Having looked it up the proper term is South Asian, as opposed to Southeast Asian. Learn something new every day!
My point still holds: she is generally considered African American and not Asian or South Asian American because of a combination of two factors:
A) historically American racism held to the “one drop rule” where a single black ancestor is enough to label someone “black”.
B) Harris herself identifies as African American.
Northern Ireland peer Lord John Kilclooney has some thoughts about Harris. First he tweeted this:
Then, when a fairly predictable reaction occurred, he tweeted this:
I guess that settles that. It’s our fault for assuming he meant “the Indian” in a racist way.
That’s hilarious. And in later tweets, he tries to be holier-than-thou, “Why do many media commentators then describe her as a black person - that is pure racism!!”
Edited to add, by way of defense, he said he has two Indian tenants in his flats, as if to say, “I can’t be racist; I allow them to live in the flats I let.”
‘Indian’ tends to be pretty ambiguous of a word. If I heard someone was Indian, and had no other context, it could mean one of three things in my mind:
Ignoring the third one, since it doesn’t apply in other cases, other nationalities don’t necessarily work the same way. If you told me someone was Kenyan, English, or Russian, I would assume they themselves were born in the relevant country. Chinese seems to work more like Indian. You could - and someone probably has - write a dissertation about what this means for identity, race, and ‘otherness’ in American society.
Obama only half-fulfilled this!
In fairness, you have to be American to find out the VP’s name.
Yes, if she were being described as African-American and South Asian (or Indian), that would seem more parallel. Or Black and Asian. What I’m asking, apparently not as well as I’d intended, is to tease out the different valences of the meaning of the terms being used to describe her. I don’t know how she describes herself; my family was struck by the ways she was described by interviewees and commentators on election night, so I said I’d ask what Dopers think about it.
But what if the next candidate is actually half-Mayan? Is that a twofer?
That’s an amusing typo there, given the subject being discussed.
How about “Black and Desi”?
For one thing, there seems to be disagreement over whether that’s offensive.
(Yes, the complainant was also of Indian ancestry, before anybody jumps to conclusions. It may well depend on where in India the word’s being used.)
For another, I suspect many people in the USA don’t know what it means.
My impression is that the word is the Subcontinent’s equivalent of “Latino/Latina”, and like it, was largely unknown to the rest of the world until recently.
Obama has made himself at home in every community he’s found himself in. To the nerds, he’s a nerd. To the jocks, he’s a jock. Heck, he managed to present himself as more Irish than a guy whose name starts with “Mc”. That skill is part of why he’s been so successful in politics.
O’Bama?
i have the march pin from the obama campaign that does have the above spelling on a shamrock.
Obama identifies as Black, rather than simply being called Black. He grew up as a Black American with that shared experience. The fact that half his genes are Caucasian is incidental.
And if he tried to identify as white, how would that have gone over in 1950s America, 1960s America, 1970s, America, 1980s America, 1990s America, through today?