U.S. presidential hopeful's 'done with Indian-American' remark prompts Twitter storm

[prasad1]

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Republican presidential candidate and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal formally announces his campaign …



NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Louisiana Governor and U.S. presidential candidate Bobby Jindal caused a Twitter storm of jokes and insults in India on Thursday after he said he dislikes being called an Indian-American.



Republican Jindal is the first person of Indian origin to join the U.S. presidential race. During his campaign launch on Wednesday, Jindal said he was "done with" descriptions that identified Americans by their origin, ethnicity or wealth.
"We are not Indian-Americans, African-Americans, Irish-Americans, rich Americans, or poor Americans. We are all Americans," the two-term governor said to loud cheers at the event in a suburb of New Orleans.
The comment, however, was interpreted by some people on Twitter as an attempt to distance himself from India.

The hashtag #BobbyJindalIsSoWhite recorded more than 6,400 tweets and was among India's top trending topics on Thursday.


"#BobbyJindalIsSoWhite teacher used to use him as a chalk on board," said one Twitter user named aindrila. Another user, Yusuf B, said:

"#BobbyJindalIsSoWhite that we only see the outline of his body when he stands in front of a white wall."


Jindal's office could not be reached out of business hours on Thursday.



Jindal, who converted from Hinduism to Christianity as a teenager, is popular with social conservatives and evangelical Christians.
But he has struggled recently with a fiscal crisis in his state. He frequently ranks near the bottom end of opinion polls of Republicans seeking the party's nomination in the 2016 election.
In January, Jindal made similar remarks and said his parents moved to America to be Americans.
"If we wanted to be Indians, we would have stayed in India," Jindal said.
http://news.yahoo.com/u-presidential-hopefuls-done-indian-american-remark-prompts-110954719.html

 

[prasad1]

Jokes aside, what’s striking about Mr. Jindal’s statement is that at best it completely denies the very idea of America: a nation made up of immigrants of all stripes, nationalities and colour (except for native Americans), not melding to some abstract notion of what it means to be American, but actively contributing to forming the identity of this nation, a salad bowl, a tapestry of different textures and hues, existing creatively and collaboratively in the best of times, and colliding and conflicting in the worst of times. At its worst, Mr. Jindal’s comments can be seen as a crass ploy to compete for the vote of right wing conservative evangelists who would rather define America in the narrowest possible white, Christian frame. A one-time Rhodes Scholar, Mr. Jindal must know better. Rather than using his innate intelligence to lift the dialogue about race and ethnicity in America, how sad it is that this well-educated American, born of Indian immigrant parents, should stoop to a simplistic version of America that has no basis in reality.

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-...-be-american/article7368058.ece?homepage=true

 

[prasad1]

Himself son of an immigrant parents from India, two-term Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal believes that immigrants in the US should learn English and adopt American values.

In a video advertisement, launched by his super PAC, 44-year-old Jindal is first shown stating he is tired of hyphenated Americans, as he referred to labels such as Indian-Americans, African-Americans and Asian-Americans.

"I think our immigration system is broken. If folks want to immigrate to America, they should do so legally. They should adopt our values. They should learn English. And they should roll up their sleeves and get to work," Jindal said.

Jindal's parents immigrated to the US early 70s. He was born in Baton Rouge in 1971.

Correcting Myths
Spanish predated English in arriving in what is now the United States. For 400 years, the two languages have co-existed; today’s immigrants continue to bring variation. Phillip M. Carter explains how Spanish came to our shores and explores its many dialects.
Local, regional and national news stories have recently raised the misconception that native Spanish speakers are only now beginning to populate areas of the United States en masse. Although recent Census reports show that the U.S. Hispanic population has experienced an upsurge since the early 1990’s, Hispanic communities and varieties of the Spanish language have been maintained in the United States for well more than four centuries. In fact, Spanish actually antedates English in the areas that now make up the composite United States — a fact that surprises many Americans. In terms of continuity and longevity in the United States, the Spanish language is second only to Native American languages that were spoken for centuries prior to colonization.
In parts of the Southwest, for instance, there are longstanding Hispanic communities where varieties of Spanish have co-existed with English varieties for centuries. Likewise, varieties of Spanish have been maintained for decades alongside English in a number of major urban U.S. cities. In this paper, I highlight a number of historical events in the history of Spanish in the United State s. I also hope to show how Spanish use today is not solely a function of immigration in the 20[SUP]th[/SUP] and 21[SUP]st[/SUP] centuries, but rather the consequence of social and historical factors that are as much a part of American history as the factors that lead to the development of American English.



To protect those rights, there is something called Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Although twenty seven states have declared English as their official language, in order to receive federal financial assistance those states still have to comply with Title VI, which requires that vital materials be available in the language of everyone receiving benefits subsidized by the Federal Government.

Mr. Jindal is trying for the ultra right wing of Republican party. That wing is racist and they hate all immigrants (including Jindal). In the process he is alienating lot of US citizens who are of Spanish and French origin. He is an insult to PIO community. We are forced to on the defensive.

Despite his announcement last week, Jindal's popularity rating is in single digit and is not in the top 10 Republican presidential hopeful.

His announcement to run for presidential election has failed to generate much enthusiasm among the Indian-Americans because of his statements in which he sought to distance himself from being an Indian-American.

He appears to have lifted many of her ideas from white nationalists and anti-immigrant extremists and has moved from being a right wing polemicist to openly proselytizing for white supremacy.

[h=1]"Dhobi ka kutta na ghar ka na ghaat ka"[/h]
The proverb is used to refer to someone who is split between two things (jobs/work/situations) in such a manner that he cannot undertake any one full-time, or cannot to justice to any.