What do race and religion have to do with each other? Well, in the Indian Americans’ case, they have a lot to do with each other. Often times people assume that that all Middle Easterners are a certain religion based alone on the color of their skin. As an African American male living in New York City I can relate, a little. Being judged or assumed of a certain characteristic trait because of the way you look is unfair to me. Indian Americans are also a victim of this racial profiling. “In 1923. the U.S. Supreme Court in U.S. v. Bhagat Singh Thind concluded that although Indians were “classified by certain scientific authorities as of the Caucasian or Aryan race,” they were in fact nonwhite according to “the understanding of the common man.” So based on the popular belief that Indian Americans were not white because of their skin color, it was made so. Does this mean that if enough people believe that snow is in fact balls of cotton dropping from the sky, then it will be known as so, even though it isn’t true?
The "Racialization of Religion” has to do with the association of a religion based on race. Indian Americans are assumed to be of a certain faith because of their “skin the color of mocha.” Khyati Y Joshi (New roots in America's sacred ground: religion, race, and ethnicity in Indian America, Rutgers U. Press, 2006) provides an example about this when talking about Shiren’s school friends, whose ignorance to religion were made obvious by asking Shiren is she and her family ate monkey brains at home. Apparently her friends’ only expertise on Hinduism went as far as watching Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
By: Jason Jeremiah
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