Tag Archive for "south asian"

Posts Tagged south asian

Why These Activists Are Protesting Hindu Nationalism in Trump’s America

On Friday, September 7th, six activists from Chicago South Asians for Justice stood up in the middle of the plenary panel of the World Hindu Congress in Chicago to voice their resistance to the Hindu nationalist political movement currently ascendant in India.

By Meg Sri • 7 years ago

From Kuchibhotla to Kal Penn: How Hate Crimes Build Off Liberal Media

Yesterday, the New Yorker published a stirring article on Being Indian in Trump’s America, a rumination by Amitava Kumar on racial violence, hate crimes and the tensions that come with being South Asian in America. Around the same time, Indian American actor Kal Penn tweeted images of racist scripts offered to him at the beginning of his acting career. The two pieces, juxtaposed together, offer a handy depiction of hate: a dehumanization project that begins with media stereotyping and logically concludes in racist violence.

By Juliana Britto Schwartz • 8 years ago

Daily Feminist Cheat Sheet

On Sunday, 32 people were killed and 100 injured in a car bombing but because it happened in Turkey and not Paris, the global outcry has been lacking.

By Suzanna Bobadilla • 9 years ago

The Feministing Five: Creatrix Tiara

For this week’s Feministing Five, we spoke with Creatrix Tiara, who is a producer, writer, and performer of “Yoni Ki Baat,” an original series of stories by women from the South Asian Diaspora.

By Suzanna Bobadilla • 9 years ago

The Feministing Five: Darkmatter

Janani Balasubramanian and Alok Vaid-Menon make up the incredible trans South Asian art and activist collaboration Darkmatter. Masterfully using humor, language, and rhythm, Darkmatter pushes their audience to reflect and take action on racial justice, anti-colonialism, and gender and sexuality politics. Their spoken performances share stories from their childhoods to conversations during their young adult lives, and they invite you to find the poetry in your own world, relationships, and journey toward social justice.

Excitingly, Darkmatter’s brilliance can also be found within their written poetry, prose, interviews, and tweets (seriously, follow them now). Like their individual work, which has been featured in outlets such as Black Girl Dangerous, Racialicious, The New York Times, and Upworthy, Darkmatter’s ...

By Samhita • 11 years ago

Sherlyn Chopra: The first ever Indian lady to pose nude in Playboy

Sherlyn Chopra is making naked lady history by being the first Indian woman to pose nude for Playboy. And she’s getting a lot of criticism for this–not because she is supporting a misogynist publication that perpetuates ridiculous standards of sexy. No, that’s not why. Instead, she is getting criticism because some people believe she is hurting the view that Indian women should be modest and pure.

Playboy has always had this awkward relationship to feminism. Hefner is a sexist pig that lives off the objectification of women’s bodies and posits nudity as faux-empowerment–since you get paid for it! (He ignores the part where it is a sexist marketplace that believes a women’s greatest asset is that booty which allows for ...

By Samhita • 12 years ago

Sakhi summit: Preventing violence, promoting justice

Rethinking the way that organizers handle sexual assault and domestic violence is not easy work. The tools that are given to us are often tools that can also hurt us, i.e. an over reliance on the criminal justice system. If this week has shown us anything it is that sometimes the criminal justice system can’t be trusted–especially when working with communities of color–so how do we create solutions to violence that don’t simply reproduce violence?

This is the question that is being asked at the first ever Sakhi for South Asian women’s “game-changing” summit:

Preventing Violence, Promoting Justice will provide the opportunity to explore the intersections among domestic violence, immigration, economic justice, philanthropy, health and other related movements for social justice and to ...

By Samhita • 12 years ago

Nikki Haley’s got “white girl” problems

Growing up South Asian in the United States in the last few decades was not exactly awesome if fitting in was central to your identity development. If you grew up in the city, you probably didn’t feel like you belonged to the other more populated immigrant communities around you and if you grew up in the ‘burbs or rural areas there’s a good chance you were one of the only non-white people in your town (like me).

In a country where the diversity model is either you are white or you are added to the diversity salad by claiming a racial and ethnic identity in it’s most “authentic” sense–growing up at a time when there weren’t a lot of South Asians ...