PSA: Followup

Now Playing: Chantal Kreviazuk – All I can do (is love you to pieces)

As an addendum to my previous post, I'd like to note that the concept of the Nice Indian Boy/Girl (hitherto to be referred to as NIB/G) is one that could only really take root in a diaspora setting. If you live in India, you're surrounded by 1 billion other Indians, so what's the point of describing the apple of your eye as a NIB/G? A Nice Indian Boy or Girl as opposed to what? The other 1 billion Indians in the country? In India, I'd think the NIB/G would be much more regionalized – a Nice Malayalee Boy/Girl, for example – because people there are more part of their own regional communities than the national one. Whereas with Indian people living abroad, the numbers of these regional communities are small enough that now they identify more with the national identity than the regional one. At this level, the Nice Malayalee Boy/Girl has no meaning, so the term's replaced by the NIB/G that we've all heard way too much about. Of course, with increased immigration, certain communities grow big enough that the national affiliation is dispensed with, to be replaced with regional ones again.

In commenting to that post, both Cale and Salil made points that I think merit discussion, so here we are.

From Cale:

“Nice Indian Boy though - hmm well, truly, properly, there're none of course, but the intensely fucked-up ones aren't so much in the country as tens of thousands of miles out of it. They're either born there and face "identity issues" or are immigrants that're disillusioned by the evils and loose morals of the filthy putrid icky West.

But here, they're either all dangerous-like a la Delhi Jats ... ”

Here I'd have to disagree. I'd I don't believe there's any difference in the level of fucked-up-ness between Indians at home or abroad. To me, a Manu Sharma is just as frightening as a Kimveer Gill, because the level of entitlement that makes you feel you can shoot a waitress for not giving you a drink and then get away with it borders on the psychotic. Different things mess you up – overindulgent parents, chemical imbalances – but the end result is equally scary.

Now Salil:

But it's not just Indians - plenty of others people immediately exempt their own kind from so many common issues. Indians, Aussies, Poms, etc - we're all human; ergo, fucked up in some way or another.

[As for Kimveer Gill, that incident asks the same question about another false stereotype. Remember how Moore's Bowling for Columbine started giving people the impression that Canada was some sort of lovely, gun-free utopia while madmen roamed the USA with .45s? Seems like quite a few people bought into that. *So* many people were shocked by the Montreal shootings. "In Canada? But isn't it so quiet and gun-free there?"]

I'm not sure I agree with the idea that all groups exempt themselves from common issues, because it seems to me that the development of the Nice Italian Boy (cf Mambo Italiano) or the Nice Greek Girl (cf My Big Fat Greek Wedding) or any other Nice Young Thing is the product of being part of a minority group in a larger community - and that it's only the Nice Young Minority Person who is somehow considered, by members of his/her own community, to be above the vices or peccadilloes or issues of the society outside. (Holy Run On Sentences, Batman!)

And yes, Canada is not some crime-free Utopia - last summer was actually dubbed the Summer of the Gun by the Canadian press because of the sudden increase in gun-related crime. Mind you, apart from a few neighbourhoods I'd consider Toronto completely safe - but I think we Torontonians have had to give up our illusions of living in a pristine gun-less environment. I guess it needed something as violent and jarring as the Dawson College Shooting for the stereotype to finally shatter south of the border as well.

More feedback is totally welcome.