India’s SMS Hoax Panic: Could It Happen In The U.S.?
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I'm a North Easterner, Manipur to be precise, who moved to Bombay in 1999. In Bangalore (the epicenter of the North East Exodus), since 2011.
I've lived long enough in Bombay, some in Pune and now in Bangalore. Have travelled to almost all of the major cities in India for business and pleasure. Of course, I've faced enough stare, ridicule and the perpetual question, "Are you Indian!". Sometimes, it's fun and you get the 'foreign' treatment (you know the way, we Indians treat foreigners, the good way) on various occasions.
Those non-indian treatment were mostly in established government establishments and mostly by not-so-educated people. I have never had an issue with the educated people, working class people, colleagues and business partners.
In India, most of the tourist destinations have two entry tickets - one for Indians and for 'Foreigners', which is costlier. Me and my family always have to carry an Indian Identity when we enter such spots to prove my "Indianness" and avail of the Indian pricing. Once at the Taj Mahal, me and my wife could not find our ID quickly. Instead of arguing with the person-in-charge, we got the 'foreigner' tickets. Of course, we got the foreigner treatment and were able to skip the long winding "Indian" queue to enter the gates to the Taj Mahal.
As for the SMS hoax and the recent NE Exodus back home, it was fueled by the fact that the North East people have always been kinda alienated by the common Indians who could not understand and fathom that we, the 'Asian' looking people live and thrive in India. Add to that, the miscreants taking chances of a phenomenon and attacking any 'asian' looking people in the cities. So, it was not just those NE people but many Tibetans, Nepalese were at the receiving end.
The incident could have well been evaded but this is India and nobody, specially the people in the governance, care about timely actions and getting things done on time.
Finally, in my personal experience, I get a much better treatment from the American people when I visit the US than here in my own country, India. Except for the immigration officers, nobody cares who or from where the hell am I. With my oriental look and an Indian Origin, I enjoy the company and good treatment specially from both the communities in US. Anyway, everybody else is too scared of lawsuits to have anything to do with racial profiling. :-)
As a parting note, here is a nice article about the perception of the general Indian towards the North Easterners. http://www.indianexpress.com/news/national-interest-we-the-i...
Birthers think that all Blacks/African-Americans were born in Indonesia?
[To be clear, I am neither supporting nor refuting the GP's claim that the birthers are racist.]
The claim was that racism explains why birthers think that Obama was born in Indonesia.
Racism supposedly means "ascribing attributes to individual/group based on their skin color/ethnicity".
How are you defining racism such that Birthers believe that Obama was born in Indonesia because of racism/their beliefs about Black people but don't believe that other Black people were born in Indonesia?
In terms of actual usage, "racism" is basically code for "I'm a good person, we disagree, therefore you're a bad person".
I remember that days after 911 there were some fake/spam emails that where forwarded around that claimed that more attacks where eminent, including at malls and other public areas. These were immediately debunk and people went about their business.
Unless there was a really coordinated campaign that used multiple media platforms to reinforce the message....