I liked that this article focused on racism very specific to an ethnic group — South Asian Americans — and not a collective whole of racism towards all minority groups. First of all, I think when people hear the term Asian, they think Chinese, Japanese, and maybe Thai, but South Asians are not that. They are from India, Nepal, Pakistan, etc., and they are commonly perceived as terrorists by very ignorant people in this nation. They look like the extremists that conducted 9/11 and so this nation continues to perceive them as dangerous. As I read the article, I actually learned that South Asian Americans have essentially always been recipients of racist tendencies in this country, even before 9/11 happened. I, ignorantly, thought this was only a new concept since then… I should have known better.The article did a beautiful job detailing their inclusion of old articles/artifacts to teach students that racism towards this group of people has been around for centuries.

That said, as I read, the above quote really struck me as 1) odd and 2) true. As we all know, racism against African Americans is unique in this country. They may be perceived as dangerous, but I don’t think the common perception is that they’re “foreign” to us, nor unaccepting of American values. Eastern Asian immigrants may be perceived as foreign in this nation, but not generally unaccepting of American values, and very rarely dangerous. Latinos are another great example. They may be perceived as one or two of the three (foreign, dangerous, or unaccepting of American values), but not all three at once, and that’s what makes racism against South Asian Americans so fascinating. Why them? I have to throw the disclaimer out there now that my previous assertions are based on my own experiences of what I’ve heard and seen from people around me. You may have a completely different take, but for the purpose of my argument, we’ll go with it. The article details, and I agree it must be a significant contributing factor, that South Asians’ religion seems to play a huge role in our perception of them. We categorize them all as Muslim, therefore unaccepting of American values, but they’re not all Muslim. In fact, their religion is as diverse as them and the countries they originate from and, I might add, being Muslim does not imply in anyway to be unaccepting of American values. I have no clue how to even begin tackling such a complex dilemma of misinformation, like where does one even begin? That said, I think the writers of this article have begun excellent work and I would be really interested to seeing some of those lessons implemented to gauge students’ take on it. I have a newfound perspective of this issue that I hope to contribute in solving over my years as an educator.