I'm just going to opine and give my own anecdotal view on this in the context of the BLM and police brutality protests. These views aren't meant to be all encompassing of everyone else, but hopefully some will see some common threads and can join in the discussion, or provide opposing viewpoints.

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Growing up in a pretty much all-white environment (suburbs of Chicago, private schools, etc.), exposure to anyone outside of white folks, besides the Indian community, was limited until high school. Going to school on the south of Chicago was an interesting experience because it finally exposed me to those who live in the city and come from households that were very much different from mine - single parent, low income - the types of lifestyles that just didn't exist to that extent in the indian communities of Chicago who were very much in the upper ranks of society especially as a immigrant families. This was also my first real exposure to black folks and having black friends. I didn't see them as anything foreign - quite the opposite - I found a lot of commonalities in how they were brought up and how I was brought up, from the way a dad would discipline the kid (we all had stories of getting a good whooping from our dads), to how they would go to community and family functions. But despite that there seemed to be a gulf into gaining a better understanding or wanting to sympathize with their plights, and a lot of that conflict came from hearing the experiences and opinions of family and family friends who had emigrated, often with nothing, and made a name for themselves.

I imagine a lot of you had parents that low key, or sometimes even high key, would straight up lock the car door the second they saw a kalu. They'd stare straight ahead while giving some slight side-eye, maybe turn down the music a little bit. And to an extent I can understand some of where this fear came from. Chicago in the 70s (when my folks emigrated from India) was a rough city. There was still a lot of underlying unrest from the 68 riots, and there was a lot of white flight occurring as white baby boomers began making up the middle class. There was a stark difference between being a white immigrant vs being a black native, and it was clear that as long as you were white you were going to get some better treatment from authorities. For Indians, the de facto attitude became "don't make a scene" or "don't stand out." Appeal to the white man and you'll be okay. That attitude began trickling down into just an overall worldview towards not just blacks but other minorities as a whole. As far as I could tell looking back, this is where the idea of the white sahib was still carried over from a colonial mindset, and now that they were in a white dominated country, they had to act accordingly.

When watching the news, it was more of the same. It's not like violence in the inner city in Chicago is a new thing. Crime from "the hood" was always on the nightly news, and especially as immigrants there's no context to the situations which were leading to the massive amounts of violence in Chicago. And when your worldview is being shaped by your parents during those years, it was always "look at how they just kill each other." Oddly enough, where my parents had their medical clinic was just on the outside of Chicago, with a lot of blue collar eastern European immigrants, and also some black families. They struck up good friendships with some of these black families and were some of those memorable patients for them, but a lot of it was still within the context of "well these are just different black folks." The same type of attitude taken by the white folks from the suburbs where we lived.

My attitude towards this was "well if my folks could make it on their own when coming here with nothing, why is it so hard for black folks to do it after getting so much government assistance?" I was lucky enough to have been born after the struggle my folks went through to become established here was finished. They had made it and as a result could give me and my sibling the best in education, food, and travel. I was / am lucky to have had that. I was in a bubble surrounded by other Indians who had that same experience as well. We created our bubble, and saw the struggles of other minorities as an aberration to our own experiences. This continued throughout college - going to an elite school in the northeast where there was a CLEAR segregation of whites and non-whites, especially blacks. It was the dichotomy and struggle of trying to create a space for themselves but which then turned into what I saw as a physical alienation of them by the school under the guise of giving them a place they could call their own, whether through their own dorms or dorms geared towards honoring that struggle, or cultural centers on the outskirts of campus. For the rest of us south asians though, it was a matter of even just trying to find a common voice and group we could be a part of. For us, our south asian club at one point had as many white folks as it did South Asians. We were just happy to have non-POC's involved and wanting to learn more. We had a couple of West Indians involved, which was the beginning of the mental bridge for me to see how these common backgrounds were even more prevalent and started breaking down those mental walls of being the "other" minority apart from myself.

I was also at school during the beginnings of the Tea Party movement. We'd seen his reelection to his 2nd term, and towards the end of my time at school the elements of the Tea Party movement had been coopted by fraternities at the school due to their reintegration into the school's overall charter. For some quick context - a series of hazing deaths forced the school to take action against the frats and sororities and said if you don't integrate into the school's housing system all pledges and members will be automatically expelled. This for some reason turned highly political and while this was all happening, black and latino students had started demonstrating against the Patriot Act and incidents of police violence against black and latino minorities. Student groups had begun taking sides, and for us as South Asians, it was a lot of confusion. On the one hand, frats and sororities wanted us to side with them based on the fact that they wanted to have diverse voices in their crowd. Token protestors if you will. For the black and latino student groups, they thought we as another group of minorities should be involved with their stances as well. But for us South Asians, we were a mix of international students who didn't have any context to either discussion, and conflicting opinions about all of this. We didn't know how to use our agency so we remained neutral. Again, the mentality of "don't make a scene" or "don't stand out." In fact we pushed back against both and said we're not here to do anything that anyone else wants us to do.

Over the course of the rest of the late 2000's into the 2010s, I realized I had stayed mostly on the side of "well if we as Indians made it, why can't anyone else just do it?" And I came to realize that this isn't a stance that anyone can take anymore. You start to break out of that sheltered bubble of thought from your suburban childhood and teenage years and start to look into how the system is built for some but not for all. I was lucky the racist incidents against me were sparse and scattered. In grade school it was the curry jokes, the turban jokes, the shitting on the road jokes. In high school it was the post-9/11 terrorist comments, go back home comments, and in college it was just being called the n-word because townies had never really seen a brown person before. In one instance, the campus shuttle driver had tried to jokingly refuse me from getting on board because I was carrying a large box of DJ equipment and he tried to make a bad joke about it being a bomb. At the time I felt like they existed in a vacuum, and didn't want to make a big deal about it because you're conditioned to think that way. But looking back, you start to see how all this little bullshit is what happens to other people on a weekly basis and can be the foundation for really bad shit to happen to them. I started to see how this was being reflected in how we saw the struggle of black people - where my racist run-ins ended at the comments. But for others it was the beginning that would lead to a showdown with racists with guns or police shooting them.

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There are more commonalities with the struggle of black people from the South Asian perspective than what we've really acknowledged on a large scale. We tend to insulate ourselves with success - Indians control some of the largest companies in the world, and yet we as a people come from the same colonial ancestry and conquering by foreigners as those from the African continent. But because we've made it as a culture or race, we focus on ourselves. We help ourselves before we help others, and to be honest I can see why. It's hard to break away from that.

We were replacements for the black indentured servants in British colonies that were then sent on to the Americas as a part of the slave trade. We were just lucky enough to have our layovers in less violent places, and those layovers became permanent. But when it comes to have advanced societies disrupted by white invaders - to have our culture stolen from us over and over, and to have those conquering entities take our identity and use it as their own as spoils of victory - we share a strong common history. The seeds of division within our own communities that were planted by other people and those same interlopers turning us against one another are all common. And yet we've never truly acknowledged that. When blacks here and Indians in India were fighting for their rights and independence, the leaders of these movements talked with one another. They saw the common struggle, but once that fight was over it appeared that solidarity never carried over. When the brain drain from India to the US / Canada began, it was about surviving and getting yours, then worrying about everyone else. Nobody was necessarily helping us, so we had to make sure we took care of ourselves, and that's where I see the underpinnings of that insulation from other minorities began.

One of the biggest common issues in both groups of people are police brutality and police corruption. We all have heard the horror stories of the police in India, whether through apathy, corruption, or outright brutality, have targeted specific groups while taking bribes from those who have the power and wealth. Maybe it's harder to discern because in India it's Indian police attacking Indian citizens mixed in with caste and class, so lines can be blurred, whereas in the US it's a very clear black and white issue. But that shouldn't stop us from seeing those common threads and seeing where understanding that struggle can help us see what happens here.

And this is where I see us now. We as Indians have established ourselves as a strong demographic, from spending power, to corporate and political influence. We have taken the model minority bullshit for too long, but now we have the ability to leverage that and actually put it to use outside of just helping other Indians. We have the ability to influence, and it can no longer be used just to advance a single agenda or propagate a myopic viewpoint. Because as we have kids, as our kids have kids, the blurring of cultural lines will only increase and have to be willing to trust those outside of our immediate groups. As the threat of white supremacy grows in the US, there won't be any discrimination between black and brown - it will be the battle against anyone non-white. And while this all may seem doom and gloom, it's worth reading about the evangelical takeover of the government, and the tie in to white supremacy at the local police level. Like Rage Against the Machine said, "some of those that run forces, are the ones that burn crosses."

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There is a very fine line here however. And this is what brings me back to my original post thought. There is a growing trend especially amongst Gen-Z Indians who want to be a part of the struggle so badly, they'll do so at the cost of their own identity. The perfect example of this - to me - was the protest against Holi. Using that as a platform to support Muslims who feel persecuted through the CAA / CAB bills under the Modi administration. Opinions of whether or not that bill was a good move, there is no need to deprecate your own culture's important holidays as a way to help build up another's case. From my perspective, this is where we cross that line of being allies to wanting to be victims, and creating an odd element of self-victimization through someone else's struggle, almost like a Munchausen episode. The need to feel woke and accepted by others who are being oppressed becomes a perverse need to be recognized and get the attention others are getting because of a legitimate struggle. I often question the intention of those who take it too far - who start to lambast and chide those who aren't recognizing that struggle or agreeing with them.

Ultimately it's all about how you choose to use what you have as an asset for the greater good. We don't have to throw ourselves on the fire for someone else just so everyone sees the spectacle of doing so. But we have the ability to use our success and the platforms in front of us to be good allies and help where we can. I just hope we see this as a greater struggle that starts with police brutality against black people, and that we can be there to support them how we can, because at the core of our shared histories, the struggles are very similar.