What does South Asian mean?
Labels are fickle, but also salient in your understanding of how you function and navigate in a space. Before my junior year of high school circa 2019, I was called a “brown,” “desi,” and “Indian.” I later learned how these labels can be problematic, and cause the erasure of other experiences. It is important to note that I defined these terms in a specific time period (1990s-present). These roots have further historical roots but for the purpose of my archival project, with the 1990s and 2000s being the central focus, I will speak within that spatiotemporal context. Post 9/11 attacks, the term “brown” became popularized through the New York Police Department’s efforts to detect homegrown threats by attempting to link individuals of (possible) Islamic faith to ethnic proxies (American Civil Liberties Union, 2013). FBI Hate Crime statistics in 2020 showed that hate crimes were mostly racially and ethnically motivated through suspicion of perceived brown bodies (Dépré, 2022; United States Department of Justice, 2021).
It was later revealed in a 2011 investigation that the NYPD and CIA heavily map and surveil dominantly Arab, Asian, and Black American communities in New York (Apuzzo & Goldman, 2011).
Even though these ethnic communities have a commonality of their “brownness” through appearance (i.e., dark skin tone, head coverings), it is harmful to use the term brown as it homogenizes specific historical community experiences (i.e., police brutality, illegal immigration, airport security). Moreover, many first-generation South Asian Americans feel that interchanging the terms “black” and “brown” can obscure the distinct historical struggles faced by Black communities upon their arrival and the experiences of indigenous and Hispanic populations (Venkatraman, 2021).
The term “desi” is also not the most inclusive term. “Desi” became popularized after the song of Desi Girl from the Hindi film Dostana (2008)--for millennials and Generation Z. Early Desi portrayals in the 1990s modeled the patriarchal, rural Indian family. Desi comes from the Sanskrit word desh translating to country. But many American-born South Asians feel like the term makes them unauthentic or delegitimize their identity because they may not read or write in their mother tongue (Zimmer, 2013). Furthermore, there exists contention regarding whether “desi” adequately encapsulates the entirety of South Asian identity. Often perceived as a term predominantly associated with North Indian culture, it perpetuates the misconception that all South Asians are Hindu, fair-skinned, and Hindi-speaking, as depicted in many caricatures within popular television and film depictions.
The term “Indian” typically refers to someone from or with ancestry from India. The most recent points of contention is between the Indian government and ethnic minorities such as Punjabis (dominantly Sikh). The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has been implementing legislation that reflects their Hindutva beliefs. The most recent BJP attack on the Sikhs was the 2020-2021 Indian Farmers’ Protests. In 2020, the BJP passed anti-farmer laws that minimized the prices of crops as a political tactic of putting Sikh farmers out of work (Sarwar & Zafar, 2023). The laws led to an increase in civil disobedience and supported the rising belief that Punjab should be an independent state (Nair & Sambanis, 2019). Therefore, Indian can be an ambiguous term reflecting how people within a nation do not share the same beliefs as their governing party.
In contemporary discourse, the inclusive term for individuals with ancestry from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives, including diasporas in Fiji, Trinidad & Tobago, Guyana, Suriname, and Jamaica, is “South Asian.” It is pivotal to acknowledge the evolving nature of labels for ethnic groups; while there might emerge new terms like “South Asians,” understanding and respecting this evolution is essential.
Reflecting this awareness, I co-founded my high school’s first South Asian Cultural Club (SACC), drawing inspiration from CUNY Hunter College’s South Asian Student Association (SASA). Thus, I eagerly embraced the challenge of exploring how South Asians have established their presence at Poly-NYU.