By Nathan Reddy, Community Works Institute
Paulo Freire said any situation that denies humanity is one of violence, so it stands to reason that Indian American parents are committing violence against their own. Take one look at TIME’s 2020, and first, “kid of the year.” Her name is Gitanjali Rao, and she’s, of course, a tech wiz. The contents of the article are not as important as the cover for Indian American parents, who gaze at it and wonder: “why can’t mine be like theirs?” “Theirs” has won a competition, a competition perhaps even more prestigious than the Scripps National Spelling Bee. For this community, there are clear “winners” and “losers,” and God forbid if your child is in the latter.
Let’s interrogate exactly what it means that winning the national spelling bee is so utterly prized in the Indian American community. Paulo Freire bemoaned the educational system known as “banking education,” where factoids are simply “deposited” into the minds of students, devoid of using information as a vehicle for critical thinking. The teacher represents the bearer of all knowledge, and the students represent empty “receptacles.” Their interaction is dehumanizing in that the students represent containers, but studying for spelling doesn’t even have literal human interaction, since their teacher is the dictionary.
The Spelling Bee is simply a microcosm for the way education has been largely conceptualized and institutionalized, and Indian Americans are now the community that has most succumbed to this definition of education. What does this produce? Well, doctors, lawyers, philanthropic businessmen and businesswomen, all of whom are ensconced in their specialized knowledge, protected on all sides from actual environmental stimulation that induces the practice of critical thinking. What we have left, then, is an army of professionals who are lauded as exceptional model minorities, precisely because they have done exactly what they were supposed to do. Achieve maximum “success” as the system allows, and don’t question anything that may even remotely be deemed wrong.
And what is wrong? Apparently, nothing. Even Indian Americans would agree that they have the least racism applied to them among all minorities in the United States, and some may even boast that their ability to “work hard” is what propelled them to “success,” a slight against all other minorities, at least all non-Asian minorities. However, as I have explained, there is entrenched systemic racism against Indian Americans in which we are funneled into certain paths as a result of complex immigration laws that have allowed us to capitalize on the system and become its foremost representatives.
Why do I insist on putting “success” in quotation marks? Because there are many definitions of success, and the one prized by Indian Americans is the least resistant path. No one would say the path towards becoming a doctor isn’t filled with hardships, but for Indian American children, the truth is it is the path of least resistance when love from the people who should love you no matter what is conditional on your MD. We all need love to survive, in fact, Muhammad, the Buddha and Jesus command us to love each other, and yet, us common folk have setup barriers against that.
The Dalai Lama asks us to completely take “success” out of the equation, and instead asks us to nurture more healers. We don’t need more “successful” people in this world. In this truly dark age, what we need are people that can build bridges across tensions, and resultingly create coalitions to fight against injustice. People who don’t participate in the false generosity of philanthropy, but fully and directly immerse themselves in the humanism of working with, not for or on the people. That is who we need; people who excel in the vocation of becoming fully human, not automatons outputting the desires of their parents, desires born out of programmed dreams.
Freire would condemn spelling bees as a practice, as they represent the culture of silence more than anything else. An activity that can distract people from the problems of society by drowning them in fierce competition against fellow human beings telecasted up to the national level. How different, exactly, is the practice from The Hunger Games? Let kids be kids, and that is, naturally inquisitive beings who are prone to recognize situations of injustice from an early age. Why don’t we nurse that, instead of an outsized, completely irrelevant vocabulary? Ironically, the more words we prescribe our kids, the more voiceless they become. What matters is the words they use, authentic words uttered by a voice that has the potential to transform and heal the world. I don’t plan on having children as of right now, but I implore fellow Indian Americans in my generation who are reading this to not make the same mistakes of our parents. Raise humanist healers, not “successful” humanoids, and in doing so, contribute to making the world a better, more peaceful place.
AsAmNews has Asian America in its heart. We’re an all-volunteer effort of dedicated staff and interns. Check out our new Instagram account. Go to our Twitter feed and Facebook page for more content. Please consider interning, joining our staff, or making a financial contribution to support us.
