Cry me a river!

Europe has become an anti-immigrant continent.  Germany, too, where its chancellor is fighting to hold on to her job, which is under threat because of her past strong support for immigrants, especially refugees.

Anti-immigration sentiments mostly stem from "they" being "different."  The looks, speech, habits, dresses, ... Particularly if "they" are Muslims.  Even in the tiny country that is mostly irrelevant on the global stage.  No, I am not referring to the UK, but Denmark.

For decades, integrating immigrants has posed a thorny challenge to the Danish model, intended to serve a small, homogeneous population.

So, what is the Danish approach?

Denmark’s government is introducing a new set of laws to regulate life in 25 low-income and heavily Muslim enclaves, saying that if families there do not willingly merge into the country’s mainstream, they should be compelled.

Ah, yes, compel them.  "That tough approach is embodied in the “ghetto package.”"  And then the beatings will continue until the morale improves!

Whenever I read anything like that, the old anti-colonialist teenager that I was come out from within me.  But, what am I gonna do?  Stop eating havarti?

I did the only thing that I could do as a powerless member of the public.  I wrote a letter to the newspaper.  That will send a powerful message to the Danish government!  

Oh well, I know the letter wouldn't even get published, given the volume that the NY Times receives.  But, hey, I have my own blog where I can publish whatever I want; so, here is that letter:

Dear Editor:
I read with interest, "In Denmark, Harsh New Laws for Immigrant ‘Ghettos’".
Every time I read one of these reports on how European countries are "struggling" to deal with immigrants, especially Muslims , I wish such reports also included reminders about the past.
While Denmark might be peaceful now, with its people being the happiest on earth, the Danes imposed themselves on places and people far away from Scandinavia.  I grew up in the state of Tamil Nadu, in the southern tip of peninsular India.  In a small coastal town, Tharangambadi, Denmark established a trading post and then a fort nearly 400 years ago.  The Danish East India Company couldn't match the resources of the British East India Company, and ended up with a very small footprint in the Subcontinent.
Whether it is Denmark or France "struggling" with foreigners with hijabs and the Koran, it is history echoing how peoples far away from Europe "struggled" with foreigners who came with guns and the Bible.  I wonder if the native Danes are being educated about this even as the "ghetto children" are being forced into assimilation camps.

Yes, Virginia, colonialism exists!

I was an intern in a regional planning agency in Los Angeles, during my graduate school days, thanks to this departed friend.  The internship was one of the many awkward and uncomfortable phases of my life, but that is a different story for another day.

My supervisor was an African-American woman.  Boy was she excited when Clinton beat Bush!  There were two younger women of color who worked in the adjacent cubicles.  Both were full-time employees.  One was from Eritrea.  She was the first person, and the only one ever, from Eritrea with whom I have talked to in real life.

The other woman was from from the Caribbean, she said.  St. Thomas, she added.

My reaction was simple. "St. Thomas?"

Hey, there is only so much one can know.  Life does not teach everything all at once to everybody.  Learning is a lifelong activity.

It was before the days of the world wide web.  Back then, we learnt from each other.  I asked her a whole bunch of questions about St. Thomas.  Including whether they too enjoyed Belafonte's songs.

I thought I had learnt everything important that was to be learnt about St. Thomas.  Of course, wrong I was.  I had no idea all these years that:

One hundred years ago, the islands were called the Danish West Indies. Denmark sold the islands in 1917 to the United States for $25 million.

The Danish West Indies.  One speck of a tiny European country colonizing remote parts of the world, the old country included.

St. Thomas was in the news, but briefly.  Hurricane Irma smashed into the islands there.  Even though the island, along with a few others, is a part of the US, well, the people there aren't "real Americans."  We Americans are the colonizers, and they are the natives who are part of the whole but without any voting rights.

The island has been devastated.

When I finally received a text from my Aunt Cecile on Thursday, she wrote, “The post office is gone.” “What do you mean ‘gone’?” I texted back. She responded with a list: “Grocery stores gone. Schools gone. Hospital gone.” “What do you mean ‘gone’?” I asked again. “Gone,” she texted again. “Demolished. No roof. No walls.”

Imagine the scenario.  A tiny island. No where to run to.  You are stuck.  And now without anything.  Not even food and fresh water.  And you expect your government to come to your rescue, right?

Wrong!

Because, they are not "real Americans."

Virgin Islanders are led by a president who makes clear delineations between “real” Americans and all the rest. True, the people of the Virgin Islands didn’t vote for this current president. The people of the Virgin Islands didn’t vote for any president of our United States of America, because voting in the general election is not a privilege of citizenship that the federal government extends to us. Like the citizens of Puerto Rico, Guam and the other United States territories, we are not yet real Americans.

We Americans do not care when cyclones batter Bangladesh. We don't care even for the Virgin Islands.

No wonder TV networks and even the president’s homeland security adviser, Tom Bossert, can’t seem to get it right.
In a press briefing last Friday, Mr. Bossert appeared to chastise the news media for not covering the government response to Hurricane Irma’s assault on the Virgin Islands. Watching him, I held my breath, wondering if now someone would claim us. But he mentioned the evacuation of American citizens from the Virgin Islands in the same way he talked about the evacuation of American citizens from St. Maarten and St. Martin. I took him to mean: We are evacuating the real Americans from these foreign Caribbean islands.

It is like how post-Katrina, many commentators were referring to the people fleeing Louisiana as "refugees"--because "real Americans" are white and, therefore, the non-whites were like those running away from Eritrea!

I suppose the "real Americans" are very happy with this real-American president!

How far away is India from Indonesia?

My first newspaper opinion piece--not any short letter to the editor--was when I was a few months away from wrapping up graduate schooling in Los Angeles, which was my port of entry to life in these United States.  The op-ed was, in retrospect, a terrible piece.  But, hey, if my writing and I are works in progress, you can easily imagine that I and my writing sucked big time more than two decades ago.

It was published in the Bakersfield Califiornian--by then I had transitioned to life in Bakersfield.  Soon, it was a second opinion piece in that same paper, after I had managed to find gainful employment in the city.  A day after that second opinion essay, when the phone rang at work, it turned out to be the beginning of a productive association and friendship.

The caller was a professor at the local university.  He was pleased that the opinion author was from India and wanted to contact me right away.  He was also from India, and chose to go with a short version of his multi-syllable Indian name.  At the end of the brief phone conversation, he invited me and my family over to his home for dinner with him and his wife.

A few days later, we met in the real world.  That was the first of the many dinners with Kris and Kirsten.  He was only a few years younger than my father.  Kirsten was from Denmark--they had met when he was a graduate student in Copenhagen.

Not too long after that, Kris invited us to join them at the local Danish association's potluck gathering.  In his uniquely funny manner, Kris added that he was the president of the Danish Association.  Only in America can an Indian be the president of a Danish association!

It was but a small gathering.  Most of them were even older than Kris.  They were all familiar with India as well.  One of them, a much older woman, quizzed me about the Danish connection with India.  She asked me if I knew about the Danish colonies there.  I was so thankful that I knew about Tranquebar--it was not far from where we lived in India.  The old woman was pleased that I knew.  She then talked about how in their schooling they had learnt about the Danish East India Company, and the Nicobar Islands.  She regretted not having been to India.

All the way from tiny Denmark a colony in the Nicobar Islands.  Imagine that!

I was reminded of those old stories when I read this lengthy report in the New York Times, about the ethical and legal issues relating to a dead baby among one of India’s last intact Paleolithic tribes in the Andamans. Reading that will be well worth your time, I assure you.

So, why Indonesia in the title of this post?  It is easy to forget that the Andaman and Nicobar Islands are way, way out there from the Indian mainland.  So much out there that the southern end of this archipelago is less than a hundred miles away from the northern tip of Indonesia's Aceh Province.

It is a small world after all.

As for Kris, one evening he poured wine in two glasses for Kirtsen and for himself while she was making a pizza for dinner.  Kris told his wife that he was going to lie down for a few minutes.  He never woke up again--a massive heart attack ended his life.

More on Yale banning cartoons in a book

I blogged earlier about Yale University Press forcing the author of a forthcoming book on the Danish cartoon controversy not to include the cartoons in the book.

Christopher Hitchens says it best (as always):

[Now] the rot has gone a serious degree further into the fabric. Now we have to say that the mayhem we fear is also our fault, if not indeed our direct responsibility. This is the worst sort of masochism, and it involves inverting the honest meaning of our language as well as what might hitherto have been thought of as our concept of moral responsibility.

Last time this happened, I linked to the Danish cartoons so that you could make up your own minds about them, and I do the same today. Nothing happened last time, but who's to say what homicidal theocrat might decide to take offense now. I deny absolutely that I will have instigated him to do so, and I state in advance that he is directly and solely responsible for any blood that is on any hands. He becomes the responsibility of our police and security agencies, who operate in defense of a Constitution that we would not possess if we had not been willing to spill blood—our own and that of others—to attain it. The First Amendment to that Constitution prohibits any prior restraint on the freedom of the press. What a cause of shame that the campus of Nathan Hale should have pre-emptively run up the white flag and then cringingly taken the blood guilt of potential assassins and tyrants upon itself.