Beijing and Mumbai - America's new bogeymen?

When Obama tells students in Tennessee , “You’re competing against young people in Beijing and Mumbai,” there’s good news and bad news.

Here’s the good news for India. America doesn’t just see India through just the Indo-Pak lens anymore. It’s upgraded it to India-China instead.

The bad news is Obama might be inadvertently constructing, in a recession-riddled America, the new bogeymen. Study hard. The Chinese are coming. The Indians are coming. Add to this the new Pew Forum finding that Hindus are only second to Jews when it comes to moneymaking and degree earning.

[caption id=“attachment_11312” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Obama brings up Mumbai and China as points of inspiration.Getty Images”] [/caption]

Actually the bogeyman is an old one. The United States has seen its share of horrific Asian exclusion laws for years. The Angel Island immigration station in the San Francisco Bay was built specifically to keep Asian immigrants out in the early 20th century. At that time poor Punjabi farmers displaced by Britain’s agricultural policy were heading to America in droves. “Uncle Sam’s Domain” was becoming the “Sikh’s Mecca” complained the San Francisco Call. The Asiatic Exclusion League launched a recall campaign against Hart Hyatt North, the Commissioner-General of Immigration, for not being aggressive enough in halting the “Hindu invasion”. The League nicknamed Hyatt North “Sahib North”.

“South Asians had the highest exclusion rates,” says Judy Yung, co-author of Angel Island - Immigrant Gateway to America. “At least 66 percent.” Indians were stopped for all kinds of reasons - poor physique; hookworm; not having a job and thus liable to become a public charge; having a job, in which case they were suspected of being contract labour.

That might have been over 100 years ago. But that fear, that fault line always lies dangerously close to the surface in American political rhetoric. These are old ghosts that have haunted America for all its history. In her book Driven Out!, Jean Pfaelzer describes how Chinese immigrants were hounded out of California and the Pacific Northwest. Racist doggerels about “John Chinaman” appeared all over the state. Signs appeared on wooden posts: “ANY CHINESE SEEN ON THE STREET AFTER THREE O’CLOCK TODAY WILL BE HUNG TO THIS GALLOWS.“Charles McGlashan, editor of The Truckee Republican ran a daily column called ‘Boycott the Traitors’. His strategy was simple - publicly shame every white businessman who employed Chinese labour. “Let (mothers) teach the little ones to abhor a Chinaman and his upholder,” warned McGlashan. “Let the little fingers be pointed at them, and the first words that fall from their baby lips be ‘Shame, you China lover’.”

No one can accuse Obama of being cut from that same cloth. Obama, with his mixed pedigree and globe-trotting upbringing is probably the most cosmopolitan president America has ever had. I have read he carries with him a little Hanuman icon. When he presided over the White House Diwali function, the first American president to ever do so, I learned more about Diwali from his speech than I did growing up in India. And the pronunciation was not bad either.

In acknowledging Mumbai and Beijing, Obama was paying them respect. He was trying to challenge and inspire his audience. It’s not the first time he has done that. In his State of the Union address earlier this year, he mentioned China four times.

• Meanwhile, nations like China and India realised that with some changes of their own, they could compete in this new world.

• Just recently, China became the home to the world’s largest private solar research facility, and the world’s fastest computer.

• China is building faster trains and newer airports. Meanwhile, when our own engineers graded our nation’s infrastructure, they gave us a “D”.

• Recently, we signed agreements with India and China that will support more than 250,000 jobs here in the United States.

China and India, he warned, have “started educating their children earlier and longer, with greater emphasis on math and science”. As America ramps up for the 2012 presidential campaign, these compliments can become a double-edged sword. Come election time, India becomes the new global, back office vacuum cleaner sucking up American jobs. Offshore outsourcing has become a dirty word in American politics, a litmus test for every Indian American candidate.

In the 2010 midterm elections, Raj Goyle ran for Congress from Kansas. Goyle, born and raised in Wichita, Kansas is about as all-American as they come. He wore the number 67 jersey in his high school football team. He played the trombone. His best friends are from second grade and fourth grade. On the campaign trail he had to face questions about his views on outsourcing. He campaigned hard to fight the outsourcing of Kansas jobs. Across the country, Ami Bera running for congress from California had to keep reiterating, “We have to keep those jobs here because we have over 12 percent unemployment.” Both lost.

There is always that fine line between Obama’s healthy competition and an out-of-work American’s paranoia. Years ago when Japanese automakers were giving Detroit a run for its money, Vincent Chin learned that the hard way. Chin, a Chinese American was beaten with baseball bats by Ronald Ebens, a Chrysler auto plant superintendent. “It’s because of you little m—–f——s that we’re out of work!” Ebens told Chin. Chin slipped into a coma and died.

Obama brings up Mumbai and China as points of inspiration, a challenge to Americans to excel. The danger is in a country reeling still reeling from a devastating recession, one man’s inspiration can easily become another man’s bogeyman. It’s just that this bogeyman aces math tests.