Joel Stein's Own Private India

Time Magazine's former staff writer and sometimes contributor Joel Stein is no stranger to controversy.  He wrote a column last year where he contemplated not having his son circumcised.  That piece started quite a few water cooler conversations that sparked debates from both sides of the issue.  So it should come as no surprise that the July 5th 2010 issue of Time Magazine contained a piece by Stein titled My Own Private India.  If you haven't already read this article, I must warn you before you click on the link that the contents may be offensive, especially if you are of Indian origin.  


In the article Joel Stein talks about how the city where he grew up, Edison NJ is now the home of one of the largest Indian communities in the US.  He expresses a sentiment that I've always suspected some people feel but don't talk about, that sentiment being immigration is all well and good as long as it doesn't happen in their backyard.   Joel Stein is entitled to this opinion.  He is entitled to his shock at his own reaction of how the changes in his hometown are making him feel.  While I do believe that was Stein's intention, I was appalled by the way he chose to express this.  He tries to make a point by joking about how Edison is overrun by Indian stores, restaurants and movie theaters, which is why he believes "there is an entire generation of white children in Edison who have nowhere to learn crime."   I enjoyed this little bit of self-deprecating humor from Stein, but after that the article begins its downturn from being satirical to being incredibly offensive in a hurry.  I cringed when I read Stein talk about how the Indian doctors and engineers "brought over their merchant cousins."  This may have been Stein's idea of a joke, but it wasn't funny at all.  As if that wasn't bad enough, the article continues its descent downhill, gaining momentum in offensiveness, culminating in a statement that implies Indians wear enough cologne to cause the Statue of Liberty to shed a tear.   On the way downhill, Stein makes reference to the racist name given to Indians around the '80s: "Dot-heads".  I don't know if he forgot or simply ignored the fact that along with that racial slur came attacks against the Indian community. He wonders how his townsfolk couldn't come up with a better insult for a group of people whose gods have multiple arms and an elephant nose.  By the time I reached the end of the article, I was ready to slap Stein up side his head and call him an ignorant racist, along with a few expletives I would rather not mention here.  I also wanted to enlighten him to the fact that change is the only constant and if he thought that his hometown was going to stay the same twenty years after he left, he was more ignorant than I thought.


The reaction of Indians both in the US and India is hardly surprising.  A friend of mine wrote a blog in order to educate the likes of Stein about, among other things, the rich cultural heritage that India and her people enjoy.  Indian-American actor Kal Penn who gained fame with his "Harold and Kumar" movies and more recently the TV show "House", wrote a blog for Huffington Post in response.  Penn's blog supposedly prompted Time Magazine to issue a statement regretting that the article offended so many people.  Joel Stein issued an apology saying that he was trying to express his shock at his own reaction of his changing hometown.  I also read somewhere that his apology implied that he was stupid enough to think that Gandhian non-violence would prevail in people's reaction to what he wrote.  I'm not sure if those were his exact words, but that sounds like a back-handed apology if ever I heard one.  In an open letter to Time Magazine, the South Asian Bar Association of New York (“SABANY”) has taken exception to the apology from both Time Magazine and Stein himself.  Their contention is that the apology from Time doesn't express regret that the article was published, but rather that the sentiments of Indian people were hurt by it.  I'm not sure what kind of apology SABANY is expecting from Stein, if any.  But I don't know that they are going to get the apology from Time Magazine that they are seeking. C'est la vie.


As disgusted as I was by the article, I think that every Indian and every American of Indian origin has it in themselves to rise above these mere words and not allow themselves or their contribution to the world at large be diminished in any way.  Far be it from me to dictate to anybody what their reaction should be, but if I may I would like to make a suggestion.  We can choose to allow the words of one misinformed person crush our inner spirit, or we can take this opportunity to shine even brighter.  So we didn't get the apology we wanted.  We may never hear the apology we need to hear.  So what?  I am fortunate to live in a country that has adopted me as one of their own.  For every Joel Stein out there, I know people who have shown a tremendous amount of respect for me and are curious to know about my culture, where I come from, and what has made me the person I am today.  I am more than happy to answer their questions and share of myself with them.  When we look past our physical or cultural attributes, we will realize how much the similarities far outweigh the differences between us.


What do you think?