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Maimuna and Saarah, I really liked your discussion posts and I was also thinking about this matter while reading the text. It is really fascinating that despite the discrimination and the racial inferiority which was imposed upon the peddlers, there had been this great demand for exotic goods which as Maimuna said, makes this condition a double edged sword. However, I was thinking of the power of culture when it comes to the systematic discrimination and exclusions. The desire for Oriental goods allowed these peddlers to establish networks and livelihoods across the U.S., despite systemic discrimination. The text even describes how Americans' fascination with the “mysterious and exotic Orient” created both opportunities and exclusions for these peddlers​ Actually this desire for the Oriental goods and the mysterious and exotic Orient made me think about the significance of culture on both ends. The opportunities and the possibilities of inhabiting a culture other than their own have played an important role in this context. The culture indeed found its way into American homes, but the people behind it were still often treated as inferior.

The Lie of integration has so much room to be analyzed, tore down, and debunked. Not only does integration ask someone to strip themselves of their cultural identity just to conform to the societal norm but often it asks the same individual to condemn their original identities and views. Majority cultures, especially European cultures but most especially the British, love to flaunt how 'accepting' and 'educated' they are of/on the diaspora of minority (conquered) cultures that were present in the British Empire, and then in the same breath condemn multiculturalism and promote the systematic condemnation and destruction of these cultures within Britain. It is not just a 'cultural conversion' that is pressed onto melancholic migrants but the active condemnation of their mother culture, once 'cultural conversion' has been completed society seeks to implicate the melancholic migrant in the destruction of their old identities. All of this, just to never truly be accepted by the Majority as a "proper British bloke".

In a far less literal sense than the example of Black American Veterans that you gave, "Integration" seeks to enlist the migrant/minority population in a war against their own communities. "Multiculturalism" is dead only because the societal Majority is too lazy or ignorant to seek an understanding with its minority populations. Every mention of "seeking understanding through 'shared values'" makes me laugh and cringe, knowing that the real intention behind those words is 'British values'.

As Said points out in his book, Orientalism can be generalising (as @jane_malek and @pierre-augustin_habrih have also pointed out), but there are also specific Orientalist stereotypes, the British stereotype of the weak and servile Bengali being one of these.

Great point about the parallel between McClung and J.J. Singh.