Introduction
South Asians were the first Asian immigrants to arrive in the United States of America in the 19th century after the discovery of gold in California. The term ‘South Asians’ is a hybrid identity of the current Asian immigrants from the seven Asian countries that include Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.
The termis used to bring a diverse population into a common pool of people who share identity through common economic and political history. South Asians got into the United States as a minority people vulnerable to oppressions from the locals based on their race, sexuality, origin, religion, and economic weaknesses. However, over the centuries, the group has gradually resisted oppression to become one of the contemporarymost powerful minority groups in the United States and other western countries.
In addition, it has resisted the hybrid identity to demand individual identity all over the western countries, but mostly in the United States and the United Kingdom. Some scholars argue that South Asian Americans garnered their identity as they resisted economic problems, but this paper holds that inferiority complex fueled the multiple levels of negotiations and resistance of these immigrants to oppression in the United States.
The multiple levels of negotiations and resistance
After their emigration to the West in the 19th century, South Asians were vulnerable to oppression from the locals due to their economic weaknesses and general inferiority complex. South Asians viewed Western countries as land of opportunities, and thus a majority of elite people in the South Asian countries was attracted to the western nations as their countries already had economic downturns.
The emigration of South Asian Americans from their countries is viewed to have been a mass movement of people as western countries received many people who exceeded the demand for labor at the mines and construction sites in the century. In late 19th century, already there was a great population of South Asian Americans that exceeded the demand for labor in the US.
Hence, they felt inferior to the locals, which consequently rendered them submissive to oppression from the westerners. For instance, already many Chinese people had emigrated from China after the country experienced economic depression that rendered many people jobless, and they had already occupied areas where mining and railway constructions sites were located.
Upon their arrival in western economies, the majority of South Asians population was exposed to further economic problems in a foreign land. Hence, in a bid to overcome the economic problems, South Asians were left with no option rather than to seek jobs that locals had shunned, which included the servants’ jobs in the constructions sites, but a few secured vacancies in the railway construction and mining sites as menial workers.
Others started small businesses around the regions where they had occupied. As aforementioned, South Asians’ problems exposed them to oppression from the locals based onsocial, economic, and political status. Socially, Asians were viewed as illiterate as a majority could not access quality education as opposed to the local citizens who had better education. However, a few parents managed to enroll their children in schools where they were exposed to discrimination from their local peers on race, religious, and other social basis.
Hence, South Asians felt the firsthand discrimination experience right from childhood from their peers to adulthood whereby good jobs were reserved for locals and other races that were viewed as more superior to the immigrants (Gupta 143). These compounding elements heightened South Asians’ inferiority complex, and thus they could not accept hybrid identity, as they wanted to stick together without the influence of outsiders.
Religion and cultural values seemed to prompt the locals to discriminate South Asians in western countries. South Asians did not adopt the western cultures upon their immigration (Tarlo 82), but instead they retained their strong cultural values, which enabled them to settle in large numbers at a particular place.
This aspect cemented their resistance to hybrid identity, as they never mingled freely with other cultures. For instance, the Chinese had their own Chinese towns where they displayed their cultural heritage to people of other cultures.
Indians also settled in specific regions where they also practiced their culture and religious believes. The failure to adopt the western culture made them antisocial and locals often viewed them as unwelcoming people.However, South Asians did not accept defeat. On the contrary, they endeavored to fight for their human dignity and identity in the foreign land tirelessly from one generation to another. It was easier for the initial immigrants to suffer the stated oppression than to embrace hybrid identity.
South Asians are truly one of the minority groupings in the United States. Nevertheless, their resistance to adopt western values has made them one of the most powerful racial groups as well. The group mostly entailspeople whose origin is from South Asian countries, though a majority of them is bornin the United States of the third generation of the pioneer South Asian immigrants.
The rising of South Asian dignity has been gradual ever since the immigration of their ancestors in the 19th century during the gold rush and railway construction period. Their ancestors belonged to the demonized minority due to their weak economic and social status as compared to the locals.However, today, their descendants have proved to be the model minority in the land where their ancestors endured great pain of oppression.
In addition to retaining their values over generations, which have played a major role in empowering them, South Asians have become better as compared to people belonging to other races in the western economies and studies shows that they have improved their identity through entrepreneurship. South Asians have grown to be one of the leading entrepreneurs in their areas of settlement, and hence they have employed locals who once discriminated them (Bhavnani 189).
Hence, the locals became accommodative to the South Asians after realizing that they too benefited from what they had to offer. Today, South Asian youths form one of the most admired minority groups in academic institutions as they are perceived to be morally upright and they stick to their values as opposed to other groupings that have adopted modernized culture, hence eroding their morals and values in society. Therefore, South Asians have retained a higher dignity in society as compared to their counterparts.
However, there have been challenges amongst South Asian Americans minority groups where immigrants from certain South Asian countries face oppression from their counterparts. Initially, the term ‘South Asian’ was generally used to refer to immigrants from the seven southern Asian countries. Nowadays, the Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese are also referred to as South Asian immigrants. This aspect has led to divisions of the group where religion and ethnic divisions have been used as a basis for segregation.
Some members often view themselves as more superior to their counterparts, hence oppressing the rest by making them feel weaker. Hence, the battle of supremacy led to the fighting for dignity by some members like Indians who felt left out of the group on an ethnic basis. Others like Bangladesh and Pakistan immigrants felt oppressed on religion basis. These divisions led to the redefinition of the term ‘South Asian’ in order to accommodate all minority groups that formed it by including all South Asian countries in the definition.
Conclusion
Although various ethnic divisions exist in the group, which form the ties that bind the groupas their divisions make them very radical and active in economic matters as they compete against each other. An immigrant American woman from Bangladesh wears Hijab, which makes her appear different from a Korean woman, but both are regarded as South Asian minorities.
Historically, economic and political factors have played a major role in empowering the South Asian Americans ever since their emigration to the US in the19th century when they found few job opportunities after which they had to find their own ways of gaining economic powers. Hence, their zeal to climb the economic ladder surpassed the locals who have lost values to modernization, while South Asians have stuck to theirs.
Therefore, inferiority complex contributed to the strengthened relationships amongst South Asians,as it was the only option to resist oppression and support each other as community, thus enabling them to achieve a common social and economic growth in the western countries. Ultimately, South Asians resisted hybrid identity and lined multiple levels of negotiations courtesy of their brimming inferiority complex in a foreign land more than political and economic factors could have contributed.
Works Cited
Bhavnani, Kum-Kum. “Organic Hybridity or Commodification of Hybridity? Comments on
Mississippi Masala.” Meridians 1.1 (2000): 187-203. Print.
Gupta, Monisha. Unruly Immigrants: Rights, Activism, and Transnational South Asian
Politics in the United States, New York: Duke University Press, 2006. Print.
Tarlo, Emma. Visibly Muslim: Fashion, Politics, Faith, New York: Berg, 2010. Print.