Indian American

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An Indian American is an American by residence or citizenship who has ancestry originating in the Indian subregion of South Asia. Many Indian Americans were born in India and immigrated to the United States while many were born in the United States and have Indian ancestry.

Numbering around 2 million, Indian Americans account for about 0.6% of the total population of the United States. Indian Americans are the largest subgroup of South Asian Americans, and the third-largest subgroup of Asian Americans, after Chinese Americans and Filipino Americans. Many Indian Americans specialize in the fields of computers and medicine, while many others are engineers or other specialists.

The U.S. Congress passed a resolution on April 26, 2005, (House Resolution 227) to honor the Indian American community and Indian Institutes of Technology graduates [1]. Many individuals, particularly those in the fields of medicine and technology, consider Indian Americans to be the epitome of the model minority. Indeed, according to the U.S. Census Indian Americans have the highest median income of any ethnic group in the U.S. ($60,093). In addition, Merrill Lynch recently revealed that there are nearly 200,000 Indian American millionaires. According to the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin, there are close to 41,000 Indian American doctors.

Demographic and cultural profile

Like the terms "Asian American" or "South Asian American", the term "Indian American" is also an umbrella label applying to a huge mosaic of cultures, and people of widely varying socioeconomic status, education, place of residence, generation, views, values, lifestyles, and appearance. While statistics below describe general trends, no attempts can fully portray the diversity of the community.

Indian Americans tend to be very well educated; many are doctors, engineers, and IT experts. Indian Americans are also very well represented as small business owners, hotel owners, and taxi cab drivers [2]. Many Indian Americans have chosen to fully embrace their American identity, identifying themselves as simply "American".

Settlement

The states with the largest Indian American populations are California, New York, and New Jersey. However, there are large Indian populations in Michigan, Texas, Illinois, Florida, and Pennsylvania as well. The metropolitan areas with the largest Indian American populations are New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Philadelphia. [3].

Since many Indian immigrants come to the US to do their Graduate schooling, Indian populations often center around academic centers.

In contrast to immigrants from East Asia, who tend to be concentrated in California and other areas near the Pacific coast, Indian Americans are more evenly distributed throughout the country.

Languages

Indian Americans often keep hold of their native Indian tongues, whether it be Hindi, Punjabi, Gujarati, Bengali, Oriya, Telugu, Marathi, Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada, Urdu, Kashmiri, or any of the other plethora of Indian languages. As a legacy of British colonial rule over India, immigrants from India are generally fluent in English.

Community-oriented businesses

There are many Indian markets and stores in United States. Some of biggest Indian markets are in Chicago, New York City, the Philadelphia Metro, and Houston.

Cultural establishments

There are many Hindu temples across the United States. ISKCON and Chinmaya Mission are established in the U.S. Vivekananda brought Hinduism to the West. Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains, Muslims, and Christians from the subcontinent have also established their religions in the country.

See Also

Entertainment

There are Hindi radio stations in areas with a high Indian populations. Several Indian movies have been in the top 20 at the U.S. box office during their opening weeks, despite playing in only a fraction of the theaters that Hollywood movies premiere in. The Asian Variety Show usually airs on public television and caters to the Indian American audience.

Several cable and satellite providers offer Indian channels: StarTV, ZeeTV and Gemini. Others have offered Indian content for subscription, such as when India played Australia for the Cricket World Cup in 2003

History and immigration

Timeline

Classification

In the late 19th and early 20th century, due to the originally negligible population of Asian-Indian Americans, the U.S. government did not officially classify Indians as being of any particular race. From 1910 to 1920, anthropologists deemed Indians as Caucasian and several courts deemed Indians as white and a few as not white. However, starting from 1923, the official judicial stance has been to classify Indians as Asian. Below is the case history of judicial racial classification of Indians. [5]

  • 1909 In re Balsara, Indians are probably not White - rationale: congressional intent
  • 1910 U.S. v. Dolla, Indians are White - rationale: ocular inspection of skin
  • 1910 U.S. v. Balsara, Indians are White - rationale: scientific evidence, congressional intent
  • 1913 In re Akhay Kumar Mozumdar, Indians are White - rationale: legal precedent
  • 1917 In re Sadar Bhagwab Singh, Indians are not White - rationale: common knowledge, congressional intent
  • 1919 In re Mohan Singh, Indians are White - rationale: scientific evidence, legal precedent
  • 1920 In re Thind, Indians are White - rationale: legal precedence
  • 1923 U.S. v. Thind, Indians are not White - rationale: common knowledge, congressional intent
  • 1923 U.S. v. Akhay Kumar Mozumdar, Indians are not White - rationale: legal precedent
  • 1925 U.S. v. Ali, Punjabis (Indian or Arabian) are not White - rationale: common knowledge
  • 1928 U.S. v. Gokhale, Indians are not White - rationale: legal precedent
  • 1939 Wadia v. U.S., Indians are not White - rationale: common knowledge
  • 1942 Kharaiti Ram Samras v. U.S., Indians are not White - rationale: legal precedent

The crucial 1923 Supreme Court case United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind created the official stance to classify Indians as non-white, which at the time retroactively stripped Indians of citizenship and land rights. While the decision was placating racist AEL (Asiatic Exclusion League) demand, spurned by growing outrage at the Turban Tide / Hindoo Invasion (sic) alongside the pre-existing outrage at the Yellow Peril, and while more recent legislation influenced by the civil-rights movement has removed much of the statutory discrimination against Asians, no case has overturned this 1923 classification. Hence, this classification remains and is still relevent today because many laws and quotas are race-based. Thus, Asian Indians are counted as Asian when tallying the Asian quota of University of California schools, as well as when tallying minorities to ensure large corporations are diverse. Some Indians prefer to select a choice other than Asian on forms which ask for a "self-described" racial identity with limited selection. Increasingly, many of these forms explicitly mention "Asian (including the Indian Subcontinent)" to reduce doubts.

Interestingly, amid a sea of zealous prosecutors working to denaturalize Indian Americans, some clerks either in protest or in naivete continued to process citizenship requests made by Indian Americans in the period when Indians were deemed unassimilable. Bhagat Singh Thind himself, after being stripped of citizenship in 1923 by the Supreme Court, was awarded citizenship by a clerk in New York a few years later. Further marking a certain lack of unity between the governmental organizations, the U.S. Census Bureau has changed over the years its own classification of Indians. In 1930 and 1940, Indian Americans were a separate category, Hindu, and in 1950 and 1960, they were classified as Other Race, and in 1970, they were classified as White. Since 1980, Indian Americans have been called Asian Indian, a subcategory under the Asian category. ([6] - see footnote 6)

While judicial racial categorization of Indians has stayed the same since 1923, anthropology has advanced. In the past, it was determined merely visually that the Indian Subcontinent was “Caucasian” while the Far East and Southeast Asia was visually determined to be “Mongoloid”. We have come a long way. All populations of the world have been mapped genetically in clines which are like gradations of genetic distance. These new genetic distance maps, however, place the Indian Subcontinent and the Far East as closer genetic relatives than the Far East and Southeast Asians, contrary to popular perception. Genetically there are no distinct races, so categorization seems moot. Unfortunately, the legacy of racial categorization remains.

See Also

Current Social Issues

Disunity

Indian Americans have not had a unified voice in the American political system as the population is widely dispersed among various regional community groups like Punjabis, Gujaratis, Bengalis, Telugus, Tamils and others, all of whom have their own languages, cultures, and traditions.

Also, many Indian-Americans are extremely wealthy, and thus tend to vote Republican, while others identify as minorities and tend to vote Democrat. This, in turn has lessened the effectiveness of lobbying for Indian-American causes.

Discrimination

Since September 11, there were scattered incidents of Indian Americans having been mistaken targets for hate crimes. In one example, a Sikh at an Arizona gas station was murdered by an White Supremacist for being mistaken for an Arab because he wore a turban. There were numerous other examples of violence against the Indian American community where they were mistaken for being "Middle Eastern" or "Arab".

While violent incidents are rare, de jour racism continues to be a problem for Indian-Americans. Especially since the concurrent rise of the Indian services market and the fall of the American economy, people have clamored about outsourcing, and Indian-Americans have felt the effects of this bitterness.

Immigration

Indians are among the largest ethnic groups migrating to the USA legally. Immigration of Indian Americans has taken place in many waves since the first Indian-American came to the United States in the 1700s. A major wave of immigration to California from the soon-to-be Indian state of Punjab and vicinity took place in the first decade of the 20th century, from around 1900-1910. Immigration from India has taken place in several waves throughout American history with one major wave taking place in the 1950s.

Media Portrayal

Image:Dilbert IIT1.gif
Image:Dilbert IIT2.gif

There are many positive stereotypes about Indian Americans, one example of which has recently been publicized in the famous cartoon strip Dilbert by Scott Adams, with a character named Asok a graduate from one of the Indian Institutes of Technology. On the other hand Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, a character on Simpsons is a satirical, stereotypical portrayal of the Indian community.

See external link for a comparative media portrayal: [7]

Assimilation

Assimilation has traditionally been less of a problem than for many other immigrant groups. Indian immigrants tend to have good English skills due to their typically coming from the more prosperous, educated backgrounds in India.

Marriage

Indian Americans are generally more conservative than many groups, but they are known to sometimes marry outside their community as well. The rate of marrying members of other ethnicites is generally lower than that of other ethnic groups because many Indian Americans are more recent immigrants who are always more endogamous.

Politics

Indians are starting to make headway in American politics. Examples include Bobby Jindal, a Republican Congressman from Louisiana and Satveer Chaudhury, a State Senator in Minnesota. Dinesh D'Souza is also of Indian origin [8] as well as Democratic congressman Dalip Singh Saund.

Indian Americans as a whole tend to vote in U.S. elections for Democratic candidates. However, because of the number of extremely successful and wealthy Indian professionals and entrepreneurs, there is also a sizable Indian Republican vote.

See also

Books on Indian Americans

Magazines for Indian Americans

Films with Indian American subject matter

External links

Retrieved from "http://en.freepedia.org/Indian_American.html"


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