We increasingly live in a single global cosmopolitan community. If current trends continue within a generation half of all billionaires [and millionaires for that matter] will be Asians from Asia or non Asians of Asian ancestry. The east has reemerged and continues to rise.
Some people are special [high levels of physical health, mental health, intelligence]. Others are attracted to them. Others like them. Others love them. These are the movers and shakers that dominate the world. The emerging global cognitive elite. Mental health here is broadly defined to include concepts such as self confidence and character.
These people have extraordinary privilege. Far more valuable privilege than money or ancestry. [Genetics is correlated with the privileges that matter, however.]
Privilege olympics:
—-big three (physical health, mental health broadly defined, intelligence broadly defined)
—-distant fourth (good company . . . maybe because good company helps acquire the big three privileges)
—-very distant fifth (being an alumni of a famous university)
—-very very distant sixth (family privilege)
—-very very very distant seventh (money)
There is no such thing as “white privilege”. Do I need to repeat? There is no such thing as “white privilege”. If you are caucasion and this offends your ego; get over it. You simply aren’t more important, potentially powerful, or potentially wise than “darkies”. The idea of “white privilege” was invented by post modernists (and partly the caucasion intelligentsia) to colonize the minds of “darkies” with inferiority complex and a lack of self confidence. “Darkies” have woken up to the post modernist mind games. “Darkies” see right through it. “Darkies” WILL NOT put up with it any more.
There is no such thing as “white privilege”.
There is no such thing as “white privilege”.
There is no such thing as “white privilege”.
Has the point been understood? Or does it need to be said more slowly?
“100% agree with Dalai Lama on partition, Nehru and Jinnah”
AnAn, I saw a news item about Dalai Lama saying he was wrong about what he said about Nehru on partition. Have you seen that?
Razib, excellent article [that Zack linked to above.]
All i can say is rani molla needs a central asian raja.
I like white people because we tatars are white too. White muslims are the best. I think rani should convert to islam if she isn’t muslim already and i can be her bf. Black sea resorts and shit waiting baby.
Jinnah and iqbal were great and all but I think pakistan should join with central asia. Why stick with indian hindus man? Stanis in the hood bruv ..
I swear on a skeptics god that I was thinking of writing a post called ‘White Gods and Brown Children’ few days ago when I reading one of the posts in BP about white people, izzat, colonies, banning etc etc. It seems to me Razib’s remarkable post’s main message is that how judging, evaluating people and their actions by skin color, nationality is regressive and reactionary in today’s world. A person’s action should be primarily judged as individual responsibility, a person’s background is his own background not his racial background. I may be wrong but that’s what I got from Razib’s post not Brown triumphalism.
Anyhow, I posted one of my comments on Bangladesh protests as a post but it is still pending after two days. If you want talk about Bangladesh, letting posts go through is probably helpful for that purpose.
Shafiq, curious that the post is pending. Can you pushed submit one more time? Very much look forward to reading it.
” A person’s action should be primarily judged as individual responsibility, a person’s background is his own background not his racial background.” Beautiful.
This is European enlightenment (which believes the individual is sovereign) and eastern philosophy (individual is divine). European enlightenment and eastern philosophy assumes that free individuals can by their own efforts surge their knowledge and power, become self-actualized and manifest wonders.
Post modernism rejects the assumption that “individuals can by their own efforts surge their knowledge and power, become self-actualized and manifest wonders.” Most of the rest flows from this difference in assumptions.
Is this difference in assumptions where the disagreement with Rani Molla is flowing from?
i pushed the post. no idea why it was pending. never seen that before
What is the final word on Rani Molla, her ethnicity? Enquiring but cognitively challenged minds want to know after following the whole thread. One of the good posters at the top tried to show she could not be a Telugu. What is the final verdict? Thanks in advance.
i’m 90% sure she’s bangladeshi. or that her father is. look up her name on familytreenow and look at the names of her relatives