Operative Space for the 'Orientals'
-
In the early 20th century, there was a discussion of the “Hindu question”, especially on the West coast as the fiercest opposition to the Asian migration was manifested in that part of the country. I find this question particularly interesting because the majority of these people weren’t even technically ‘Hindus’. The equating of turbans with Hinduism (or whatever form of a mystical Eastern religion was conceived at that time) is not only an example of idle ignorance but also a phenomenon of creation of racial space. When that space is created, an operative boundary is also accorded to that particular race or people.
Although Bald is not trying to make a particularly pointed argument about ‘Orientalism’ like Said, he does convey that different people of colour used different tactics to make their place in the segregated society. In this case, Orientalism could be used to the Orientals' advantage. As opposed to African-Americans, South-Asians could bank on the particularities of their ethnicity even though they were stereotypic. However, since they arose from a slave tradition, any particularities that the African-Americans had to offer were ipso facto perceived as inferior. So instead of making it a battle of civilizations, South-Asians were able to use the stereotypes to their advantage and navigated through the Jim Crow spaces with more ease.
If they were to be lumped together as Hindoos, they were better off not to make a big deal of it. The categorization of the South-Asian peddlers as ‘Hindoos’ not only accorded a limited operative space but also took away the nuance required to understand a region with a multitude of different cultures, languages and people. Although the exoticization may have afforded them somewhat better mobility than African-Americans and a reputation for innocuousness, teleologically speaking, it was not all for the good. Being reduced to a caricature may have been good for business, but even today Indian character play stock characters in American media (think of the turban-wearing IT guy mistaken to be an Islamic terrorist in The Office or selectively mute geek Raj Koothrapali in the Big Bang theory).
Overall, I don’t think that importing corrections would have been helpful for the Asian cause at that time when their status was most precarious. The reputation as a ‘problematic’ ethnicity would probably have barred them from whatever spaces that had been allowed to them because doing so would have violated the operative space allowed to them. Notice the passive voice used in this paragraph. It is a purposeful indication of the fact that power was largely concentrated in White hands. Despite our retrospective volition to assign some agency to these actors, we have to accept the fact that even though the South-Asians had some agency and choice in adorning the ‘exotic” role, it had still to ‘be allowed’ by the people who held the social power to define the operative space in which that rolw could be played.
Unassigned Sources: Amor de Cosmos, “The British Colonist”, University of Victoria Library Collection: British Colonist 1858-1980, April 4th, 1911, 10,
-
You’re giving away my whole Islamophobia lecture! Well done.