MARKETING SUCCESS, DEFINING ETHNICITY:

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Shailja Sharma

MARKETING SUCCESS, DEFINING ETHNICITY:

South Asian print media in the US

The age of change

As we mark 42 years since the passage of the 1965 Immigration Act, an importantpart of the process of changing demographics among South Asian Americans, is thecommunity’s change from being constituted by primarily migrants to becominghyphenated Americans. The serendipitous release of the Mira Nair film, The Namesake,based on Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel of the same name, marks this change by being the firstdramatic visualisation about the process of Americanisation in an Indian family. Thenovel raised issues of acculturation, cultural identity, assimilation, and the abortedmyth of return; all of which are well-documented milestones in the lives of immigrantgroups. Both Rumbaut and Portes and Castles and Davidson, chart the process ofacculturation along the indices of housing, education, employment, all of which areimportant markers of social mobility and Americanisation.1 Focusing on the social andidentitarian facets of acculturation, however, The Namesake deals with the inner,personal struggles of the Gogol/Nikhil, the young desi played by Kal Penn. Hisparents dream of returning to India and want him to learn how to be Indian, while heviews himself as American because his peers are American. His parents are Indian buthe is an Indian-American. Though this well-worn cliche of a male hero who discoversassimilation is not new, earlier movies like My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2001) stillrestricted the assimilationist narrative to European groups. The Namesake is one of thefirst mainstream Hollywood films to follow this trajectory with respect to Indian-Americans. Mainstream popular culture has acknowledged the size and economicweight of South Asians in America (The 2000 census numbered Asian-Indians/Indian-Americans at 1.9 million, a growth of 106% since 1990).2

However, not all of them are immigrants. According to the census, fully 86percent of Indian-Americans under 18 have been born in the United States.3 Thismeans that the majority of Indian youth are American citizens, in many cases, secondgeneration Americans. It is not an overstatement to say that desis are changing as agroup, as they see themselves negotiating the different pitfalls of ethnic immigrantidentity on their route to becoming Americans. The repercussions of this change fromimmigrants to ethnic minorities have important consequences for how desis think ofidentity politics, consumer power, cultural and religious nationalism, and intercommunity affiliations. These processes also play out in the forms that immigranteconomies take, especially media that is targeted towards desis.4 My focus in this

South Asian Popular Culture Vol. 5, No. 2, October 2007, pp. 179-191

ISSN 1474-6689 print/ISSN 1474-6697 online � 2007 Taylor & Francis

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/14746680701619602

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paper is on print media—newspapers and magazines that are addressed to desis in theUnited States—to explore what reciprocal effects are created between texts andreality. My analysis of print media highlights how the changes in readership arereflected back in the structure, form and content of the media itself. I argue that thechange is from news directed to a nationally demarcated diaspora community (Indian,Pakistani, Bangladeshi) to one that addresses a more diverse, multiply situatedaudience. This readership is stratified nationally, linguistically, in terms of religion,and generation. Part of the change is also inherent in the South Asian diaspora in itsspatial multiplicity that spans vast regions ranging across S.E. Asia, Europe, Africa andthe Americas. Thus, the notion of diaspora now inhabits, in its expanded form, afluidity across geographical area, generation, class, religion and global affiliations. Infact, the boundaries between diaspora and national communities become extremelyporous and unstable, creating national communities across international boundaries.

Media function

In terms of media function, this instability means a shift from constituting printreadership as a community related to home and abroad to one that is grounded inAmerican culture and within that, primarily functioning as consumers.5 In K.Viswanath and Pamela Arora’s terms, it is a shift from cultural information andcommunity building to defining ethnic identity and being a ‘community booster’’.6

My thesis charts these changes in desi print media as an indicator of their changingroles within American society. These changes can be seen in terms of ownership ofnewspapers and magazines, in terms of their layout and content, and within that ofadvertising, as well as their increasing specialisation. It is also a movement from ethnicmedia’s function of social control, which changes from one of maintaining links withthe homeland to one that is focused on shaping a desirable and successful desicommunity in the United States and its parameters of success.

The movement is both that of separation from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, SriLanka and one of expansion. The diaspora changes from being a small working class,migrant group to a globalised group of wealthy and influential group. The function ofethnic media changes correspondingly. A cursory look at many newspapers showstheir layout is divided among financial information/solicitation, and religious/moralinformation, such as festivals, moral codes, astrology, etc. Both the public and private(cultural and homeland) domains are thus addressed. While this is standard formattingfor old style papers, newer publications are diversifying towards a more targetedreadership on the basis of income, profession, interest, etc. A 1987 ethnographicstudy of US Indian print media by Mohammed A. Siddiqui, showed that Indian printpublications followed the dual function of preserving ties to the homeland as well asencouraging acculturation to all sectors of the immigrant population.7 Currently, myresearch shows that publications are divided, with an increasing percentage of paperschoosing to ignore the function of community booster and moral policeman. In termsof content, there is a shift away from nostalgia and links to the homeland towardsconstituting a community that is not primarily defined in terms of its experience ofimmigration. This often involves less emphasis on communication news of thehomeland or nation-US relations and increasing attention to social and cultural events

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that are meaningful to the desi communities in the United States. This change is morethan just reflective of changing demographics; it marks a change in the imaginarygeography of a group: away from the focus on a distant homeland and exile to theexperience of the United States as homeland and permanent home. Desis are now inthe process of being constituted not as immigrants but as an ethnic minority within anew country: the United States. Cultural markers of identity and rites of passage suchas graduation, weddings, dress, now mark younger generations as part of theAmerican imaginary, not as foreigners.

Place making, ethnic enclaves and the role of the press

Castles and Davidson in their study of migration and citizenship point to twoprocesses of acquiring substantial, as opposed to legal, citizenship: ‘home building’and ‘place making’.8 While home making might involve affective factors, place making isa more public process. It involves inhabiting space in the new homeland. This can rangefrom the changing of neighbourhoods, establishment of small businesses to ‘naming,rituals and institutions’9. Taken to an extreme, place making can involve the control oflocal markets and the development of ethnic enclaves and an ethnic economy such as thelarge Cuban enclave in Miami. An aspect of place making is the layering of housing,businesses, service providers and cultural institutions, all of which encourage ‘theproduction and consumption of a large proportion of goods and services a [to] take placewithin one group’.10 Similar large-scale attempts at place making have taken place amongdesis in the US as well. Little India in Jersey City, Devon Avenue in Chicago, JacksonHeights in New York City can all be read as examples of these enclave economies. Thespatial layout and businesses within enclaves that target desis are roughly similar in manycities and are filled with ethnic restaurants, groceries, electronic shops and music/DVDrentals.

The function of these micro-economies changes over time. From providinginformation and encouraging assimilation, they move towards staking a claim spatiallyand culturally within the domains of American pluralist society. In terms of function,immigrant enclaves serve to ethnicise an area and serve not just as a functional andsupportive place for a minority but instead to ‘showcase’ that community as part ofthe American mosaic. Eventually they may become a place of ethnic sampling formajority groups and move completely away from serving the ethnic community itself.On Chicago’s Devon Avenue, for example, restaurants and stores have moved from aprimarily desi clientele to serving as a hub for South Asian shopping and dining ingeneral. This can be seen in the numerous accounts of restaurant reviews, providedfor a general public appealing to a broad spectrum of people from those appearing onPBS to the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Reader. This change is indicative ofAmerican society’s appetite for consumable ethnicity but also highlights the extent towhich desi culture is both known and marked as simultaneously safe and exotic.

In the context of this shift from place making to ethnic enclaves, the immigrantand ethnic press plays an extremely important part. ‘Media are a critical subsystem ofthe total community system … [they] reflect, refract and amplify the concerns of thepower groupings in the social system, thus performing a central integrative function… of environmental surveillance, transmission of cultural heritage, correlation of

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different segments, mobilization, and entertainment’.11 Early on in the place makingprocess, newspapers play a role in maintaining a new community grouping, providingimportant information with regard to immigration, settlement and providingnecessary cultural information about events, religious/cultural festivals and mostimportantly, in policing cultural norms. South Asian newspapers that began in the1970s, soon after the passage of 1965 Immigration Act, can be seen to reflect theseroles in their layout.

My example of this older style of desi paper is the India Bulletin, published sincefour years in Chicago. The 4 November 2006 issue leads with news of a bandh (strike)in Delhi, an Indo-British treaty on transport, and the sidebar with photographsincludes photographs on Prince Charles’ visit to Pakistan, Jimmy Carter’s visit toIndia and one item each on cricket and Bollywood. The emphasis is on news fromhome. The sections in the paper are, in order, International News, Entertainment,Community, Business, Sports, and though it is not listed, a long Classifieds section.The essay by Mohammed Siddiqui, also highlights this aspect of the early desi press.According to him, almost 44 per cent of the space in weekly papers was used foradvertisements, 28.3 per cent for news of India and only 2.8 per cent for US news.12

If the percentage of newspaper space is a correlation to that section’s importance,then it becomes clear that earlier newspapers did not see their role in acculturation tobe very important. Instead, they took seriously their commitment to keep expatriatedesis informed of news from back home.

India Bulletin is a free newspaper, almost all its revenue coming fromadvertisements. In fact, its website has a whole section on South Asian demographics,emphasising their value as consumers. In this, it is typical of most ethnic papersdistributed in ethnic enclaves such as Devon Avenue. Other newspapers of interesthere might include The Indian Reporter and World News, the India Tribune, India Abroadand Desi Talk, all of which are published out of different regional centres in NewJersey, Connecticut, and cities like NJ/CT, Houston, Los Angeles, and Toronto.Advertisements are geared predominantly to an immigrant population focused onIndian satellite television offers that target desis who want to watch programmes fromback home, home ownership and realtor offers emphasising trustworthy desi agentsthat transcend language barriers, and thus avoid legal issues in buying/selling/leasing,desi fast-food places, and money transfer businesses like Western Union and otherbanks, reflecting the centrality of remittance flows within South Asia. All the abovecommercial and classified parts of India Bulletin work to create the illusion of a micro-homeland within the United States by emphasising the ways in which commercial,business and cultural activities within the diaspora can work seamlessly to shut out thenon-diasporic world. The entertainment section also emphasises news from home:Bollywood reviews, top ten lists and star gossip.

Conversely, in news coverage, the emphasis is not on home but on the successfulassimilation of the migrant community. For example, news items like ‘IBM sees moregrowth in India as economy booms’ and ‘JPMorgan Chase celebrates Gandhi Day inChicago’ are fairly standard, reflecting a shared concern with home and abroad, aswell as pride in accomplishments in both places. Within this old style of newspaper,there may be subtle differences. Some papers are geared more towards differentlinguistic or regional groups. For example, The Ajit is a Punjabi (Gurmukhi) paper,while the Urdu Times focuses on news from Pakistan. Some papers, though targeted


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toward and produced by diasporic desis, are actually owned in part or wholly bynewspaper corporations on the subcontinent. The Tribune of Chandigarh, for example,had an American offprint for a few years in Chicago. Rediff.com, a popular website foryoung Indians, now publishes India Abroad, a slick, colour publication which ispublished from different locations within the US (as I explain in greater detail below).

Changing technology is reflected in the evolution of the desi press as well. Even asthe more traditional papers are finding their hard news value being undercut, if notmade redundant by the Internet, their primary role as advertisement media andsources of community news remains and earns them revenue. That is part of thereason why a large number of newspapers do not rely on subscriptions to stay afloat.Instead, they are distributed in shops, restaurants and other desi commercial andcultural outlets. This emphasis away from news is also reflected in their reporting,which relies heavily on wire stories and syndicated columns. However, older forms ofcultural information distribution, and the focus on community events with theiremphasis on social control, are still an important part of these papers. In fact, a closelook at two papers, Indian Reporter and World News, and India Tribune shows a heavyemphasis on community news with slightly ponderous titles like ‘Bhangra FestivalPlanned’ and ‘Diwali at NASDAQ Stock Market’. Such headlines remind readers ofthe importance of cultural/religious roots not just in and of themselves but also asevents that are marked by non-desi populations and institutions. Such validation bymainstream groups is a common tactic in asserting cultural and group pride.

A related method is the use of these community papers to advance the careers ofthe local elites. For example, local politicians use them to court support for particularpieces of legislation that benefit majority interests but also target ethnic sections of theelectorate. The 3 November 2006 edition of The Indian Reporter was notable for twofull-page colour advertisements saying ‘Asian Americans for Blagojevich’ (the Illinoisgovernor candidate for re-election). These advertisements were ‘sponsored’ by HarishBhatt and Rajinder Bedi, the latter an editor for the newspaper. Thus Viswanath isright when he says, ‘Editors are likely to be part of the community elite… Tiesbetween the political elite and the media elite are likely to be closer …’.13 Beforeelections, desi newspapers routinely run pieces on candidates and their links to thecommunity. Election results are also published by highlighting the connection tocommunity interests. After the November 2006 mid term elections, most desi papersran full colour page covers of South Asian candidates who had won and lost. Thus, thefunction of information sharing goes hand-in-hand with forging ethnic identity.

Interestingly, ethnic identity itself is constituted along two trajectories; one interms of the nation and its diaspora, and now increasingly as a transnationalcommunity. So the 17 November 2006 issue of News India Times, published out ofNew York, leads with a full page photograph spread of South Asian Americans, ‘10winners among at least 24 South Asians in Nov. 7 elections’, which featuredcandidates from Ohio to Nevada. However, the banner of the paper reads ‘All AboutIssues and Achievements’, and the paper’s coverage is centred on global desis whohave achieved ‘success’ in technology, music, politics or in academic arenas. Clearly,part of its brief is shaping a particular image of desis, and not so much on old-fashioned categories of covering news. India Abroad, a publication of the Rediff groupof companies, has sections on desis in Canada, India, the United States and Europe.Both these papers effectively constitute desis as a transnational population, held


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together by culture (language, sometimes religion, and affective links to South Asia),not just by race.

It is also clear in reading the community sections of many desi newspapers thatthe mantle of spiritualism has become an integral part of desi self-image. One couldargue that in many cases, this emphasis on spirituality and religion is also a defensiveand xenophobic reaction to the dangers of assimilation as well as a political spur toconservative groups like the VHP (Vishwa Hindu Parishad). The latter argument ismade most strongly by Vijay Prashad, who sees the trope of spirituality as an escapefrom an engagement with the racial politics of this country, in particular how it worksagainst solidarity with African-Americans. As an example, the News India issue carriesan excerpt from Dr Rajendra Prashad’s speech, with the slightly unwieldy title,‘Source of happiness does not lie outside us but is enshrined within our own hearts’(17 November 2006). The invocation of a political leader from India’s first momentsof independence in order to encourage an ‘inward’ contentment is also a rejection of‘Western’ consumerist norms. This paternalistic tone is also apparent in The IndiaTribune, which has weekly agony columns, one written by ‘Uncle’ in which he advisesyounger readers on dating and marital issues, another by a younger woman whorepresents her gendered and generational viewpoint. In both instances, peer adviceand counselling are replaced by figures representing the hierarchy of a traditional desifamily. The ‘uncle’ figure and the ‘sister’ are both upholders of desi values as they arethreatened by assimilation and cultural conflict.

Seldom do papers a signal a potential problem or highlight an existing one withinthe desi community, whether it is particular crimes or tendencies such as spousalabuse or other forms of violence or fraud. They do not want to project the image ofself-criticism or self-assessment of the community. In fact, as mentioned earlier, theyexplicitly see their role as emphasizing positive values and traits. Viswanath and Aroratrace the reason for this tendency within the dual roles of ethnic newspapers: socialcontrol and strengthening ethnic identity. This marks print media as different fromthe internet, which tends less towards the community and more towards theinterpersonal. Print media traditionally tends to police social and communityattitudes, which belong to the public domain. While the desi press may pay attentionto some external conflicts, they are less likely to highlight those conflicts that threatenthe internal stability of the community.14 Part of the emphasis on spirituality andinternal difference is paradoxically geared to an avoidance of introspection with regardto community problems. Thus, their role remains inherently conservativeideologically, socially and politically.

Generational shifts

While the above analysis remains true for most ethnic desi papers who see themselvesserving primarily an immigrant community, many papers and magazines are nowtargeting and courting younger readers. These readers are part of a changingdemographic among South Asians for whom inclusive ethnicity within majorityculture and society is far more important than an emphasis on immigrant or homelandstatus. Children of immigrants, young techie sojourners or part of the globalprofessional-managerial classes, this group is more likely to form social groups orcommunity through consumer patterns or popular culture rather than religious,


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ethnic or race-based communities They are also more likely to see themselves as atransnational cosmopolitan group than as part of an immigrant community.15 This is asmuch a result of the privileged space ethnicity holds in middle class America as of agenerational demographic shift. One could argue that ethnicity in the United Stateshas become a culturally tradable commodity, not a burden or a handicap as it mayhave been for the earlier generations of immigrants. The distinction betweenhomeland and abroad does not remain an abyss to be negotiated as a minority; ratherit can become, through buying into the advertisements and infotainment news gleanedfrom the pages of print media, part of what Dominique Schnapper called ‘lyricalmulticulturalism’.16 In Schanpper’s view, this form of ethnicity actually detracts fromstruggles around race and class in its emphasis on the consumer friendly aspects ofethnicity and diversity. However, given the economic successes of desi populations inthe United States, it is this form of ethnicity rather than any form of race and classbased struggle, which is most easily accessible to them.

Media roles in the context of a lyrical, consumer-driven approach to ethnicity are acontrast to the role of Muslim newspapers in countries such as Britain, where a seriousmarginalisation of Islam and Muslim culture has been an outgrowth of old style racism.

Articles published in the mainstream media represent the strategic discursiveconstruction of the nation, its identity and culture, in a bid to protect thisconstruction from deterioration in the interests of the in-group, and by marginalisingthe out-group. The importance of the media in the formation of public opinionbecomes apparent; in the particular context of distrust and suspicion against Islam,their role is even more important… In Britain, Muslim newspapers such as TheMuslim News, Q-News, Crescent International, Impact International and Trends … havetaken advantage of emerging communication and information opportunities toproduce serious alternative views to the mainstream.17

While at the surface level it may be argued that ethnicity and religion are notcategories that can be easily conflated, there is a strong argument to be made forcollapsing them in this instance. The classification of minority status that was oncestabilised through race as the primary marker of difference has now expanded in thepost September 11 climate to interlace race with religion, most notably in the UK andFrance. While the struggle over the definition of modernity was earlier made in racialterms, (Hegel’s taxonomy of civilisational levels) and later in national terms (East/West, England versus its colonies),18 it is now giving way to a civilisational rhetoricaround the axis of religion. What doesn’t change is the binary structure of theopposition, defined by Europe and the USA against the lesser, more primitive East, orwhat in current vocabularies is termed the global South.

This change in the geography of Empire after September 11, argues AliMirsepassi, while shifting its adversaries in fundamental ways, has not changed itsstrategy. He writes,

There is a systemic character to Empire that reinvests global hierarchies whileintroducing new strategies of power…. It is in this divergence between asystematic and historically grounded contemporary analysis and the ahistoricalmetaphysics of an essentially divided East/West that one sees most clearly what is


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stake in defining world geography in a particular way. One sees, in effect, thedegree to which geography can function both as a mental landscape of rigidsubjectivities anchored in metaphysical dogma and as a plane of encoded desires.19

However, American desis must be seen as a special case and not blurred as part ofa transnational diaspora. They are constructed rather uniquely and artificially as partof a model minority group that has overcome racial divisions through economicsuccess. In this, they are closer to East Asians in the United States, and notcomparable to Latino/a groups. While certain issues can galvanize ethnic media torepresent issues in an alternative way from mainstream media, what Viswanath andArora call ‘conflict coverage,’ the media’s critical edge remains a hostage to self-valorisation. (‘Asia Society Gala Draws Cream of Houston Crop’ India Abroad 7November, 2006) Nevertheless, Chan points out that a study by NCM (NewCalifornia Media) shows that ethnic media is not just attractive to advertisers but alsouseful in order to get a complete national perspective on social trends. This is to say,ethnic media with all their drawbacks still perform an important function in pluggingthe gaps within national media by virtue of their attention to particular communities.In the example that Chan uses, ethnic media were able to highlight thedisproportionate number of ethnic minorities who were laid off or suffered economichardship in the wake of September 11, something that mainstream media hadoverlooked.

More interestingly, she makes the argument that because of print media’s role aswatchdogs of the other America, and because they serve a growing market,investment in ethnic media makes good economic sense for traditional mediacompanies. Increasingly, English language media companies are either launchingethnic newspapers or buying them out.20 This is a reversal from earlier years, whenethnic media were ignored or seen as a losing proposition. Both existing publishingventures as well as foreign investments are driving the value of ethnic media up, partlyfor reasons of better demographics, but also because they are seen as better value(Chan). The combination of media ownership, increasing circulation, and economicmobility, have all made ethnic media and ethnic groups, which were marginal, nowcentral to the economy of media ownership and consumption.

In terms of new ethnic minorities, Allied Media (www.allied-media.com), anIndian company, controls more than 20 English and regional South Asian newspapersand magazines including Desi Talk, India Abroad, News India Times, Indian Express, LittleIndia etc.21 The list includes some titles that are old style community papers, othersthat deal with business and finance with an NRI slant, some that are in regionallanguages and addressed to older readers who may not be proficient in English, andstill others that are ‘lifestyle’ publications, and are geared to young consumers. Theprimary outreach of many of these publications is towards affluent desi South Asiansacross a range of generations and incomes. The company has also recently diversifiedinto Arabic, Russian, Spanish language media as well as TV and newspapers aimed atAfrican-Americans. Their website boasts of their specialisation in ‘MulticulturalCommunication’ and multilingual skills. Based in Alexandria, VA and Europe, theyare clearly looking at a market of immigrants and sojourners, but more importantly,at companies who want to target this market at a global level. The scale, variety andoutreach of a company like Allied Media is a strong indication that ethnic media is


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going to be an economic force to be reckoned with in addition to being a strongcorporate entity.

For desis, their easy model-minoritisation and the lack of a strong issue aroundwhich to mobilise may be detrimental to a vocal issue-driven print media in the US.The valorisation of economic success and majority culture mandates of conservativefamily values has defanged even progressive emergent bodies like SASA (South AsianStudents Association), whose national conventions have been criticised for wildpartying. New publications like the IndUS Business Journal emphasise the growingsymbiotic role of American corporations in India and desis in American businesses.The self-congratulatory tone is stronger and the aversion to controversial social issuesmore marked. Despite the 2001 slump in tech industries in the US, desis remainstrong venture capitalists. India’s strong economy adds to their role in terms oftransnational businesses and BPO operations. ‘Global Image is Shifting and Asia isgaining’ (IndUS Business Journal) or advertisements for Jaguars best indicate this paper’starget readership. The format is somewhere between a community paper and a morestaid financial publication like The Financial Times. The function of such a genre drivenpublication is clearly to help network desi entrepreneurs with each other and providea resource to marketers and finance/commerce related services. This seems astandard kind of niche-driven publishing that has recently emerged with ethnic media,where the entire point of the publication is driven by classifieds and advertising, ratherthan by audience or any kind of socially responsible journalism. Once a communityhas been presented as being affluent or having a high savings rate (as Allied Media’swebsite boasts), multiple publications that will target all sectors of that communityare seen as more profitable than a single, inclusive community newspaper. Hence, thelinguistic and interest-driven multiplicity of their publications, which are trying tocapture not just a national Diaspora’s readership, but truly a global one, with multipledesi communities across the globe.

Unfortunately, this is where generational segmentation and consumerist fantasymeet: second-generation desis have been obviously defined as ideal consumers and anumber of ‘lifestyle’ publications targeting them have sprung up. Glossy magazinessuch as Rivaaj, Bibi, Nirvana Woman, Anokhi, whose slogan is ‘A perfect, symbioticrelationship exists between ANOKHI Magazine and the South Asian community inwestern society and beyond,’ Shaadi, Instyle: South Asian style, and EGO (they brandthemselves to say ‘EGO’s reader is the urban educated modern consumer who wantsa magazine that informs him or her of cultural, lifestyle and fashion trends’). As moreand more children of first generation migrants choose to marry in the US, suchpublications provide a format that combines US style luxury, Bollywood fashions andglamour and desi assimilationist lifestyles that are instantly consumable.

One exception is the left-leaning Samar, which started as an independentmagazine addressing political and developmental issues in South Asia but now is partof Allied Media’s empire. Interestingly, many of these magazines are targeted towardsaffluent women, and have correspondingly high production values. Their paper isglossy and thick, the photographs rich and inviting, and the articles are pitched to theself-consciously hip among the younger generation. At the level of content, they arepitched at the nexus between cultural tradition and the disposable income that desisare presumed to have. Even the names of these magazines translate into the terms


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suggesting a pick-and-choose ethnicity: Anokhi (Unique), Rivaaj (Tradition), andShaadi (Wedding).

The spring 2005 issue of Rivaaj: Your South Asian Guide to Fine Living has a minimalnod to journalism in the shape of an article on human trafficking but the bulk of the130-page magazine is geared to fashion and popular culture. The layout makes verylittle distinction between editorial/feature content and advertising, it is hard to tellthe difference between three-page spreads of Sahil fashion wear and a four-pagespread , ‘Roots, Pride, Culture: Desi Wear’,22 or the difference between ‘Events:New York’ and ‘Hot Spots: Event Decor Specialists.’ In this, the magazine follows thelead of mainstream lifestyle publications like Real Simple. It is priced at over $5.00,which also pitches it as an ethnic alternative to the more expensive magazines, withthe added cachet of providing ‘community’ news and outreach. Such magazines seetheir competition in mainstream publications, not as a supplement to them. (In this,they are a contradiction to Chan’s argument about community newspapers, citedearlier.) The two sections on ‘Events’ and ‘Entrepreneurs’ are aimed at providing aUS-based national-desi outlook on what is important to its readers.

Whatever their intentions, despite the overwhelming market-driven segmentationof these publications, an effect of the way in which they target their readers is thecreation of a virtual desi community. This younger desi community sees itselfconstructed in a flattering way through the production and content of these magazinesand this in turn can lead to an identification with the desi diaspora. Thus, insofar assomething like a national desi consciousness is a by-product of consumerism, even thispost-immigrant segment of the press functions as a tool of acculturation that feedsethnic subjects into American society.

Conclusion

However, it can also be argued that if desis possess all the attributes of a successfulgroup, judged, that is, by majority white and overwhelmingly econometric standards:high income, high savings, high education, house ownership and entrepreneurship,23

then what are the advantages of ethnicity to this group? The research of Aihwa Ong isuseful in this regard. Ong suggests that majority culture in the US ‘whitens’ or‘blackens’ ethnic minorities in proportion to their economic placement withinsociety. Certain Asian groups, like ‘overseas Chinese’ or Japanese are assimilated andwhitened over time, while, others like Laotians are seen as more ethnic, therefore,black. Factors contributing to ‘whitening’ are those judged desirable by majoritywhite norms, such as economic success, public adherence to white cultural norms,social mobility and high achievement in education, and conspicuous consumption ofhigh-end cultural products. This taxonomy marks desis as becoming whitened.Ultimately, what is the significance of ethnicity to this group? In other words, anyexamination of desi media has to end with the question of its value. What is the valueof an ethnic media to a group that is losing any real connection to ethnicity and isbeing rapidly assimilated?

The magazine Little India (March 2007) is an interesting example of thisconundrum between ethnic pride and assimilation. The cover story is titled‘Generation Next’ and an eight-page article highlights the achievements of Indian-


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Americans. In fact, a number of people they cover, such as Norah Jones (music) andBrandon O’Neill Chillar (football), do not identify themselves as desi, partiallybecause there are no advantages to ethnicity. They have achieved success without it. Apolitician like the conservative Republican, Bobby Jindal, in fact, repudiates ethnicityas a losing (and divisive) proposition. Castles and Davidson point out that many of thespatial and societal aspects of minoritisation only take place because of direct and/orindirect discrimination by the host society.24 For example, marginalization in thelabour or housing markets can lead to a group’s privileging of ethnic identity becausethis factor gives them group support, lobbying power and thus, protection. However,if a group is seen as economically successful and it suffers from little overtdiscrimination, ethnicity can either work against a community by calling attention tothemselves, or worse, stigmatize them. Thus over time, such a group will try tounderplay ethnicity, or use it as a reductively cultural attribute as opposed to aracialized identity. While the South Asian press has been highlighting the whitening ofdesis within American society, in terms of their achievements and economic success,it may in fact, be complicit in its own demise over the next generation. In addition toincreased acceptance by and inclusion within white America, other factors, includingincreased education and professionalisation, growing rates of intermarriage, withpredictable loss of cultural/linguistic/religious identity among subsequent genera-tions, might complicate a coherent desi identity. Unless there is a galvanizing issuearound which a certain political mobilisation can take place, desis might find that theyare treading ground marked by earlier generations of European immigrants, where bythe third generation, obvious signs of ethnicity and cultural identity had been lost. Thelink between newspapers and long-term changes among desi populations is not adirect one, of course. Nevertheless, publications marked by an emphasis on ethnicpride above all, may be singing their own swan song.

Notes

1 Rumbaut and Portes; Castles and Davidson.2 http://www.census.gov/prod/2002pubs/c2kbr01-16.pdf3 Little India 4.4 I follow the tradition set by Vijay Prashad in The Karma of Brown Folk in using the

moniker ‘desi’ to refer to South Asians in the US. In fact, neither demographicstatistics nor consumer figures can effectively separate South Asians according tonational origin. Moreover, there is a compelling argument to be made in favour ofbypassing national origins based on mobility, cultural similarity and linguisticaffinity. Therefore, there is both a political argument and a theoretical one for usingthe term.

5 For an extended essay on media function, especially its role in facilitatingassimilation, see Viswanath and Arora.

6 Viswanath and Arora.7 Siddiqui studies over thirty different publications from four major cities in the US

and finds them conflicted, though he does not use that term, in their centralfunctions.

8 Castles and Davidson 130.


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9 Castles and Davidson 132.10 Castles and Davidson 133.11 Viswanath and Arora 2.12 Siddiqui 188.13 Viswanath 4.14 Viswanath and Arora 5.15 See Rajan and Sharma, New Cosmopolitanisms: South Asians in the US (2006) for an

extended discussion on this group.16 Schnapper 225–253.17 Rigoni 563–580.18 Chakrabarty.19 Mirsepassi.20 Chan’s article points out that the Knight-Ridder companies own Nuevo Mundo and

Viet Mercury in California and the Los Angeles Times has owned El Opinion for a while.NBC also owns the Telemundo Network.

21 Others include New York Awam, Mirror International, Sada E Pakistan, Pakistan Post, BizIndia, Ajit Weekly, American Asian News, Asia Today & India Globe, Biz India, BusinessTimes, Daily Sajjan, DNN, Geet Gurjari, Gujarat Times, Hindi Jagat, India Currents, IndiaJournal, India Light, India Monitor, India New England, India Post, India This Week, IndiaToday, India Weekly, IndUS Business Journal, Kairali Publication, Little India Publications,LOKMAT, Malayalam Pathram, Mantram Magazine, Marathi Vishwa, Masala Magazine,Nationwide, News India Times, NRI Today, Rajani, Sher-e-Punjab, Silicon India, Siliconeer,South Asian Insider, Weekly, Spirit of India, Sushila Publications, The Pulse of Desis, WeeklyTiranga, and Traveler’s India .

22 Chan 122–126.23 Rumbaut and Portes 38–49.24 Castles and Davidson 76–80.

References

Castles, Stephen and Davidson Alastair. Citizenship and Migration: Globalization and thePolitics of Belonging. New York: Routledge, 2000.

Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference.Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.

Chan, Vera. ‘Study: Ethnic Media Fills Increasingly Important Role.’ Quill 90.9 (2002).Mirsepassi, Ali. ‘New Geographies of Modernity.’ Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa

and the Middle East 26.1 (2006): 1–15.Rajan, Gita and Shailja Sharma, New Cosmopolitanisms: South Asians in the US. Chicago, IL:

Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2006.Rigoni, Isabelle. ‘Challenging Notions and Practices: The Muslim Media in Britain and

France.’ Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 31.3 (2005): 563–580.Rumbaut, Ruben G. and Alejandro Portes, eds. Ethnicities: Children of Immigrants in

America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.Schanapper, Dominique. ‘From Nation-State to the Transnational World: On the

Meaning and Usefulness of Diaspora as a Concept.’ Diaspora 8.3 (1999): 225–253.Siddiqi, Mohammed A. ‘Indian Ethnic Press in the United States and its Functions in the

Indian Ethnic Community of the US.’ Gazette 39 (1987): 181–194.


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Viswanath, K and Arora Pamela. ‘Ethnic Media in the United States: An Essay on theirRole in Integration, Assimilation, and Social Control.’ Mass Communication andSociety 3.1 (2000): 39–56.

Shailja Sharma DePaul University, 802 W. Belden Avenue, Chicago, IL 60614. [email:

[email protected]]


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MARKETING SUCCESS, DEFINING ETHNICITY: