“Illegal Immigration”? How the Bengazi Added to Our Cultural Mix Before the Civil Rights Act

One of the biggest lies told you in school is about “America being the land of opportunity for immigrants”. It’s a lie because before 1965 immigration from non-white parts of the world was illegal. Many of the Chinese who came here to work on the Transcontinental Railroad in the 19th Century, were boxed up and shipped back to China as soon as the railroad was finished.

In terms of “non-whiteness” the Irish were only brought here in the 1840′s through 1870′s because they were cheaper than slaves, and made excellent cannon fodder during the Civil War. Black folks and Irish competed, and often worked for and on the same low paying dirty jobs, from digging coal mines, to ditch digging. That competition was sometimes not friendly – as demonstrated in the New York City Draft Riots during the Civil War, and later during the early Labor Union period of the 1900′s. But there is a pretty rich history between the two groups, certainly not all antagonistic.

South Asia was particularly singled out by American Immigration authorities, which is why few South Asians can trace their history in the US back more than 50 years. But some Indians and what would later become Pakistanis did come here nearly 150 years ago. They stayed here, they married, and raised families. A fascinating book (next on my loyal Kindle) uncovers this previously unknown and ignored bit of history…

The Bengazi in Harlem. A group of largely Muslim South Asian immigrants and their African-American and Puerto Rican Wives at a  1952 banquet at New York’s Pakistan League of America.

Bengali Harlem: Author documents a lost history of immigration in America

In the next few weeks, Fatima Shaik, an African-American, Christian woman, will travel “home” from New York to Kolkata, India.

It will be a journey steeped in a history that has remained unknown until the publication last month of a revelatory book by Vivek Bald. And it will be a journey of contemplation as Shaik, 60, meets for the first time ancestors with whom she has little in common.

“I want to go back because I want to find some sort of closure for my family, said Shaik, an author and scholar of the Afro-Creole experience.

That Americans like Shaik, who identify as black, are linked by blood to a people on the Indian subcontinent seems, at first, improbable.

South Asian immigration boomed in this country after the passage of landmark immigration legislation in 1965. But long before that, there were smaller waves of new Americans who hailed from India under the British Empire.

The first group, to which Shaik’s grandfather, Shaik Mohamed Musa, belonged, consisted of peddlers who came to these shores in the 1890s, according to Bald. They sold embroidered silks and cottons and other “exotic” wares from the East on the boardwalks of Asbury Park and Atlantic City, New Jersey. They eventually made their way south to cities like New Orleans and Atlanta and even farther to Central America.

The second wave came in the 1920s and ‘30s. They were seamen, some merchant marines.

Most were Muslim men from what was then the Indian province of Bengal and in many ways, they were the opposite of the stereotype of today’s well-heeled, highly educated South Asians.

South Asian immigration was illegal then – the 1917 Immigration Act barred all idiots, imbeciles, criminals and people from the “Asiatic Barred Zone.”

The Bengalis got off ships with little to their name.

Attack of the Arachnids – Indian Village Overrun By Poisonous Spiders

Wow – this one is like something out of a 80′s horror movie. For reasons unknown, villages in part of India have been swarmed by a previously unknown type of Tarantula…

Mysterious Poisonous Spiders Invade Indian Town

Swarms of never-before-seen spiders descended upon a cultural festival in the northeastern Indian town of Sadiya last month, biting several people and leaving two dead. The arachnid “invasion,” as the Times of India called it, caused a panic among festival-goers who reportedly jostled one another and tripped over benches in an effort to escape the venomous spiders.

A spider suspected to be a new species of tarantula in Tinsukia, Assam state, India, is shown, May 30, 2012. The hairy spiders were first noticed about a month ago across Tinsukia district’s grassy plains and dense jungle forests north of the Brahmaputra River.

Scientists from Dibrugarh University and Gauhati University have not been able to identify the spiders, which resemble tarantulas but may be a new species altogether. Ratul Rajkhowa, a professor of zoology at Cotton College in the city of Guwahati, told the Times that the spiders could be black wishbones, a species native to Southern Australia. If that’s the case, the spiders’ venom would not be deadly but could, in some individuals, cause severe allergic reactions that may result in death. The individuals who died after being bitten by the mysterious spiders were reportedly cremated before autopsies could be performed, and scientists have yet to test the toxicity of the spiders’ venom.

The sudden infestation nevertheless remains a concern for both scientists and Sadiya residents, as venomous spiders are not native to India’s Assam region, where the attacks occurred.

British naturalist Vejay K. Singh told the Times that, while swarms of spiders are rare, ”a certain anomaly in conditions may provoke an unusual surge in breeding populations…usually after flooding when the spiders search for dry and higher ground.” Post-flood spider swarms in Australia last March left farmlands blanketed in spiderwebs, while in Pakistan millions of spiders enveloped trees  following last year’s devastating floods.

Specimens of the Sadiya spiders have been sent to the Indian Society of Arachnology in the state of Maharashtra for identification.

Michelle Gets Down in India

The First Lady shows the young girls a move or two in India -

Skin Whiteners and Chin Chillers in India For Men

Vestiges of caste and colonialism…

Vaseline skin-lightening app stirs debate

Vaseline’s new skin-lightening application for Facebook users in India has re-ignited the debate over skin color and perceptions of beauty.

The app, which was launched by Vaseline, invites Indian men to download their profile photos and drag a line across the screen to digitally “Lighten my Skin.”

It is being used to promote Vaseline Men UV Whitening Body Lotion, a new product launched in India in June into an already crowded market for skin-lightening creams.

The Vaseline facebook app

On the Facebook page inviting reviews of the product, users have left a string of angry comments. One wrote: “I wish I could rate this less than 1…racist application. India has the biggest double standards. Imagine the horror and uproar if this were published by a western country.”

Another said he condemned the ad campaign, writing “It is insidious of them to take advantage and make profit out of a bias that unfortunately exists in the Indian society.”

“Honor” Killings in India – At Last Some Justice

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Hang "em High! Village Elders Murdered Couple

Fundamentalism, whether Christian, Islamic, or Hindu remains as one of the biggest threats facing modern civilization. It is the root of some of the most brutal conflicts in our history, and is often used to justify genocide. While Islamic Fundamentalism gets most of the press attention due to terrorist atrocities committed under it’s tutelage – Hindu and Christian fundamentalists aren’t far behind.

In India, Village Councils enforce local religious laws. Not surprisingly, the councils are almost always made up of men, and the most severe punishments are almost always meted out to women. Honor killings are also a feature of Islamic fundamentalism.

Historically, whether a man murders his wife by dousing her in gasoline and setting her afire, or the Village Council murdered teenage girls refusing arraigned marriages by burying them alive hasn’t met with criminal punishment from the courts…

5 sentenced to death in honor killing of Indian couple from same clan

But the marriage was short-lived. Village elders declared the relationship incestuous, a violation of ancient Hindu rules of marriage because the two were descendants of a common ancestor who lived thousands of years ago. As the couple tried to flee town, the young woman’s family chased them down and dragged them out of a bus on a busy highway. The groom, Manoj, was strangled, and his bride, Babli, was forced to drink pesticide. Their bodies were dumped in a canal.

“My son did the honorable thing by marrying the girl he loved. But the village council said the boy and girl belong to the same clan and are siblings. They said the couple had brought dishonor,” said Banwala, sitting on her porch kneading dough. “It has been three years, nobody invites us to marriages or funerals, and no shop sells us groceries.”

Starting Fresh – When the HR Rep Doesn’t Call

One of things you never will hear crossing a politicians lips when talking about unemployment – is the fact that the 10% unemployment numbers include 5 – 7  million of the unemployed are folks who have college degrees, and would be classified as white collar workers. This situation started shortly after the Dot Com bust, where previously highly paid professional people with significant skill sets were thrown out of work, or forced into underemployment by cascading companies.

During the Bushit Administration, these jobs were heavily “outsourced” to China and India. Another “brilliant” idea when you consider those 160,000 programmers in China attempting to Hack into Google, our military systems, and cripple our grids conducting 3 – 5 million attacks a day…

Were trained largely on corporate America’s dime.

Finding a Job by Starting a Business

Last year, more laid-off managers and executives grew tired of waiting for human resources departments to call them back. They took matters into their own hands by starting companies.

Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the outplacement firm, regularly keeps track of 3,000 high-level job seekers in a range of industries. Last year, 8.6 percent of these decided to take the start-up route, compared with 5.1 percent in 2008.

The biggest surge was in the third quarter. The hope is that this momentum “will carry into 2010, since new business development is considered critical to a sustainable recovery,” Challenger stated.

After seven years, only about a third of start-ups are still in business, according to a study in the Monthly Labor Review. Most of these companies fail within in the first few years. So in four years or so, it would be interesting to see how many of these entrepreneurs wish they had waited for that H.R. person to call back.

Bombing Bollywood – Sen Cronyn (R-Tx) Sez We Need the F-22 to Protect Us From… India

Rethugly thinking (if that is what you can call it) gets stranger everyday. In this case – a Republican Senator proposes we need the multi-billion dollar apiece F-22 to protect us from the new, new, new “Axis of evil”…

India, Iran, Russia, and North Korea.

Now, these are the same guys who led this country into invading the ONLY member of the previous “Axis of Evil”, who neither had nuclear weapons, or even a credible ability to build them – Iraq.

Now they want to protect the American way…

And bomb Bollywood.

I mean – there obviously is no greater threat to America than those gorgeous Indian women and handsome Indian men singing and dancing on those music videos!

WITH their clothes on no less!

Welcome Indian brothers to “Giant Negro” status as a brown skinned country seriously making progress.

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