Is Any Ethnic Group in the U.S. Immune to Racism?

Photo courtesy of https://thetoolkit.wixsite.com/toolkit/black-lives-matter

It’s easy when one is a member of an ethnic group in America to be intimately aware of the challenges that confront the group to which one belongs. For example, a person can be all too aware of the discrimination faced by individual group members and the stereotypes attributed to one’s own racial group.

Given the attention that has been paid to Latino immigrants at the U.S.’ southern border and to DACA recipients, media reports have given our nation disturbing insights into the challenges that many Latinos face.

But, unless a group’s struggles are highlighted by various media outlets and discussed as a local or national issue, many Americans might be unaware of the challenges faced by the various ethnic groups around them and they might not understand the sensitivities that some of them hold. 

This fact was brought to my attention recently during a conversation with one of my neighbors, who is Indian American. The neighbor told me that, a few hours prior to our conversation, he was going to a restaurant with his college-aged son. He dropped his son off at the restaurant and then, intending to join him after he had parked, he drove around the block to find a parking space. Within minutes, his car collided with another car.

The police quickly arrived. The father told me that he called his son on his cell phone to tell him what happened. Standing on the sidewalk at the scene of the accident and facing the direction in which his son was coming, he stood holding his hands behind his back. Upon seeing his father, the son almost collapsed in tears, thinking that his father was handcuffed and being arrested.

In relating the incident, the father said that his son is keenly aware of the Black Lives Movement and of the heartrending experiences that some people of color have had with the police. Since his son saw him standing near several police officers with his hands behind his back, he said that his son feared the worst.

When one thinks of the Black Lives Movement, many people in the U.S. would not necessarily think that it is a movement to which other ethnic groups feel included.

In my latest Talking with Henrietta television show called, Ethnic Media: Who Produces It and Why, one of my guests, Vandana Kumar shares a conversation that she had with one of her twin sons. 

In the conversation, her son told her that she was Indian and he was American.

Seated left to right on the set of  the Talking with Henrietta show on Thursday, November 14, 2019
is Vandana Kumar, Sandy Close, Henrietta J. Burroughs and Diana Ding.

 Kumar’s response to her son might surprise you.

See for yourself what she had to say. You can get more details about this show at www.epatoday.org/tv.html#ethnicmedia and see it on YouTube here.