Iyer - We too sing America : South Asian, Arab, Muslim, and Sikh immigrants shape our multiracial future

We Too Sing America

2015 by Deepa Iyer

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Excerpt from I, Too from The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes reprinted by permission of Harold Ober Associates Incorporated.

Copyright 1994 by The Estate of Langston Hughes.

Published in the United States by The New Press, New York, 2015

Distributed by Perseus Distribution

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Iyer, Deepa.

We too sing America: South Asian, Arab, Muslim, and Sikh immigrants shape our multiracial future / Deepa Iyer.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-62097-121-5 (e-book)

1. United StatesRace relations21st century. 2. ImmigrantsUnited StatesSocial conditions21st century. 3. Hate crimesUnited StatesHistory21st century. 4. RacismUnited StatesHistory21st century. 5. XenophobiaUnited StatesHistory21st century. 6. IslamophobiaUnited StatesHistory21st century. I. Title.

E184.A1I94 2015

305.80097309'05dc23 2015020036

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Composition by dix!

This book was set in Fairfield LH

Printed in the United States of America

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

For the next generation of storytellers and community builders

For Amma, my pillar of strength

For Ahilan, my little light

And in memory of Chellam Chandran

Contents

At the age of twelve, I moved with my parents and brother to Louisville, Kentucky, from Kerala, India. Growing up in the South included periods of isolation and confusion during which I became keenly aware of what it meant to be different and how it felt not to belong to either side of the Black or White racial line. When I went to college, also in the South, I took every opportunity to celebrate my cultural background and to press for diversity efforts on campus. Still, I linked race mainly with notions of multiculturalism and inclusion and less with justice and equity. It was only in law school, while working at an immigration clinic, that I began to connect race more concretely with the concept of justiceor the absence of it. When I eventually found my way to Washington, D.C., in the late 1990s, I eagerly joined an emerging cadre of advocates who sought to place Asian Americans in the contemporary struggles for racial and economic justice in our country by supporting voting rights, affirmative action, and humane immigration policies. During the summer of 2001, I joined a burgeoning group of South Asian activists, lawyers, organizers, and service providers at a gathering called Desis Organizing in New York City. We felt as though we were on the cusp of broadening and deepening the movements for racial justice in America.

The events of 9/11 and its immediate aftermath would test our resolve. On 9/11, nineteen terrorists affiliated with Al Qaeda hijacked four airplanes and used them to destroy the World Trade Center in New York City and damage the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C., resulting in the deaths of more than three thousand people. At the time, I was working at the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. I remember standing with my colleagues outside our evacuated office building on the streets of downtown Washington, feeling scared and confused. Later that day, I returned home to my apartment in Arlington, Virginia, located just a few miles from the Pentagon. As plumes of smoke wafted up into the night sky from the damaged Pentagon, I tried to comprehend what had occurred and to account for the whereabouts of friends in New York City and Washington. In the days that followed, I joined Americans around the country to grieve for the innocent lives that had so cruelly been cut short. I felt, as so many did, that everything had changed.

Almost immediately, a double grieving began. The days and weeks after 9/11 brought reports of backlash and incidents of reprisal. The targets included South Asians, Muslims, Arabs, Hindus, Sikhs, and anyone perceived to be from these communities. I passed the first six months after 9/11 in a blur of activity, collaborating with lawyers, organizers, and activists around the country who sought to address the tremendous needs that emerged seemingly overnight. I worked with colleagues at the Department of Justice to inform people of their civil rights in the face of discrimination and with a group of dedicated South Asians to shape a national community-based nonprofit organization called South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT).

A few years later, as the executive director of SAALT, I had the privilege of getting to know and work with many of the people who appear in these pages as we weathered one crisis moment after another, from those initial days after 9/11 to the Park51 community center controversy nine years later to the Oak Creek gurdwara massacre in 2012. We responded to the complex needs of community members experiencing unprecedented levels of violence, detentions and deportations, and racial and religious profiling. We pushed back on negative media coverage and political rhetoric that fueled Islamophobia and xenophobia. We built organizations that had not existed prior to 9/11 and began to develop deeper connections with Black and Latino groups.

The decade and a half since 9/11 has fundamentally altered South Asian, Arab, Muslim, and Sikh immigrant communities in the United States. Yet we continue to hear sanitized histories of post-9/11 America that all too often neglect their experiences. Young people, including many of my students at the University of Marylandwho were first or second graders when 9/11 occurredhave learned incomplete histories of this time period. This book contributes narratives, anecdotes, and analyses to provide a more comprehensive understanding of post-9/11 America.

It does not provide an all-encompassing representation of post-9/11 America, however. The book provides only a snapshot of the many government actions and incidents of discrimination and hate violence that have targeted community members over the past decade and a half. It also uses terminology that is still in the process of evolution. For example, the collective identities of South Asian or Arab used in this book do not adequately reflect the unique experiences of specific faith or national origin groups that may comprise those categories, such as Hindus or Christians. Additionally, there are issues outside the scope of what I address herethe experiences of Black Muslims and the impact of U.S. foreign policy toward South Asia and the Middle East on communities in America, for examplethat warrant deeper research and analysis. I wrote this book keenly aware of these limitations, as well as with my own. I recognize that my life experiencesinfluenced by caste, class, language, and cis-gender privilege, to name only a fewdiffer in significant ways from those of the young people who are featured in this book. As such, my rendering of their stories is imperfect and inexact, and any shortcomings are mine alone.