I think you’re confused.

Brown seems more plausible than the others (but still not sufficient).

A toast to brown. For now.

I think “Ultradesi” has quite a nice ring to it

Anyway, I thought I should clarify my reasoning a little further, to complement the points I made in my previous post.

Along with what I said before, I should mention that — as very long-term visitors to SM will know — I tend to have a “human first” attitude; meaning, I don’t mentally subdivide people up into “races” in the literal sense. I know that there is some medical basis for “race”, at least in terms of some groups being more susceptible to certain ailments than others, but beyond that I don’t consider it at all. It may sound like a cliche, but I only regard there as being one race — the human race — and beyond that it’s just a matter of people being from different countries (which are very artificial geographic/political delineations created on the planet by humans themselves anyway).

Because of this, personally I agree with the attitude in the UK of using geographical origin, not skin-colour, as a form of ethnic identification; it’s because, in my view, the latter just sets up another barrier between people and inadvertantly promotes the notion of “race” as some kind of semi-separate “species”-type classification, as someone else mentioned higher up in this thread.

Also, the risk is that using skin-colour as a primary form of self-identification can inadvertantly reinforce preoccupations with such matters and perpetuate excessive self-consciousness about one’s own skin-colour (and that of other people), instead of actually eradicating such attitudes.

For various historical reasons this may have been the dominant attitude within the United States, but there is such a thing as perpetuating something which was a mistake in the first place, especially a misguided and generally nasty approach which has its roots in the Victorian era.

Along with my previous post, this has been the basis of my arguments from Day 1 — again, as some very long-time visitors to SM will be aware.

However…..It is becoming very clear to me these days that, in some aspects, there are considerable cultural differences between the South Asian community in the UK and our counterparts in North America, so beyond a certain point it would not be appropriate for me to comment excessively on this matter, especially as someone who doesn’t actually live in the US. It’s apparent that you are all still trying to hammer out the various issues regarding “identity” etc.

I’m sure you guys know what’s best for yourselves and can therefore figure out the right course of action and the right approach to take

ULTRABROWN! ULTRRRRAAAABROWN!

“Brownian Emotion.”

Thanks for the responses. I wish I had something intelligent to say, but I’m too sleepy. I’ll get back to y’all in the morning…

Those Americans are very silly. And so are those Indians. Browns.

“To prevent comment spam, please type the word brown below:”

Razib, clearly it’s not working. What do we call this? Brownian…non-Motion?

Weird right? Especially since the comment thread has degenerated to it’s usual spin by the time it reaches 150+ posts on SM. And especially since domestic stats were given. C’est la vie- it’s the way of the comment threads at SM.

Class is an issue, and it’s a difficult issue. Helen Zia talks about it well in her book the Asian American Dream where she compares the taxi worker movement to the Bay Area Tie group and how disconnected they are. It is something that I’ve struggled with as a SAA voter organizer- an issue that some in the pass the roti circles would call classist organizing amongst desis