in the USA these are de facto ethnic terms.* who has heard the term “han american”? i have made the case that the modal identity among indian americans raised in the USA is a novel synthesis which doesn’t map easily onto ethnic boundaries within india, so even if it doesn’t exist in practice today (indian americans are mostly immigrants born abroad), it will in the future. this is evident in the dominance of punjabi-hindi terms even on the message boards here, which are alien to many of us whose families don’t come form that cultural complex, but who are expected to (and do, now) understand that lingo.

• also, i’m not sure what your own perspective is, but i’m sure you’re aware that the broader ethnic terms in south asia and china are almost trivially problematized. because of china’s recent history and formal process by which sub-national identities are created and recognized it’s child’s-play to track the rise and fall of ethnonyms there (e.g., the disappearance and reappearance of manchus).

Thanks, lifelong, we are now BF lifelong!

not sure if you’re just repeating their terms here, but as a point of fact, these lines are drawn along national boundaries/origins, not ethnic ones.

Thanks for asking me Malik. No I don’t think so. I reject the high folks’ classification of Indian art forms into “classical” “folk” and “popular” categories. I don’t either buy that other whine about elite expropriated forms vs. the subaltern/oppressed peoples’ forms either. I also have a problem with dhol/bhangra being passed off for “Punjabi” music/dance. There is a far more to it. I do have my likes and dislikes, but today I have concluded that if I don’t like some artistic form it is 8/10 because I don’t care to learn about it. I do have a problem with S&D intruding into R n’ R. But then there are all sorts of rockers, types like Alice Cooper (a born again so a strict TT), Chris Martin (a no beer and vegan) and of course my favourite – Ilayaraja whom AR Rahman credits with helping him find his way, “How could this man lead such a pure life, and produce such awesome music, how could he so cleanly break with the stereotype of the debauched musician?” And then again art is grunge and without its tamasic bohemianism would be insipid. The problem with the “E.Asian revolutions” is that they were not radical at the core and were in larger parts driven by reactionary and ossified traditionalist sentiment.

lots of graduate students blog. PIs, not so much. though that is partly an artifact of age/generation. also, PIs seem to often blog anonymously from what i’ve seen. even tenured ones. i think some of it is that they’re “public people” and don’t want their political rants googlable.

But I think this is mostly true, after all, how many prominent/renowned scientists blog? Probably the most prominent “science” blogger, PZ Myers is an assistant professor at a very small University of Minnesota satellite. If you ascribe to the model minority stereotype, then the dearth of bloggers of diversity follows, they’re too busy doing real science to blog about it.

I for one do think that the violin/piano and classical music in general IS of higher aesthetics to what the average electric guitarist puts out. Wouldn’t you also agree that Bharatanatyam and Carnatic music are vastly superior to Bhangra and Hindi folk music? Is there even a contest?

It’s interesting you pointed this out, because the stereotype of the Harvard-bound Asian kid, complete with violin, piano, 4.0 and off the charts SAT scores has become such a cliche, that those types now find it harder to get admittance to top universities like Stanford and Ivies. OTOH, the Asian kid who also has great grades/SAT, but plays electric guitar and is captain of the lacrosse team often stands out more from the hardcore violinists fiddlin’ away.

I also think that since Asian cultures are less individualist and more collectivist than Western cultures, that maybe Asian parents feel more pressure to sculpt their kids in a certain fashion, not so much for the sake of competing with their White neighbors, but more importantly so Junior can be a model of perfection in the Asian community.

(and all this is common mostly with 1st/2nd gens. I notice that after 3rd gen or so, there seems to be a dramatic difference in culture for whatever reason).