Scoring Brownie Points

The next-time I read some feel-good crap about Indians/Indo-Canadians/East Indians/South Asians/brown people/whatever by Prithi Yelaja, Staff Reporter, I may just cancel my subscription to the Toronto Star.

Initially the stories were interesting. It did make me swell with pride - Big-ups, good to see brown peeps doing well, represent. I’m not of Indian extraction but appearance-wise I always get mistaken for one, so whatever – so long as Torontonians get a positive impression of people that look like me from these articles, I guess I can somehow bask in that.

But I have been reading Prithi for over a year now, and now her one-dimensional feel-good stories are getting tired and trite to the point of nauseousness. On Sunday there was an article entitled "Riding wave of India's new prosperity", about some entrepreuneur who'd received the "Entrepreneur of the Year award "from the Indo-Canada Chamber of Commerce by multiplying his asset fund management firm's net work to the near-billion by astutely investing in blue-chip Indian stocks (Incidentally, the article mentions he was a former actuary too - nothing more lethal than an actuary playing the markets.) I just knew the author would be Prithi Yelaja... and groan, wouldn’t you guess it, it was her.

I question the necessity of these articles. It would be a different matter if this was an aggrieved, disenfrachised community, and if these “successes” were few and far between. Were that the case, perhaps it would be a good thing to bring such stories to the forefront insofar as it will aid in reforming prejudices held by the general public. Wouldn’t it be good to read a story about black guy who wasn’t an athlete or a criminal? We might think “wow, a black guy runs that firm!” And it functions a collective self-esteem boost for members of that community, a disproportionate number of whom are disenfranchised - there's a brother they can take pride in. But if these successes are everywhere, then do we really feel the need to hear about them? I don’t need to be hit be hit over the head day-after-day about Indo-Canadian "success" stories – thanks, you guys are great, we get the point.

Doing so also betrays, in essence, a weakness, a sort of pathology of victimhood. One senses an element of posturing here of a group vainly seeking validation and acknowledgement and approval - when really, successes exist in every community that we don't hear about and really, nobody outside really cares. If you’re good, you know you’re good; people will see it with their own eyes and implicitly acknowledge it; a smart guy doesn’t need to say or feel the need to justify he’s smart – his achievements speak for him. Likewise, we don’t need articles about how Jews are successful, because everyone privately acknowledges that any law firm will have its fair share of Levys, Bernsteins, and Schwartzes. One does not need to read stories about the financial might of the Hong Kong community and their entrepreneurial dynamism – there is no need! One sees it driving along Hwy 7, in Pacific Mall and Times Square and First Markham Place and Splendid China Tower.

So how about more balanced coverage? How about stories about that Indian M.D. whose only recourse is to drive a cab because his foreign credentials aren’t recognized? How about stories on the impoverished of India, whose ranks are scores-fold greater than those in IT/call centres? How about expositions on those people that inhabit those shabby high-rise fortresses in Thorncliffe, Rexdale, Malvern? I would like to hear their stories. Simply highlighting the positives stories through rose-tinted lenses to score brownie points with white people (pun intended) while sweeping all the negatives under the rug is doing a gross disservice (although this is a mentality common in the community, and Prithi is privy to that.). Moreover, this betrays the essence of journalism – namely, the pursuit and exposition of truth.