Member-only story
The Price of Keeping Our Heads Down
Anti-Black racism remains rampant among South Asians, as some of the reactions to vice-presidential hopeful Kamala Harris (who is of Indian and Jamaican heritage) show.
In this YouTube video, a Sikh American lays out eloquently the complicity of South Asians who submit to the “model minority” myth and ignore and participate in anti-Black systemic racism:
“Big Floyd was murdered by police outside of a grocery store,” says Jagmeet “Hoodini” Singh, a Los Angeles-based rapper, as he walks through a convenience store. “See, my uncles also operate grocery stores, liquor stores, mini-marts, and so on. … We became well-educated, well-to-do, and, well, accommodating. We complied with a status quo that keeps telling us that we’re ‘almost there’ but just not quite ‘them enough’ until we shed every last remnant of our heritage. Except, of course, for the ones that can be exploited for a diversity initiative or sold for profit. … We abandoned our homelands and everything we knew to escape poverty, to escape violent conditions, to escape systemic oppression. And this whole time, we remained silent while we watched those very same things happen to a group of people who are just slightly different from ourselves. We no longer have time to keep our heads down. Not now, not ever again.”
