The Masks

 We wear masks. It is essential for our survival as a social animal. This time around, I wanted to touch base on a topic that has been around for decades; talked about till the sound of the topic has become toxic to the ears. The underlying issue remains with its foundation barely affected. It is discrimination.

For the sake of full disclosure, I am from Southeast Asia, brown skinned, an atheist today but born into the privileged class called Brahmins.

I have come across exactly one person during my decades of living in the Western world (with a similar background as mine: Southeast Asian origin, brown skin), that bluntly refused the existence of discrimination against SE Asians. The rest have all been very vocal, given a variety of on-your-face racism faced in many walks of life. However, I wanted to shed a little bit of light on the hypocrisy expounded by this second set of people.

I have met exactly one second generation Indian American that has an African American spouse (sorry V.P Kamala Harris, I haven’t met your mother). That speaks volumes of the tall claims of liberalism made by these people. The state of Washington recently enacted laws against casteism indicating that it thrives ten thousand miles away from India. Indian immigrants in the United States fall well within the top 5% of economic and academic strata. In any social gathering you are guaranteed to meet a cohort of PhDs, researchers and professionals with enviable academic and economic achievements. Some of the masks come off in such settings. Coming from such an elite ensemble the on-your-face discrimination against a variety of groups, is absolutely confounding.

Somewhere during the 2007-2008 timeframe, then Senator Barack Obama was in the middle of his fabled presidential campaign. I attended quite a few such social gatherings mentioned before. Heated arguments on politics is a must and I heard crap. Too frequently from different people. The N word or the Indian equivalent K word was used in surprising abundance. One such person, a scientist from no less than NREL with a bunch of letters after his name, and several patents hanging from his wall was particularly toxic. Jeering and almost enjoying using such epithets against the former President. Left me wondering, what was all that education and degrees worth when one fails to be a human being in the first place.

When such gatherings consist of mostly Hindus, the secular mask comes right off. Deep rooted anti-Muslim sentiments come out with fireworks. The same person I mentioned above (amongst a whole lot of others), would go all guns blazing with chosen epithets. The go to word is “Kata”, referring to the practice of circumcision within Muslims.

The masks are too thin; easy to peel. We should introspect a little.