New Jersey Brown People and Non-Brown people, please read this

[Nikhil]

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1999416,00.html














Write your responses tothejoelstein@yahoo.com and letters@time.com

 

[[Sher] Imran]

If a brown person wrote this article, I think people wouldn't be as upset. I think he was going for a sarcastic piece, but in any case this isn't TIME material. Cali/AZ/TX have a problem with an influx of Mexicans, Florida with Cubans/Hatians/DR, SF & Seattle with Asians, and it looks like NJ has Indians. Ask any Florida person on here, im sure they can rattle off some stereotype and inside jokes about Cubans/Hatians/DR people, just like any Cali person can go down a large of list of opinions on Mexicans. Unfortunately, the same goes for Indian people in New Jersey, I guess haha.

 

[HarmanSingh]

"Whenever I go back, I feel what people in Arizona talk about: a sense of loss and anomie"

Sense of loss? Stein should the Arizona people how they acquired the land to begin with. How about the loss the Natives felt when their land and culture was taken from them and they were forced into reservations? How about how Native American children in Phoenix were forcefully assimilated and made to change their names and cut their hair to fit what is "America"? Poor Joel Stein! You lost your Pizza Hut! You deserve reparations! The White man just can’t catch a break!

Especially funny a Jew would write such a xenophobic and anti-immigrant piece. He must have forgotten the plight of his own people.

Maybe he was trying to be sarcastic, but the guy really isn't funny.
Gotta love white nostalgia of a simpler times of segregation, Jim Crow and revisionist history.

 

[Rajbir]

Ask any Florida person on here, im sure they can rattle off some stereotype and inside jokes about Cubans/Hatians/DR people.

lol yes we can .... but we wont

 

[terabaap]

What *exactly*is wrong with this piece? It's an editorial.
Also, replace "Edison" with "Rutgers".

 

[[Sher] Imran]

I think its biting sarcasm like someone in Arizona would say in reaction to their new immigration bill: "Kick all the mexicans out?? Whos gonna mow my lawn?"

There is truth but its wrapped up in a weird context and comes off as biting.

 

[terabaap]

I think its biting sarcasm like someone in Arizona would say in reaction to their new immigration bill: "Kick all the mexicans out?? Whos gonna mow my lawn?"

There is truth but its wrapped up in a weird context and comes off as biting.

Agreed. Liked I said before, no need to get panties in a bunch.

 

[kinnell]

I agree with you, Harman, that there are parts where you get a whiff of sarcasm, but he fails miserably at being funny.

There is an entire generation of white children in Edison who have nowhere to learn crime.

In retrospect, I question just how good our schools were if "dot heads" was the best racist insult we could come up with for a group of people whose gods have multiple arms and an elephant nose.

while the population seems at least half Indian, a lot of them look like the Italian Guidos I grew up with in the 1980s: gold chains, gelled hair, unbuttoned shirts.

If the intention of the article is not humour, then it is offensive, even to non-Indians. I have lost some respect for Time. Would they be okay with publishing an article that described African Americans in a specific city as stupid, dirty, poor and alluding to them as pests? I very much doubt it.

 

[yraparla]

Yea, this article is making it's way around the internet. I posted this in response to an email about it:

"The article is so poorly written I can hardly believe it's making the print section

But I think if you filter the nonsense you can get a pretty positive statement: the Indian diaspora arrived and stayed tightknit while at the same time assimilated their future generations.

I don't see the article as overtly racist (though he makes tongue-in-cheek racist remarks that are more 'casually racist' then provocative). I think he simply points out that Edison is a microcosm of the good and the bad in immigration, and that in the end it doesn't matter whether it's good or bad because change is inevitable."


But yea, this guy is a douche. In response to the criticism on twitter he wrote, "Didn't meant to insult Indians with my column this week. Also stupidly assumed their emails would follow that Gandhi non-violence thing". Apologizing for a poorly written article by masking more racist comments with sarcasm is just not the way to go.

 

[faizan]

The ramblings of a bitter white man, nothing new. The Indian community saved Edison, and many others around the country. Still, I sense a lot of nostalgic angst from this author, a young man whose childhood memories that were couched in a town that has changed. I can relate to that, my neighborhood in Queens is now mostly Asian. There is a fine line though, between being nostalgic and missing a home you knew, and passive agressively insulting the new residents of that home. That is where I take exception to this article.

 

[HarleenKaur]

http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/07/13/parikh.stein.rebuttal/index.html?hpt=C2

 

[ameetkhabra]

http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/07/13/parikh.stein.rebuttal/index.html?hpt=C2

Doctor's telling Stein wasssssupp..

 

[KraziKudi]

someone needs to find this guy, tie him to a chair, and pluck off his body hair one by one, and put on wall street and make him watch it

 

[Govind]

I think if people actually took a bit of time to read this article and understood this man's (rather poorly conveyed) message and musings, they would acknowledge that the outcry and emotional response from the indian community we observed after this article came out was unjustified...and in fact stupid. Yea he says some not so kosher things, but that's how 90% of americans see us in communities undergoing Edison-like transitions. I read the original article before the outcry in the Times and didn't think much of it (although I'll admit i was compelled to read on after what i read the first few paragraphs, and actually understood his real message...which has nothing to do with the xenophobia that most upset indians made it out to be).

 

[HarmanSingh]

I think if people actually took a bit of time to read this article and understood this man's (rather poorly conveyed) message and musings, they would acknowledge that the outcry and emotional response from the indian community we observed after this article came out was unjustified...and in fact stupid. Yea he says some not so kosher things, but that's how 90% of americans see us in communities undergoing Edison-like transitions. I read the original article before the outcry in the Times and didn't think much of it (although I'll admit i was compelled to read on after what i read the first few paragraphs, and actually understood his real message...which has nothing to do with the xenophobia that most upset indians made it out to be).

Just because 90% of people view Indians in this way does not mean it is any less offensive or ignorant. What message do you think he was trying to convey but failed to do so? To me the message was clear- xenophobia.

 

[Govind]

I think if people actually took a bit of time to read this article and understood this man's (rather poorly conveyed) message and musings, they would acknowledge that the outcry and emotional response from the indian community we observed after this article came out was unjustified...and in fact stupid. Yea he says some not so kosher things, but that's how 90% of americans see us in communities undergoing Edison-like transitions. I read the original article before the outcry in the Times and didn't think much of it (although I'll admit i was compelled to read on after what i read the first few paragraphs, and actually understood his real message...which has nothing to do with the xenophobia that most upset indians made it out to be).

Just because 90% of people view Indians in this way does not mean it is any less offensive or ignorant. What message do you think he was trying to convey but failed to do so? To me the message was clear- xenophobia.

you should read the article again b/c you (and many others) missed the boat entirely. the author through his many examples (tongue in cheek musings, misconstrued as 'ignorant,' but in tone I would agree he comes off as very arrogant) is expressing surprise at the changes he sees in a place he was quite nostalgic about. Coming back to edison and seeing the demographic, cultural transition in a place truly hit home for the author. In his article he not only reveals some truisms about the indians who now populate edison, but he also takes aim at the white man's misgivings.

His ONLY point is that sociocultural change is an inherent part of today's America, and whether you believe that change is good or bad depends on how deep you scratch to understand its driving forces and overall impact on society.