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Comment by CodeSheikh | Hacker News Reader

Is the author generalizing other South Asian immigrants as Indian Americans? Or is it factual that Indian-Americans do own 50% of motels in the USA? Because I have seen a lot of Bangladeshis, Pakistanis and even Arabs owning motel businesses across the USA. I am not cleared about this just from reading the article alone.

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> About half the country’s motels are now owned by Indian Americans. A majority of these owners are from Gujarat state’s industrious Patel community, leading them to be jokingly referred to as the Patel Motel Cartel.

They are mostly from one region of India.

Not only loan, but a continuous strong investment from exporters from India who do not move that money back to India. ( Just like Apple or other tech giants are doing. )

I have to wonder if any Gujarati non-Patel Muslims turned up, would they be getting the same handshake loans?

Gujarat is a state in India, where there are a hundred million people or more. A specific tribe of people that happen to have mainly come from Gujarat gave handshake loans to each other, because they are part of the same tribe, and know each other, indirectly or directly. Why would they give handshake loans to just anybody, regardless of their religion or where they came from?

Non-Patel Hindus that are of the same caste as Patels would have a hard time getting Handshake loans. It is really tribal. Within Patels themselves, there are extensive intra-Patel clans.

I know, but I mean there are Muslim Patels too, is what I was driving at.

You wrote “non-Patel Muslims”.

And Patel is just a common name, it doesn’t mean you’re in the same tribe. Especially since in the old days tribes were frequently family oriented and religion was a big part of family.

But tribes keep changing. When everyone was immigrating and desperate, they acted as one and helped each other. Now, the successful ones and 2nd generations americans who can stand on their own have become their own tribe. They’re not going to reach out to their 2nd cousins who are poor and don’t know English well.

Now there are new tribes, mostly split along socioeconomic and education lines, regardless of religion.

Yes I did, implying that Patel Muslims might be given the benefit of the doubt, but non Hindus to boot wouldn’t.

They would not be part of the clan back in India, and would not be part of the clan here.

A NYTimes article from 1999 says it specifically Gujarati Indians, or those with the surname Patel.

https://www.nytimes.com/1999/07/04/magazine/a-patel-motel-ca...

Yes, 60% of motels are owned by Indians, and 1/3 of those (so 20% of total motels) have the surname Patel.

I think it safe to say they mean "Indian American" in a racial rather than national context, akin to "African American". So I'd take it to include people who have ethnic ties to the entire Indian subcontinent, including Pakistan and Bangladesh.

As a Canadian who has lived many years in the US, the casual use of racial descriptors still shocks me. I find is very discomforting to be asked my race on forms, to see national news talk about how different ethnic groups feel about this or that.

No, they explicitly mean Indian, even more specifically Gujarati Indians.

indians were categorized as white for govt purposes in the US until the late 70s when they petitioned the government for a census category so they could benefit from affirmative action. same deal as the new MENA category

Indians don't have their own census category now, either. They're officially considered Asian; the census lumps them in with East Asians and Southeast Asians.

1980 Census

This year added several options to the race question, including Vietnamese, Indian (East), Guamanian, Samoan, and re-added Aleut.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_Un...

As an old white american guy, when I read the headline my first thought was Indian = Native American and was thinking it was somehow related to casino resort hotels on reservations but it still wasn't making sense.

On your latter point, absolutely. And the people who make make the biggest effort to categorize people into hyphenated-Americans are the very ones who turn around and accuse people of being some-kinda-phobic or some-sorta-ist if they don't see the world that way.

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