{"id":138,"date":"2014-12-30T14:16:00","date_gmt":"2014-12-30T20:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/12\/is-bobby-jindal-an-indian-american.html"},"modified":"2015-02-24T23:26:55","modified_gmt":"2015-02-25T05:26:55","slug":"is-bobby-jindal-an-indian-american","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2014\/12\/is-bobby-jindal-an-indian-american.html","title":{"rendered":"Is Bobby Jindal an “Indian American”?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

(Following up on my earlier post on \u201chyphenism<\/a>.\u201d)<\/p>\n

You know, I have mixed feelings about Bobby Jindal.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start with the name \u201cBobby.\u201d \u00a0He gets widely mocked for a nickname coming from The Brady Bunch but who among us, of that generation (he\u2019s two years younger than I am), didn\u2019t watch The Brady Bunch after school, when we were too young to know that we were supposed to be cynical and mock the show? \u00a0(Remember that he, like I, is too young to have watched the show when it aired on primetime.)<\/p>\n

And from what I understand, he is, even if you\u2019re skeptical of his politics, chock-a-block full of accomplishments, and as skilled in administration and management as Obama is unskilled at it. \u00a0He has been very ambitious in his projects in LA (charter schools\/vouchers, the charity hospital reform), and he is trying to learn to speak in sound bites. <\/p>\n

But I\u2019m also not sure that he\u2019s quite right for president \u2014 at least, if you want someone who can get domestic and foreign policy right. <\/p>\n

But take a look at this:<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n

That\u2019s the image he posted on facebook and twitter this morning (yes, I admit, I both \u201cliked\u201d him on facebook and follow him on twitter) \u2014 dad and sons out duck hunting.<\/p>\n

So, I ask you, does it make sense to call Bobby Jindal an \u201cIndian American\u201d? \u00a0Yes, of course, his ancestry is Indian, but as far as I can tell, his identity is Louisianan. \u00a0Now, I have no idea whether his family eats traditional Indian food at home, or if they do so just as often as we eat traditional German food in the Actuary home (meaning, geschnetzltes is in the regular rotation, and schnitzel, and periodically I\u2019ll pick up weisswurst from the specialty grocery store), and I likewise don\u2019t know how much traditional Indian celebrations remain a part of their lives, but I have no reason not to believe that the love of hunting and the Saints (the football team, that is) that he posts about isn\u2019t genuine, nor that his religious faith and his conversion wasn\u2019t a result of true conviction.<\/p>\n

And look at his critics: \u00a0doing a twitter search, one of the first results was this blog post, \u201cBarry and Bobby<\/a>\u201d in which the author says \u201cI could never support Bobby Jindal, because Bobby Jindal has been a pitiful, disastrous, and divisive hack of a governor.\u201d \u00a0So, of course, you know right away what you\u2019re getting into (and, yes, if I decide that this next presidential cycle is the one where I\u2019ll find a candidate to support, in whatever way a resident of a late-primary state can actually make a difference, besides just sending in some cash, I will make substantial efforts to assess these criticisms) \u2014 but the author of this piece builds up a comparison between \u201cBobby\u201d and \u201cBarry\u201d in which Obama is applauded for returning to his roots and reclaiming the name \u201cBarack\u201d while Jindal is faulted for Americanizing. \u00a0Jindal\u2019s conversion to Catholicism and his adoption of local culture are labelled as fraudulent \u2014 the implication being that Jindal is either betraying his family and the culture of his native land, or, worse, because of his skin color and ancestry, doesn\u2019t have the \u201cright\u201d to share in the culture of his home state, and, ultimately, in either case, the accusation that he doesn\u2019t really care about any of this, but changed his name, his religion, and his leisure passtimes solely for political gain.<\/p>\n

Which came first, for this and similar authors? \u00a0Did their opposition to his politics lead to these accusations, or does their distrust of someone with Indian ancestry assimilating into American culture color their perception of his politics? \u00a0In either case, it\u2019s wrong.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Following up on my earlier post on \u201chyphenism.\u201d) You know, I have mixed feelings about Bobby Jindal. Let\u2019s start with the name \u201cBobby.\u201d \u00a0He gets widely mocked for a nickname coming from The Brady Bunch but who among us, of that generation (he\u2019s two years younger than I am), didn\u2019t watch The Brady Bunch after […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[62,60],"class_list":["post-138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bobby-jindal","tag-race"],"yoast_head":"\nIs Bobby Jindal an "Indian American"?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"(Following up on my earlier post on "hyphenism.")You know, I have mixed feelings about Bobby Jindal.Let's start with the name "Bobby."  He gets\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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