Blurred Lines: Racism, Joel Stein & TIME

American media, and the people with access to it, seem to be going through a period of confusion. Lines have been blurred between meaning, intent and medium. Post the election of this President, Barack Obama, MSM talking heads routinely seem to confuse racist vitriol with a legitimate point of view…political and otherwise. It’s not the 24 hour news cycle that’s to blame.  Rather, it’s the incessant repetition of falsehoods, met without challenge by those moderating the “discussion” that  lends credibility to the blatantly untrue, nonsensical,  illogical and fundamentally racist assertions of  pundits, GOP politicos and random dudes as  legitimate points of view.

Unchallenged, the racist meme is ever cemented. We’ve watched it be used as fuel for the engine of a political movement. That’s been allowed to happen, allowed by the media of this era who feel no sense of connection to truth. A media that feels no obligation to the American public, its readers, its watchers. And, no obligation whatsoever to the American public that is not white. Seems other agendas are afoot.  No one has to provide context of any sort, no one has to do research. Seems as though little to no knowledge is necessary. Say what you want and it’s relayed as a legitimate position. Your feelings, the darkest and most ugly you have, can now be expressed with abandon…legitimately as thought.  No need to check yourself. No need to ask yourself, or anyone else for that matter, if you’re being fucked up.  And, apparently, no publisher will think to question it either.  Say whatever you want. There is no accountability. You might have to say sorry, maybe…but that’s it. More likely, you’ll have to say sorry to Rush Limbaugh for taking back whatever sense you spoke.  So, while watching the lines blur on TV, I ran across this blurred piece by Joel Stein, published by a blurred TIME Magazine. This overtly racist immigration commentary pretends, I guess, to be a comedic piece. It’s entitled “My Own Private India”:

TIME/Joel Stein piece: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1999416,00.html#ixzz0swFRA2eC

Mr. Stein begins his racist diatribe with:

“I am very much in favor of immigration everywhere in the U.S. except Edison, N.J. The mostly white suburban town I left when I graduated from high school in 1989 — the town that was called Menlo Park when Thomas Alva Edison set up shop there and was later renamed in his honor — has become home to one of the biggest Indian communities in the U.S., as familiar to people in India as how to instruct stupid Americans to reboot their Internet routers.”

I hear: My middle class white town, a town with a very serious white inventor history, I might add, has been taken over by a bunch of brown people who seem to not know their actual place…which is not to live in my town, but rather to provide technical support for my computer via telephone from their own damn nation.

“My town is totally unfamiliar to me. The Pizza Hut where my busboy friends stole pies for our drunken parties is now an Indian sweets shop with a completely inappropriate roof. The A&P I shoplifted from is now an Indian grocery. The multiplex where we snuck into R-rated movies now shows only Bollywood films and serves samosas. The Italian restaurant that my friends stole cash from as waiters is now Moghul, one of the most famous Indian restaurants in the country. There is an entire generation of white children in Edison who have nowhere to learn crime.”

I hear: We white people have lost all the stuff that makes us white: Pizza Hut, A&P, multiplexes, Italian food. All things quintessentially middle income America. These Indians have taken everything from us…all that we know and understand…we’re really American and they’re not. They’re messing it all up.  And, to mitigate any cries of racism, I’m going to attempt to equalize the situation by throwing in some white kid teen antics to let you know that I’ve risen above my previous social station and can quite clearly see and critique which rung of the American ladder of dreams my town hung on, while simultaneously cementing the concept of the “real America” which is where I come from. Famous food is not a plus.

“I never knew how a bunch of people half a world away chose a random town in New Jersey to populate. Were they from some Indian state that got made fun of by all the other Indian states and didn’t want to give up that feeling? Are the malls in India that bad? Did we accidentally keep numbering our parkway exits all the way to Mumbai?”

I hear:  Why the fuck did you pick my town, you damn Indians? Of all the places, why my fucking town? I mean, we might suck and all but we don’t suck that fucking much…to make you think you can ALL come here.

“I called James W. Hughes, policy-school dean at Rutgers University, who explained that Lyndon Johnson’s 1965 immigration law raised immigration caps for non-European countries. LBJ apparently had some weird relationship with Asians in which he liked both inviting them over and going over to Asia to kill them.”

I hear: I did research to figure out how this shit happened. Who the hell thought this was a good idea? It’s all that damn LBJ’s fault you see…raising the non-Euro cap. And, even he couldn’t make up his mind: accept them or reject them. Because…they’re all the same. All Asians. Every country, every culture. All alike…not like us.

“After the law passed, when I was a kid, a few engineers and doctors from Gujarat moved to Edison because of its proximity to AT&T, good schools and reasonably priced, if slightly deteriorating, post–WW II housing. For a while, we assumed all Indians were geniuses. Then, in the 1980s, the doctors and engineers brought over their merchant cousins, and we were no longer so sure about the genius thing. In the 1990s, the not-as-brilliant merchants brought their even-less-bright cousins, and we started to understand why India is so damn poor.”

I hear: And, you see, it was okish years ago because only the really fucking smart ones came over. We only had a few. And, those few were the crème de la crème. I mean, acceptable ass Indians. The kind we white people can deal with. The ones who don’t act too Indian outside the home, imposing all their Indian bullshit on us. We only realized how much we totally hated them when there got to be too many. Listen, we don’t hate all Indians, just the ones that make India poor. We only like the superIndians, and then, only a few of those. Don’t get fucking ridiculous and bring everyone. That’s not what this is about. Not my American town.

“Eventually, there were enough Indians in Edison to change the culture. At which point my townsfolk started calling the new Edisonians “dot heads.” One kid I knew in high school drove down an Indian-dense street yelling for its residents to “go home to India.” 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.”

I wonder: Hmmm. Is changing the culture what white people are doing to Harlem? What should the well educated black people of Harlem call the white people doing that? What should the less well educated people call them?

“Unlike some of my friends in the 1980s, I liked a lot of things about the way my town changed: far better restaurants, friends dorky enough to play Dungeons & Dragons with me, restaurant owners who didn’t card us because all white people look old. But sometime after I left, the town became a maze of charmless Indian strip malls and housing developments. Whenever I go back, I feel what people in Arizona talk about: a sense of loss and anomie and disbelief that anyone can eat food that spicy.”

I hear: The good news for me, the kind of white person I am, is that when I was a kid, and the Indians were smartest, I could play nerdy computer games with them and eat food cause I’m adventurous like that, but then, it got out of hand. They’re everywhere. I get the racist fear of white Arizonans, the way they see this as a white country, their country, cause I feel the same way.

“To figure out why it bothered me so much, I talked to a friend of mine from high school, Jun Choi, who just finished a term as mayor of Edison. Choi said that part of what I don’t like about the new Edison is the reduction of wealth, which probably would have been worse without the arrival of so many Indians, many of whom, fittingly for a town called Edison, are inventors and engineers. And no place is immune to change. In the 11 years I lived in Manhattan’s Chelsea district, that area transformed from a place with gangs and hookers to a place with gays and transvestite hookers to a place with artists and no hookers to a place with rich families and, I’m guessing, mistresses who live a lot like hookers. As Choi pointed out, I was a participant in at least one of those changes. We left it at that.”

I hear: My friend, the ex-Mayor told me to see the silver lining in the brown cloud. My town would be in dire financial straits if the Indians didn’t come and save it to some degree with their financial investments. I get it…kinda…I live in Chelsea (which means to some that I’m coolish and not definable).

“Unlike previous waves of immigrants, who couldn’t fly home or Skype with relatives, Edison’s first Indian generation didn’t quickly assimilate (and give their kids Western names). But if you look at the current Facebook photos of students at my old high school, J.P. Stevens, which would be very creepy of you, you’ll see that, 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. In fact, they are called Guindians. Their assimilation is so wonderfully American that if the Statue of Liberty could shed a tear, she would. Because of the amount of cologne they wear.”

I hear: To explain further, these Indians won’t assimilate like the ones that came before them. Wtf? They’re supposed to pretend…even if we all know we don’t like them and won’t actually accept them.  But, I take some solace in the fact that they are at least trying to copy someone here…even if they’re Guidos. I understand Guidos and am comfortable with their socio-economic status and rung on the American ladder. That makes me feel better. But, those Indians should shower more.

What I read I’d expect to literally hear coming out of Andrew Dice Clay’s mouth in a stand-up routine. A routine based on seriously fucked up racist shit that other racists think is funny. In a club. A club I don’t want to go to. Why was this published in TIME Magazine?  Again, seems to me to lend validity to racism as a legitimate point of view, not the ugly “I hate people that are different from me…I’m afraid of them and I want to keep this country and all of its rights solely for us” thing that it truly is.

TIME, as you can see below, sent regret.  Joel Stein’s stomach hurts. And, I see you both.

TIME responds: We sincerely regret that any of our readers were upset by Joel Stein’s recent humor column “My Own Private India.” It was in no way intended to cause offense.

Joel Stein responds: I truly feel stomach-sick that I hurt so many people. I was trying to explain how, as someone who believes that immigration has enriched American life and my hometown in particular, I was shocked that I could feel a tiny bit uncomfortable with my changing town when I went to visit it. If we could understand that reaction, we’d be better equipped to debate people on the other side of the immigration issue.