Wounded Civilizations

That haunting question comes right out of one of the blind men feeling an elephant that is the United States, my home.

Have you not heard that "poor, non-college educated whites" is a huge electoral demographic that got us our president Trump ?

Naipaul went to India and experienced the full treatment, because he asked for it by slumming. In Trinidad he was a Hindu Brahmin, and lived the high life among the locals who were not as exalted as he was. And when he moved to the Blighty, he was slighted where the local riff-raff couldn't care for what he knows, the phrases he could coin, but looked at his skin/face and rejected him.

In America it is more expensive to be dark, bearded, and non-white. This doesn't come out of any awe that the coloured people have for the whites. We strive and fight against all manners of behaviors that are against the law.

 

This is a wild assertion !
By the most recent US census, we are still

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Household Income by ancestry[From the US Census]
source: "Median houseland income in the past 12 months (in 2014 inflation-adjusted dollars)".

1. Indian American (2016) : $122,026 [2]
2. Taiwanese American (2016) : $90,221 [3]
3. Filipino American (2016) : $88,745 [2]
4. British American (2016) : $79,872[3]
5. Austrian American (2016) : $78,127[3]
6. Russian American (2016): $77,841[3]
7. Latvian American (2016): $77,636[3]
8. Bulgarian American (2016): $76,861[3]
9. Lithuanian American (2016) : $76,694[3]
10. Israeli American (2016) : $76,584 [3]
11. Slovene American (2016) : $75,940[3]
12. Lebanese American (2016): $75,337[3]
13. Croatian American (2016): $73,991[3]
14. Sri Lankan American: $73,856[3]
15. Scandinavian American (2016): $73,797[3]
16. Chinese American (2016): $73,788[2]
    (including Taiwanese American)
17. Belgian American (2016) : $73,443[3]
18. Chinese American (2016): $72,827[2]
    (excluding Taiwanese American)
19. Swiss American (2016) : $72,823[3]
20. Iranian American (2016) : $72,733[3]
21. Italian American (2016) : $72,586[3]
22. Ukrainian American (2016): $72,449 [3]
23. Romanian American (2016): $72,381[3]
24. Greek American (2016): $72,291[3]
25. Scottish American (2016): $71,925[3]
26. Danish American (2016) : $71,550[3]
27. Swedish American (2016): $71,217 [3]
28. Polish American (2016): $71,172[3]
29. Slavic American (2016) : $71,163[3]
30. Norwegian American (2016): $71,142[3]
31. Canadian American (2016) : $70,809[3]
32. Welsh American (2016): $70,351[3]
33. Japanese American : $70,261[4]
34. Czech American (2016) : $70,454[3]
35. Czechslovakian American (2016) : $70,084[3]
36. Finnish American (2016) : $70,045[3]
37. Serbian American (2016) : $70,028[3]
38. Hungarian American (2016): $69,515[3]
39. French Canadian American (2016) : $68,075[3]
40. Portuguese American (2016): $67,807[3]
41. Vietnamese American : $67,800[5]
    (excluding Foreign Born)
42. English American (2016) : $67,663[3]
43. Slovak American (2016) : $67,471[3]
44. Armenian American (2016): $67,450[3]
45. German American (2016): $67,306[3]
46. Korean American : $66,737[2]
47. Irish American (2016) : $66,688[3]
48. Ghanaian American (2016): $66,571[3]
49. Turkish American (2016) : $66,566[3]
50. Palestinian American (2016): $65,170[3]
51. Egyptian American (2016) : $64,728[3]
52. Vietnamese American : $64,191[6]
53. Scotch-Irish American (2016) : $64,187[3]
54. Yugoslavian American (2016) : $63,765[3]
55. Dutch American (2016) : $63,597[3]
56. French American (2016) : $63,471[3]
57. Syrian American (2016): $63,096[3]
58. Pakistani American : $62,848[4][7]
59. Albanian American (2016) : $62,624[3]
60. Indonesian American : $61,943[4]
61. Guyanese American (2016) : $60,968[3]
62. Nigerian American (2016): $60,732[3]
63. British West Indian American (2016): $60,407[3]
64. Vietnamese American : $58,700[8]
    (Foreign Born)
65. Cuban American : $57,000[9]
66. West Indian American : $56,998[3]
67. Arab American (2016): $56,597[3]
68. Brazilian American (2016): $56,151[3]
69. Barbadian American : $56,078[3]
70. Argentine American: $55,000[10]
71. Laotian American : $53,655[4]
72. Thai American : $53,468[4]
73. Cambodian American : $53,359[4]
74. Cajun American : $52,886[3]
75. Jamaican American (2016): $52,669[3]
76. Trinidadian and Tobagonian American : $55,303[3]
77. Moroccan American (2016) : $52,436[3]
78. Peruvian Americans : $52,000[3]
79. American (2016): $51,601[3]
80. Jordanian American (2016): $51,552[3]
81. Pennsylvania German American (2016): $48,955[3]
82. Ecuadorian American : $49,000[3]
83. Hmong American : $48,149[4]
84. Colombian American : $48,000[10]
85. Haitian American (2016): $47,990[3]
86. Cape Verdean American (2016) : $47,281[3]
87. Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac American (2016): $44,733[3]
88. Nepali American : $44,677[4]
89. Bangladeshi American : $44,512[4]
90. Afghan American : $43,838[3]
91. Bahamian American : $42,000[3]
92. Ethiopian American (2016) : $41,357[3]
93. Puerto Rican American : $40,000[10]
94. Mexican American : $38,000[10]
95. Burmese American : $35,016[4]
96. Iraqi American (2016) : $32,818[3]
97. Dominican American : $32,300[10]
98. Somali American (2016): $24,185[3]

 

Dear Hari Sir,

I agree 100% with @Amulet. On the contrary, I see the white men and women longing to know more about India and its culture and consistently asking how to plan a trip, places to visit in the holy land. They simulate their visit by mixing with the Indian population in the Temples, social gathering, spiritual meetings, etc.

Be it immigration, tariff fight with the rest of the world, comments such as criminals and rapists, taking away the jobs of average Americans, etc. was never made against any Indian American in the US as they don't cross border illegally, American dependency on India on software maintenance and management, no criminal enterprises are run by any Indian, most Indians' average income being higher than average American income, and Indians work in areas that are not directly in competition with qualified Americans. Wherever, Americans are available in a highly-qualified job that directly competes with Indian jobs, they need more such resources resulting in no rivalry. There are CEOs, Scientists, Engineers, Doctors, some holding high position in the federal government and some are members of the house of representatives in the states as well as federal government.

I don't think Indians living in the US feel inferior to anyone else including Caucasians. There are umpteen number of examples of extraordinary performers in the US that include Preet Bharara, Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, Ro Khanna, Raja Krishnamurti, Kamala Harris and many more. There are many Indian Americans in the federal courts as judges and I won't be surprised if one of them were nominated to the Supreme Court in future. The next generation of Indian Americans born in the US are doing well in many fields in every industry.

Note: Despite party affiliation, every administration has always appreciated Indian population in the US as great contributors to the country and economy as a whole. Frankly, it is the Indian American irrefutable influence in the US resulted in strategic partnership between the US and Indian government.

 

@HariLakhera
you would want to read up on V.S.Naipaul and wonder why he was so pissed off all the time. At pretty much everyone. He has a knack to describe what he sees in objective minutiae, and put it in fine English. In the midst of the #MeToo goings on in the world, I stand somewhat to the side of separating the art from the low-life that created that.

Here is a starting point:
Sir Vidia Naipaul admits his cruelty may have killed wife
Here is an excerpt from the link above:

He is regarded as one of the most sublime novelists of the age and has won both the Booker and the Nobel Prize for Literature.

But in private, Sir Vidia Naipaul, 75, better known as VS Naipaul, tormented his first wife for four decades, visited prostitutes and kept a mistress for 24 years before he suddenly abandoned her to marry yet another woman.

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Sir Vidia's shocking treatment of those closest to him is laid bare in a new biography that suggests he is emotionally immature, selfish and self-pitying*. It also contains the author's own admission that his mental cruelty towards his wife may have killed her.

The disclosures, in the biography by Patrick French and serialised in The Daily Telegraph from tomorrow, are likely to do further harm to a novelist who already has a reputation for arrogance and rudeness that has lost him many friends in the literary world.
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*Highlight is Amulet's. This self-pitying aspect may have been the source of that "wounded civilization" phrase that he had put out.... imagining that all of the colonized people of the world go on to suffer a malaise.

 

After the 1965 Immigration Reform Act, the larger migration of Indians to America happened. The Sikhs of California had been suffering gross human rights injustices (as did the Chinese) prior to that.

Indian-Americans were not on top in household income in the 1970 US Census. However, each decennial census after that, we had been at/close-to the top. This is way before Atari, Apple, and MS-DOS happened. Our people came to graduate schools, went on to occupy university faculty jobs, bought suburban homes, and launched their children into upper middle class lives. The immigration reform act of 1965, coincided with the Civil Rights Legislation passed during the Lyndon Johnson years. And this double boon helped the desi diaspora in America.

America did not take "the wretched refuse" from India. And that resulted in the skewed "successful migrant" stereotype of the Indian-American. The second generation, as well as those who migrated via family-reunification schemes, are not likely to be as clever/driven as the strivers of the first generation, and they might regress the household-income-rank downward to a normal level.

Emma Lazarus Quote from the base of The Statue of Liberty in NYC:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
― Emma Lazarus​