I am a doctor. But I am brown. Oppressed! I am an American citizen. But I am brown. Oppressed! I am educated. But I am brown. Oppressed! I am a woman. But I am brown. Oppressed Oppressed!

*Okay, sorry, that’s kind of mean and I respect that some of you are offended, but really. Jump the Shark comes to mind with this thread….

**Advice to people who read Pat Buchanan: Stop. He ain’t the sharpest tool in the shed. And this from a registered republican, too…..

i don’t know taz, in many ways she has less power than us. is a white woman in india really powerful by virtue of being white? i suppose if you look back at the history of colonization you’ll see the white privledge; but look forward a bit. asian countries are quickly developing great economic, military, and even cultural (bollywood, indian writers) power. she a minority in a rising power and the sexual mistreatment of especially white women (who are stereotyped as willing sexual partners) is commonplace in india. And you’re the one feeling unsafe?

at the end of the day, the most vulnerable minority is the individual.

Pardesi Gori:

Please don’t start being sensitive. We’re not children here.

Well, didn\’t take long to ban me, did it? and what did I say that was so offensive? How, exactly did you feel \’unsafe\’ was the computer screen going to explode in your face? In any event, since real, open discussion isn\’t tolerated here, I\’ll move on but I will say this, your post exemplifies exactly what I said, diversity and freedom don\’t mix. You don\’t want discussion, you don\’t even want to hear the opinions of people, who offer them honestly and without hostility. If you won\’t listen, and brand anyone who makes you feel unsafe fit for \’sensitivity training\’ (re-education) then as you are as much admitting your intolerance of other views. IF there were some assimilation ethic, there might be hope but as we can see, there is not. BTW, \”multiculturalism\’ has offically been declared \’dead\’ in the UK and France, and there will probably be a similar wave of reaction throughout Europe. God knows that the bureuacrats in the EU will think up next.

Furthermore, this part of your theory is not a logical extrapolation. If you had said something like “white people in America are now paying for their past practises of slavery, etc. and now they are experiencing slavery and prejudice” (which is obviously not a fact), then maybe your theory would make sense. But what you said, is not an example of your theory of Collective Karma.

Wow. I’ve heard of ridiculous theories to justify prejudice, but Collective Karma really takes the cake.

Jai – You are correct in saying that I should choose my words more carefully. I will try. I won’t change my moniker though because Siddhartha asked that I stick with one and he is one of the moderators of this site, if I understand correctly.

Regarding Jai’s comment in #227 regarding pardesis who travel to India with an “exotification” agenda, I call that “over-romanticising” India, and it is a phenomena I have amongst some members of my spiritual group who come to India for the first time and also for short visits. They read many wonderful things (some of you might consider it “mythology”) about ancienty Bharatiya sanskriti (Indian culture), and with the bright eyes and enthusiasm of small children who look at the world with wonder, embark upon a trip to India. It is completely innocent. I was something like that too years ago before reality set in and jaded me. It’s easy for people to see either the completely bad or the completely good about a country/culture upon a first visit. It’s when you settle down and make the place your own that the many subtle nuances come out. Still, I look back upon my innocent “romanticising of India” days and wish that I could go back to that mentality because it was a time of great peace and happiness for me (albeit through ignorant eyes perhaps). Not knowing the langauge also helped as I was not able to really tell if locals were speaking badly of me. I was in a type of bubble. That bubble has since burst but that’s OK, at least I’m not as ignorant as I was before, but sometimes I would like to trade knowledge for peace of mind.

Desitude in # 221; “Our parents came here for the money, because India did not offer them any opportunities. They knew very well that this country was founded on the graves of Native Americans, through broken treaties, treachery, and “Manifest Destiny,” and is considered by many to be morally illegitimate; they also knew that in large parts of the country, blacks were treated no differently than the lowly pariahs in Tamil villages.”

Gandhi expressed in his auto-biography that he felt Indians faced oppression and prejudice in South Africa as a type of collective karmic reaction to the oppression and prejudice they meeted out to other Indians back in India through the medium of the caste system and all that it entailed up to that point in India’s history.

Krishna explains in Gita that Karma and Karma-phal (actions and the fruits of actions, or reactions) are so intricate that they can be compared to a Banyan tree. A Banyan tree appears to have roots growing from the ground up, and then from the top of the tree down. In otherwords, it is extremely entangling and difficult to decipher where the roots begin and end. Hence the cycle of Karma and Karma-phal, actions and their reactions. Although the Gita does not neccessarily speak of collective karma for groups of people, communities, societies, etc, perhaps in Gandhi’s research of scriptural texts, he found such a concept, or perhaps he intuited that individual karma and collective karma crosses over at some junctures, so that although specific Indian individuals living in South Africa at the time and experience oppression may have never personally oppressed anyone else, still, as a whole collective karma may have crossed the boundaries into individual karma in their circumstance.

The same theory could be applied as to why white people in America seem to take the brunt of alot of negative feelings regarding oppression, slavery and colonization, despite the fact that they may never have oppressed any living being in this current lifetime. It may be collective karma at work.

I don’t think the citizen/non-citizen border is as divisive and as big a barrier to conversation and political engagemment between as you might perceive. A large percentage of non-citizens, who are here on non-immigrant student/work visas and also those who are permanent residents but not citizens yet, do want to and will become naturalized citizens. They are not totally uninterested in American politics. There is variation in the degree of that interest of course, but neither the mean nor the variance is that different from any group of citizens anywhere else in the world.

The challenge is to not just focus on register-and-vote-now (which they can’t) but to engage them in topics which affect them now and which they can affect in future – immigration laws, public schools, hate crime, US-India trade and co-operation, outsourcing, small business ownership, race issues etc. Personally speaking, I am intimidated and eventually disengaged more often by trivialities like accents, clothes and lack of knowledge about US history (particularly when someone like razib is around) than by the fact that I can’t vote, yet.

I just got through reading Pat bucahnan’s “State of Emergency”

This is the first time I’ve ever sincerely typed this:

LOL!!!