Among fried Indian samosas and chocolate chip cookies, the South Asian Political Forum "Sangam" hosted a seminar to discuss South-Asian American hate crimes.
The discussion focused on two recent radio clips from Philadelphia's Power99-FM and New York City's Hot97.
Power99 recently aired a clip which included the verbal abuse of an Indian women.
Hot97 ran its "Tsunami Song," mocking the South Asian victims, while using racial slurs.
Hilal Nakiboglu, a graduate student studying higher education management, led the discussion and explained her surprise upon learning the two disc jockeys were black. She described the former support and kinship experienced between South Asians and blacks in the 1940s, citing a correspondence between racial leaders W.E.B. DuBois and Mahatma Gandhi.
"How do we make sense of this?" Nakiboglu said.
She then described President John F. Kennedy's movement to loosen immigration laws for South Asians in the 1960s. He hoped to obtain highly trained individuals to fill a shortage of doctors and scientists in the United States.
"This started the 'Model Minority' myth, that all Asians are doctors" College freshman Saken Kulkarni said. "They don't realize that 10 to 11 percent of Asian-Americans live in poverty."
College senior and Sangam board member Megha Narayan described a "weird competition of oppression" between races. She said that minorities often feel the need to discuss the prejudices they have suffered in response to those of other minorities.
Nakiboglu explained that the racial divide between Caucasian and blacks is closing due to their mutual discrimination of South Asian-Americans.
She pointed to the increase in hate crimes performed against South Asian-Americans since the terrorist attack as evidence of increased hostility toward the group.
Nakiboglu compared five murders of South Asian-Americans after Sep. 11 to the murder of Matthew Shepherd,who was killed as a result of his homosexuality. "Have we heard their stories?" Nakiboglu said. "Do we know their names?"
Nakiboglu explained that the reason for the wide array of sympathy and interest surrounding Shepherd's crime is that Americans viewed it as a morally inexcusable crime. The hate crimes after Sept. 11 "were seen in the eyes of many as crimes of passion," Nakiboglu said. "They were not as objectable."
In the final minutes of the discussion Nakiboglu asked for solutions to the increase in South Asian American discrimination.
The majority of students felt that there must be a basic level of education about South Asian culture and discrimination in schools.
