Accidental Blogger

In the past week, there has been a little drama unfolding across the pond, in Britain, involving an Indian movie star and a British reality show. Perhaps it is not such a small drama after all – it was covered by most major media outlets in the US (see here, here  and here, among others). The media in India and Britain are all agog. The gist of the story is that Shilpa Shetty, a fairly well known Bollywood star became a participant in a TV show called Big Brother in the UK. The premise of the silly show is that participants are confined within a house, living cheek by jowl with total strangers. A camera records their every move round the clock and viewers get their jollies by watching how they get along with each other. The brouhaha involving Shetty and her British roommates erupted when some of the women in the house, led by a young woman called Jade Goody ganged up on the Indian movie star with what many viewers have characterized as racial animosity. 

The matter gathered a national and international flavor when thousands of viewers in Britain complained to the TV station about the bullying and the visiting British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown was questioned by his Indian hosts. The content of the TV show came up for criticism in the British parliament and Prime Minister Tony Blair issued a statement condemning racial prejudice. Those who are not aware of this story, please check out the wall to wall report here and for added action, the video here. You can decide for yourself if Shilpa Shetty was the target of an out and out racist attack or just plain bitchiness by a nasty clique of women who in their resentment of a classier and a somewhat uppity woman, picked on her race as a convenient excuse. On second thoughts, that IS "out and out" racism. The important question is not what these particular women were caught doing on camera but whether that indeed is the pervasive mindset towards non-whites in Britain.

I was not aware of Shilpa Shetty until now. I have never seen her movies just as I had no knowledge of the English game show Big Brother. I had no intention of writing about this quite unsurprising, tasteless and rather trivial matter until Saturday morning, when I came across an article in the Guardian which examines British racism and which as an Indian born person, I am thoroughly educated about.  Author Martin Jacques makes some pointed observations and I mostly agree. Among them, the following:

"The test of our behaviour, of how racist we are, is no longer what the white British think. That started to change with the self-awareness and growing confidence of our own ethnic minorities. But the matter does not end there. The test now, in this instance, is what Indians in India think, how they perceive us.

As Goody raged and railed against Shetty on Wednesday night’s TV broadcast, she was like a cornered animal, lashing out in every direction against something she clearly detested but also feared and felt threatened by. She was confronted not only with the Other, but a hugely self-confident Other. What could be worse? It was a metaphor for the world that is now rapidly taking shape before our very eyes."

However it isn’t so much Jacques’ above analysis of racism which intriqued me – all this makes common enough sense. Rather, the following two paragraphs caught my attention.

"Almost from the outset, Big Brother’s racism has had a new and novel dimension. Because Gordon Brown was in India at the time, and was asked about it during his trip, the issue immediately acquired an international dimension. In an earlier era, of course, this would have been dismissed as of no consequence: the natives could safely be ignored. But no longer. We saw this just a year ago in relation to the Danish cartoons and their ridicule of Islam. Europe used to ignore what the former colonial world felt. There was no feedback loop. But such was the reaction in the Islamic world that it could not be ignored. That, though, was in the context of the Muslim world which, in global terms, remains weak and marginalised.

Racial abuse of Indians is a very different matter. India is a rising giant; we can no longer afford to ignore, as we once did with impunity, the views and feelings of a country that represents one-fifth of humanity. We live in what increasingly looks like a global goldfish bowl where what we do at home will be seen by the rest of the world – and duly reacted to, in a way that cannot be ignored."

So, what is Jacques saying?  That because of India’s increasing power in the global theater, it is no longer "prudent" to insult and abuse Indians?   Is it okay to abuse Ethiopians, Hondurans or Kazakhs (and Muslims, even though some Muslims are Indians)? Is the rejection of racism a matter of global economy then … and not common decency?  Funny. I would think that tailoring one’s behavior upon the awareness of the victim’s economic / political power (or the lack of it) is in itself a form of racism, albeit a "safer" one. And what about the caste/ regionalism based racism of Indians themselves? How much hue and cry is there against that in India or among Indians abroad? Not that one execrable behavior justifies another. But all similarly reprehensible social attitudes ought to be examined and condemned in the same breath.

Also, what is Shilpa Shetty, a good looking babe with star power at home doing in this unappetizing, third rate  English TV show?  Was this her idea of slumming? Or free publicity?  Well, she fulfilled both dreams.

A pizza company in Texas is in trouble with some patriotic US citizens.  Its crime?  "Pizza Patron," a Dallas based pizza chain (five stores in Houston), made the decision to accept Mexican pesos as payment for pizzas. Many of Pizza Patron’s restaurants are in areas with significant Mexican / Mexican American clientele who often have left over pesos after their visits to Mexico. The practice has raised some hackles and considerable patriotic / anti immigrant fervor. The company is hearing from irate Americans via email and occasionally in person.

"Pesos for pizzas. It seemed innocent enough. But after a Texas pizza chain this week began accepting Mexican pesos in exchange for piping hot pies, the company was flooded with thousands of e-mails.

"What you are doing is unpatriotic. THIS IS AMERICA NOT MEXICO!" one message read. "Get the hell out of this country!!!!" said another. "This is America where the currency is the U.S. Dollar. If you want to accept the peso, go to Mexico!"

But for Elizabeth Perez, who on Friday was awaiting her pizza order at a Pizza Patron restaurant on Airline Drive in Houston, it just makes good business sense. Why not, she said, spend leftover pesos in the United States instead of waiting until she returned to Mexico?

"We always have a lot of money left over when we go to Mexico, so why not waste it here?" Perez said.

Dallas-based Pizza Patron chain, with five restaurants in Houston, said it’s pesos-for-pizzas campaign has been an overwhelming success. But the promotion has also stirred a wave of anti-immigrant feelings. At a restaurant on South 75th Street this week, a man entered the store and asked what currency was accepted. When the manager said he could pay in pesos or dollars, the man said, "Pesos are for Mexico and we’re in the United States." Then he left the store.

Andy Gamm, a Pizza Patron spokesman in Dallas, said he was taken aback by the protest. He said the small pizza chain never intended to get in the middle of the national immigration debate, but is undeterred by the controversy.

"We have no intention of stopping it," he said. "We’re happy, we couldn’t be happier."

He said most of the negative e-mails are anonymous, and though many say they will no longer patronize the business, many come from states where Pizza Patron does not have any locations. The chain has 59 locations throughout the Southwest, including the five in Houston.

"A majority of the negative e-mails we’ve been getting are coming from states like Connecticut, North Dakota, Indiana and Ohio, states that aren’t known for having strong Hispanic demographics," Gamm said. He said Pizza Patron has been doing business in the Hispanic community in Dallas for 20 years and that 60 percent of its customers are Hispanic.

Once just a joke

Over the years, he said, customers would come into the stores and jokingly ask if they accepted pesos. Gamm said company officials finally asked, "Why not?" and began posting "Aceptamos pesos" signs on store counters.

"If we could get those pesos that were sitting in a drawer at home, get them out of those drawers and in our stores we would be on to something that would be difficult for competitors to duplicate," Gamm said.

He said the practice of accepting pesos for goods is common along the border, but nonexistent hundreds of miles farther north. Gamm estimated that 10 to 15 percent of Pizza Patron’s business this week has been in pesos, making the effort worthwhile. The chain will evaluate the promotion in February and determine whether to continue it.