Saira Rao is an exemplar of her generation, a famous and somewhat notorious Indian-American woman among the ‘very online’ set. An erstwhile Democratic politician two years ago, by the start of the year Rao had become an anti-racist activist best known for regularly trending on Twitter and charging white women $2,500 to harangue them on matters of race over dinner and drinks. Rao is also co-author of the forthcoming White Women: Everything You Already Know about Your Own Racism and How to Get Better, after securing a deal with major publishing house Penguin Random House.
She is very good at what she does. But, then, making money runs in Rao’s family — as it does with many Indian activists in the United States, who have become leaders in the battle against ‘white supremacy’.
Though it is true that in many ways Rao is atypical, and almost a caricature of the sort of activist found on social media, she reflects important visible strands of the Indian-American experience. The daughter of upper-caste southern Indian immigrants to the United States, her parents were doctors, which is not exceptional since nearly one out of every 20 doctors in the United States is of Indian origin, and somewhere in the region of one in 20 Indian Americans has a medical degree.
Not surprisingly, the median Indian-American household income is nearly twice that of white Americans, and as well as medicine many others are in prestigious, highly-paid industry — including Sara Rao’s husband, who works in finance and private equity.
Across the English-speaking world, and in particular the United States, people of Indian origin, and South Asians more broadly, are becoming more culturally influential. This is quite a turnaround; in the 1980s the most prominent person of South Asian origin depicted in American pop culture was Ben Jabituya in the Short Circuit sequel, played by Fisher Stevens, a white actor. Today, in contrast, there is an embarrassment of riches: comedians such as Aziz Ansari and Mindy Kaling; politicians such as Kamala Harris and Nikki Haley; television doctors such as Sanjay Gupta.
Though there are many examples of Indian Americans on the political Right, namely Haley, Ajit Pai or Seema Verma in the Trump administration, most of the public figures today are Democrats. Pramila Jayapal is a hard-left member of the Democratic Party representing a district in Washington state; though her colleague Ro Khanna represents Silicon Valley, and began his career as a member of the pro-business faction of the party, he also co-chaired Bernie Sanders’s recent campaign for President; Sanders’s campaign manager was Faiz Shakir, a Pakistani-American. Indian-American adjacent, as it were.
The Center for American Progress, the major Democrat-leaning think-tank in Washington, D.C., is led by an Indian-American, Neera Tanden, while Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez’s long-time influential chief of staff was Saikat Chakrabarti, who left to head Left-wing pressure groups in the party.
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SubscribeIt must be upsetting coming to another country only to find that your innate superiority is not recognised by the locals.
Innate superiority?! How?
Read the article.
Dear Brahmins,
Check your privilege.
Downvoted by an Indian. Brahim no doubt.
Rao is not a Tamil name. She’s from either Andhra Pradesh or Telengana!
The nerve of these people such as Saira Rao is utterly contemptible.
She could be fictional
More fools the white women paying to be harangued.
It’s a kind of mental masochism; if that’s what rocks their boat then I have no problem with how they choose to spend their money.
Very interesting and honest piece.Begs the question how long will Indian Americans(and others) continue to make common cause with BLM through the Democrats given that 1) as pointed out by the author they are on the receiving end of affirmative action discrimination in HE and 2) BLM is essentially anarchic. Block after burning block can’t be good for business.In the UK Indians have spurned the Labour Party. There are several reasons for this – 1) their economic advancement 2) Labour’s support for Pakistan over Kashmir 3) IMO – the “Rotherham” effect where Indian heritage Sikh and Hindu girls have suffered alongside young indigenous girls – and families. Labour has turned a blind eye to these atrocities, in part for electoral advantage.
Brahmins in the UK are virtually unaffected by the “Rotherham” effect, they lead very separate lives from the lower castes, often in large houses in very high priced areas, funded by renting hovel HMO’s to those lower castes, Or even more profitably to s-too-dense whom they rob at every opportunity using deposit monies to boost profits tax free into the bargain, their involvement in the legal ‘profession’ being used to great effect, and often covering other forms of soliciting as well. Attacking the host countries people comes easily to them, Gopal is a prime example of their racism in UK academia. As a confirmed Dalit I may be biased.
interesting, thanks
Several studies convey “only 7% of the BLM protests involved any violence, and in those cities with violence….it was confined to a block or two.
Why do you all stereotype other people soooo much?!
BLM is NOT anarchic.
”Why do you all stereotype other people soooo much?!”
The idiocy of people driven by emotive resentment know no bounds.
How long are we going to keep holding black people to the tyranny of low intellectual standards, and giving them a pass before we say enough it enough? It’s to think like intelligent, rational people who understand not all white people are the same or accountable for what happened to your relatives.
Thank you Razib. I have felt for many years that the import of other cultures will only exacerbate inequalities. Keeping class out of the argument appears to be how this is achieved. I like the synchronicity of The Untouchables and The Deplorables to back my view that it has always been the colour of your money that counts and not the colour of your skin. I believe that to be far closer to the truth than anyone dares admit.
Indians such as these Brahmins tend to turn up on time. work hard, and believe that 2 + 2 = 4. Or they start companies. Thus, according to CRT they embody and display ‘white behaviour’. And in doing so, many of them become prosperous. They had better watch out because the CRT mob will soon come for them.
If they do come for us, then they’ll be meeting a host of people unwilling to bend. One would hope that any right thinking person would be there to join us in fighting the idiocy of CRT.
Perhaps, but I am entering the “buy popcorn” phase of political discourse.
It is difficult. I appreciate that not all people of one type can be judged to be the same, but if the people mentioned in the article above are perceived as representing the whole group and they are turned on by the CRT there will be many who consider it poetic justice and, being unable to sort the wheat from the chaff, will allow you to suffer.I have Muslim friends. Should anything kick off in the way of, for want of a better word, backlash here, I would probably find myself fighting to defend them from those who would see them as part of that section that is causing problems. I have struggled to word this, please excuse any unintentional offence in trying to explain my point.
Completely get where you’re coming from man. Those who are part of this CRT nonsense I think are in the minority, many of the brahmins I know despise identity politics and value getting ahead in life through hard work. We left the caste system behind when we left India, we don’t want it following us here.
Thank you. My muslim friends have similar outlook.
Another example of the left ruining everything. Mrs Rao should be handed a copy of The Ivory Throne and shown how a Brahmin/Nair can fight inequality without ruining other peoples’ lives.
I would aver that it is not the left, or the right that are at fault (I’m middleish myself) but rather the selfish and greedy who will use and abuse any ideology to enrich themselves, with little regard to the lives of others. But I’m probably nit picking, and In principle, I agree.
One reason that Brahmins are overrepresented in the American managerial/intellectual class is that in South India (the Madras Presidency to be exact) they were subjected from the 1930s on to a quota system in higher education. This was brought about by the local democratically elected assembly (set up of course by the dastardly British) whose majority came from the Justice Party, an anti Brahmin, anti Hindi language party whose descendant groups have ruled Tamil Nadu since Independence. Brahmins in Tamil Nadu then sent their kids abroad to study – mostly to the US.
How very interesting, thank you.
Are Brahmins evenly distributed across the sub-continent, or are they concentrated in local pockets?
You also perhaps imply they somewhat resented the British Raj, or have I misinterpreted that?
Mark, the other quota system that the Justice Party established for Brahmins was in government jobs. Brahmins, with centuries of literacy behind them, held a large share of state jobs underneath the British. Sen Harris’ grandfather was one such officeholder.
Brahmins live everywhere in India. Village Brahmins are often quite poor. V.S. Naipaul’s family took indentured labour in Trinidad over staying in rural Uttar Pradesh.
Some resented the Crown Raj, some got along, some strove to replace
it, ie Nehru.
The loss of Brahmin status, when it rarely happens, is final and damning. Back in the 4th century BC, when the Mauryan Emperor Ashoka converted to Buddhism, many Brahmins followed him. But, unhappily, Buddhism did not outlast Ashoka in the Empire and the ex Brahmins were stranded. They form a separate local caste – the Bhumipars – in the state of Bihar. And they are sporadically fighting caste wars against ‘lower’ groups in the countryside.
Thank you for a fascinating response!
I have heard it said that Nehru may not have been a ‘proper’ Brahmin, scurrilous propaganda, no doubt.
Do we know the origin of the Brahmin caste, or is it just too mythological?
I see that Sen Harris is described as an African-American, presumably to avoid any Brahmin ‘contamination’?
Do we know much about how the Brahmins behaved during the Mutiny. Presumably most were on ‘our’ side for all too obvious reasons?
High Caste Hindus (Brahmins and Rajputs) formed the backbone of the EIC’s Bengal army and it was this army that was the main centre of the mutiny so they definitely weren’t on our side.
I rather thought not, and thank you for confirming my suspicions.
As far as I know, it was the Aryans from South Central Asia, conquerors of much of India, who set up the caste system, with themselves, naturally, being the highest caste – the Brahmins. The lowest caste was reserved for the Dalits, or Untouchables, who were the poorest of the conquered peoples. Even today, the Untouchables often have to eke out an existence doing unpaid work in rural villages,their only reward being the uneaten food of higher caste families. The Aryans also bequeathed their language to India, and other Aryan tribes colonised Westward, giving us the Indo-European languages.
I’m not a historian, so some of this may be questioned.
Yes you’re no historian. The Aryan Invasion Theory is fast being debunked and you may find this discussion illuminating.
https://youtu.be/CUgoCNtldcQ
The ARYAN MIGRATION THEORY has been proven by Genetics.
https://thediplomat.com/2019/01/where-indians-come-from-part-2-dravidians-and-aryans/
https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2019/09/12/the-aryan-integration-theory-ait/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2017/04/20/aryan-marauders-from-the-steppe-came-to-india-yes-they-did/
Most top US universities have pass rates dependent on race. Asian students need to score higher than whites, whites than Latinos and Latinos higher than African-Americans. This means that a lower test score is required for an African-American who spent his or her entire education in expensive private schools to get into Harvard etc than for an ethnic Indian or Chinese student who grew up in a home where English was a second language and who struggled through the public school system. So much for Brown-Black solidarity. Then there is the refusal by most African-Americans to recognise Tulsi Gabbard and Andrew Yang as people of colour, when they stood for the Democratic nomination. To most African-Americans a successful person of Indian or Chinese ethnicity is white.
Meanwhile Jews are allocated a ‘white’ identity despite the majority coming from places where the gentile population of the same places being described as coming from ‘brown’ countries!
Yes, it’s odd isn’t it?. Syrians, Lebanese etc, often look as white as southern Europeans but, nevertheless, are “people of colour”. Jews, largely of the same stock, are not “people of colour” . Mind you, they do have a lot of white ancestry, mainly on the female side – those slave markets in Rome must have been very useful for a young man newly arrived from Judea with coins in his pocket but no woman.
Perhaps Mr Razib Khan could enlighten us as to whether these Brahmin fellows are genetically different in any way from the rest?
After 1500 years of almost incestuous copulation, there must be?Is there anything in the physiognomy or colouring for example?
To most Englishman they (Brahmins) are forever associated with the habit of widow burning or ‘sati’/’suttee’, which was almost stamped out under the Raj, but now I gather, is having a belated revival.
A caste that intermarries and has centuries of privilege is non-distinct from a race, ro be honest.
Therefore the analogy with the Jews is somewhat ‘wide of the mark’?
Article says that genetic differences go back 1500 years as regards caste barriers. It’s as if the Normans had never intermarried with the English population, indeed they didn’t for a century or so.
That ghastly woman Gopal at Cambridge must be a Brahim, apparently she was the daughter of an Indian diplomat, historically stacked with caste privilege. Her forebears doubtless ran India for the British as the article says
You are perfectly correct, that ‘malignant butterfly’, Gopal is a Brahmin and her forebears certainly helped us run the Raj, although they were never allowed into the ‘ Club’, for all too obvious
reasons.
The current advisor to the Scottish administration on this C-19 nonsense, one Devi Sridhar is also probably one .
You are perfectly correct, that ‘malignant butterfly’, Gopal is a Brahmin and her forebears certainly helped us run the Raj, although they were never allowed into the ‘ Club’, for all too obvious
reasons.
The current advisor to the Scottish administration on this C-19 nonsense, whose name I cannot mention (outlawed by the Censor four times) is also of the same persuasion I think you will find.
Yes. This video explains it https://youtu.be/lYBCY9tOcrw
You will observe that in Northern areas of India the most common shape of head is relatively square, the Omar Sharif shape, that has a distinctly ‘European’ look. Whereas in the lower half of India the shape of the head is much rounder and looks smaller. I imagine that this could well be a genetic inheritance from the Aryan invaders, who were from Central Europe.
Please view this and you may learn something useful. https://youtu.be/CUgoCNtldcQ
One book. One required read.
Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail.
Just tried to get it. Not currently for sale on Amazon “Under review” Why, one wonders!
Yes, the copies are rare. I bought 50 back in the 90’s to give away to friends. If only I had held onto them. They’re fetching quite the price nowadays. But it can be found online. If your French is up to scratch, you can still find reasonably priced copies.
Thanks
Yes, I read it a couple of years ago. And it is all coming true.
There was a programme entitled “The March” 30 years ago
“A group of several thousand Africans migrate westward across northern
Africa and sail across the Strait of Gibraltar to Europe. Their message
is: “We are poor because you are rich”
They landed in France or Spain, I remember expecting a robust security response – which was not forthcoming, the army/police just let them pass through without let or hindrance
A great article. I have been wondering when someone would call out the hypocrisy of those such as Rao.
Perhaps more people should read A Fine Balance, by Rohinton Mistry. A great novel in which the writer exposes the misfortunes, discrimination, oppressions and the endless sufferings of the Dalits in India after Independence at the hands of the upper castes raised not to empathise or do much about the plight of those who live in abject poverty. After all, that is their karma they are living out.
Travel in India and you will see it with you own eyes. It is ten years since I was there and perhaps things are beginning to change for the better for the Dalit community although there is little evidence of it.
it’s pretty common for the first wave of immigrants to do very well. It’s often highly qualified people migrating to get well paid jobs in medicine or business. The kids of such people are far more likely to found business and go to college themselves too.
If the US, or any country for that matter, dropped the requirement for valued skills in (legal) migrants and allowed in the unskilled and poor then the average wage for that nationality would plummet. The well paid would be diluted by large numbers of minimum wage labourers and squeegee merchants etc.
If we cant fight the crazy destructive mob, lets just direct at someone else, right?
Unherd has buckled to the woke-lunacy and published a piece which works the woke’s twisted story onto some other group and paints them as a target: ‘there are those who are worse than the whites and they should be receiving this awful treatment. Choose a different target!’.
‘Not us! But them! Dont do it onto us, do it onto them!’ Yay! Well done Khan!
Lets forget all about merit, competence and hardwork. Who cares about incompetent doctors as long as we get the woke-quotas right, right?
Defending the whites by shoving brahmins to the foreground does not require courage or intelligence. Indians have been attacking the brahmins for atleast 70 years now. And the British and the missionaries for centuries before them (not to mention the muslim rulers before the British who slaughterd the Brahmins).So, Khan is just another in the long line of well established anti-brahminism. Even Khan’s argument is not new: Brahmins didnt marry other people and usually married other brahmins. Yeah. So? Beacons of freedom now are going to judge who marries whom?
The fact that there are rich brown people encashing on the current lunacy is nothing new. There are people of all classes and colours encashing on this madness and other suffering everywhere. But you cannot solve this situation by painting the target on another group.
And all the people applauding this in the comments: you are not even seeing how the current climate of lunacy is creeping on you. Is your skin all you care about while protesting the woke?
Excellent article highlighting the hypocrisies and greed of human beings. I, a US domiciled brahmin by birth, put this honest paragraph in a writing to my alma mater: “I was an untypical graduate student at that time. Most foreign students came from decently wealthy & connected families[1]. Their goal is to get the coveted degree from abroad while enjoying their life in the host country and take life one day at a time. Circumstances beyond my control – demise of dad at an early age — would dictate that I could not dream of getting into a college even in India. In fact, I was forced to change the school, city and the language of instruction for science subjects twice in the final year of my high school. Still, I conditioned myself that I belonged to what is known as the Indian upper-class Brahmin family (my first two initials representing my family name come from a nationally well-known person) with ready access to information (on how to move up in life and succeed) and not from a slum with no access to anything and I need to fight back to get what God took away.
Having said that, few questions to you Mr. Khan: 1. Do you come from a wheatish complexioned upper-class moslem family with all the princely privileges or the much darker local moslems of the foot soldiers tribe? Why not include your own side biases as well? That seems to be the problem (and perhaps that goes with the human ability to deflect) everywhere. A rightist blames the leftist and vice versa. A person with centrist thoughts and willing to look at the shortcomings of both sides (aka, persons like me) become a no-persona (you are not in our network; so you are our enemy) and lose all the chances for moving up (beyond what ones credentials indicate)!
[1] But most Indians will claim that they came from a poor family and walked five miles to school and have to cross the river on the way with books and their dress on their head!
I’m the so called Brahmin and this article is so on point ! The hereditary privilege is so ingrained that the kids growing up in these households do not realise that their problems are first world problems even though they live in a third world country and this speaks volumes! It took me my teens to unlearn all the brainwash and i don’t know why people say it’s so hard, its basic common sense; the divison of people based on their circumstances of birth should not exist. I love Pokemon and there’s this quote that haa stuck with me, “ I see now that the circumstances of one’s birth are irrelevant. It’s what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are”.
I’m the so called Brahmin and this article is so on point ! The hereditary privilege is so ingrained that the kids growing up in these households do not realise that their problems are first world problems even though they live in a third world country and this speaks volumes! It took me my teens to unlearn all the brainwash and i don’t know why people say it’s so hard, its basic common sense; the divison of people based on their circumstances of birth should not exist. I love Pokemon and there’s this quote that haa stuck with me, “ I see now that the circumstances of one’s birth are irrelevant. It’s what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are”.
Thank you for the important article. I am Indian IT Professional who used to work in U.S particularly in the Santa Clara and can totally understand what your talking about. In the Bay Area where i used to live, Indian Americans were the most well off.
Regarding brahmanism; It is such an entrenched problem in Indian society that it needs a whole different discussion and what you point about the percentage of “higher” caste people is just an extension of issues in India.
On a lighter note as far as I understand US politics it is weird that majority Indians are democratic; I mean Indian kids dont need affirmative action to get into top colleges; Indians would prefer lower taxes;
this article just tries to curry favour with the whites by trying to direct the destructive lunatic mob at a different group. Nothing new or interesting: old and established anti-brahminism. And as usual the problem is the fact that they dont marry others, succeed and work hard, and refuse to die out.
Curry favour, I see what you did there.
No the problem is that some of them, despite benefitting from obvious privilege, are laying claim to questionable victimhood.
nah, I am Indian, and I’m sick and tired of Brahmins pretending to be woke and discriminated. They are the white people of India, super privileged, and make up the majority demographic of Indian diaspora that emigrated. They are worse than 99% of republicans when it comes to social conservatism, yet do the black flag, blm, and the whole nine yards – including lording over their brownness to scam white people.
3500 years ago Aryan people moved south into Europe, Persia and India from which Indo-Aryan langauges developed. Consequently, Greek and Sanskrit are related. Britons were able to learn sanskrit and Persian because they knew Greek. Southern Indian languages, Dravidian, such as Tamil and Malayalam are not related to Indo Aryan and are much older. The present Hindu system developed 3500 years ago and was overlain on older beliefs.
Muslim conquered India from 1000 AD and by about 1700 AD had kiled 88M hindus according to KS Lal the historian- just examine the actions of Timur the lame and Babur. Hindus provided administrators for the Moghul Empire. However, the Moghul Empire collapsed from 1700 AD. By the 1750s , the East India Company were appointed tax farmers by the Moghuls for Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. Early 19th century English became the language of administration rather tha Persian which was the language of the Muslim Moghul Empire. Britain set many schools and universities from the 1830s and far more higher cast Hindus, especially Brahmins took advantage compared to Muslims . When competetive exams became the method of entrance to the indian Civil service, Bar, Medical School, Army, Railways and Police, the higher cast Hindus rapidly progressed which worried many Muslims. Britain enabled the pen to become mightier than the sword which benefitted the Hindus over the Muslims, The Brahmin over the Untouchable and the Northern Aryan speaker over the southern Dravidian speaker.
A significant reason for Jinnah demanding a separate state was because the Hindus dominated the senior echelons of government, business, The Law and Medicine and were dominant majority which meant in a democracy the would have power. Muslims had a disproportionate percentage in the Army as many came from warrior groups such as The Pushtuns. The INC was largely an upper middle class higher Hindu cast non- military organisation.
British rule enabled higher Cast Hindus to gain power in India from the previous Muslim rulers. Many Muslim rulers of the princely State such as Hyderabad did not want to join India but were forced to do so.
When people start complaining about privilege I think it is an attempt to hide their own comfortable past. It is the intellectual equivalent of Willie John McBride’s dictum of ” Get the retaliation in first “,
After religious tests were removed in the 1830s , the only requirements for entry to education was ability to pass exams and pay the fees; Nehru went to Harrow School in 1905 and afterwards to Trinity College, Cambridge.
Why are Indian Americans considered ‘socially disadvantaged’ for set-asides by the US Government if they are ‘the richest and most successful ethnic group in the USA?
Under the entry ‘Indian American’ in Wikipedia
Household income
The median household income for Indian immigrants in 2015 was much higher than that of the overall foreign- and native-born populations. Households headed by Indian immigrants had a median income of $101,591,compared to $51,000 and $56,000 for overall immigrant and native-born households, respectively. By far they are the richest and most successful ethnic group in the USA due to many factors including relatively low wages for highly skilled workers in India which creates an incentive for highly skilled Indians to seek better-paid career opportunities overseas.
Approximately 7% of Indian immigrants lived in poverty in 2015, a much lower rate
than the foreign-born population overall and the U.S.born (17 percent
and 14 percent, respectively).[57]
Yet the US Government considers Indians to be ‘socially disadvantaged’ in 13 Code of Federal Regulations 103.124?
(b) Members of designated groups.
(1) There is a rebuttable presumption that the following individuals are socially disadvantaged: Black Americans; Hispanic Americans; Native
Americans(Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, or enrolled members of a
Federally or State recognized Indian Tribe); Asian Pacific Americans
(persons with origins from Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia,
Singapore, Brunei,Japan, China (including Hong Kong), Taiwan, Laos,
Cambodia (Kampuchea),Vietnam, Korea, The Philippines, U.S. Trust
Territory of the Pacific
Islands (Republic of Palau), Republic of the Marshall Islands, Federated
States of Micronesia, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands,
Guam, Samoa, Macao, Fiji, Tonga, Kiribati, Tuvalu, or Nauru);
Subcontinent Asian Americans (persons with origins from India, Pakistan,
Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, the Maldives Islands or Nepal); and
members of other groups designated from time to time by SBA according to
procedures set forth at paragraph (d)
of this section. Being born in a country does not, by itself, suffice
to make the birth country an individual’s country of origin for purposes
of being included within a designated group.
Stock-in-trade, not stock and trade!
(Though the context of the sentence this “eggcorn” appeared in made me smile.)