A recent, good Newsweek article covers one of the secondary themes of my blog - the uniqueness of the second generation Indian experience.  I was phone interviewed by the author - Barbara Krantowitz - when she started the research for the article back in January & I sent her on a few paths .   She originally found me via my blog article reviewing Where's the Party, Yaar (interestingly, this is the 3rd such press interview I've given as the result of a blog article). 

I'm not quoted in the article but there are a few traces of our conversation in the final product -

...Politicians here may be in an uproar about outsourcing jobs to India, but India has also been exporting tremendous talent to this country. Young South Asians are transforming America's cultural landscape, setting the pace in business, the arts and media as well as the traditional fields favored by their parents' generation, medicine and technology. Many have spent time on several continents; they're multilingual, and comfortable mixing cultures. They're also often children of affluence; the 2 million South Asians here are wealthier and better educated than almost any other immigrant group.

..."South Asians are following in the footsteps of Jews," says Saran, who came from India in 1967 at 24. "They're following the Jewish model of penetrating the structural arrangement of society—economics, politics—without losing their cultural identity," he says... Indeed, many young South Asians in this country—who casually refer to each other as desi, a Hindi term that's roughly the equivalent of paesano—often feel like they're straddling two cultures.

...there are now vibrant South Asian communities all over the country, and the demographics are increasingly diverse, encompassing everyone from ABCDs (for American-born confused desis) to FOBs (those fresh off the boat).

One specific point that Krantowitz somewhat sidesteps is my contention that desi's aren't merely "straddling 2 cultures" but are instead rather actively synthesizing a new, separate culture.   The previous, confused Desi's were deemed so because they aspired to the brand of coolness of their White (or in some almost comical cases, Black) friends.  

Now, however, 20yr old Desi's at college campuses actively fulfill their social aspirations by being, well, desi.   One review of Where's the Party Yaar noted, only semi-sarcastically, that the kids protrayed lived in an odd parallel world with no white people.   Similar to the all-Black worlds in The Cosby Show, Different World, or practically every show on the WB or UPN, we're now at a point where the panoply of contrasting characters to tell an interesting story can be found entirely within the Desi crowd.  Cultural authenticity is a tough thing to describe but you know it when you see it - and, as I argued in my WTPY review, I contend we truly are seeing it within the 18-25 crowd.

The Jewish model is somewhat apropos because of the extreme success that the desi crowd has had playing within the dominant, white culture for socio-economic gain (Newsweek notes - "the median income in Indian-American families is more than $60,000, compared with the national average of $38,885").   However, I think the Jewish model is inadequate for describing cultural gains.   Jews have had tremendous success within the American equivalent of "high culture" as behind the scenes operators (e.g. Hollywood) but have only been partially successful at producing clearly Jewish cultural icons for their own youth much less mass culture (Seinfeld comes to mind as a somewhat overtly Jewish figure;  Adam Sandler also occasionally leads with Jewish cultural themes in his work).

The desi crowd, by contrast, is rather actively synthesizing a "low culture" and creating youth icons in a more assertive, confident way.  Music by Sukhbir and Punjabi MC, for example, has clear Rap influences while still maintaining a strong desi flavor and possessing a growing, cross cultural appeal.  Interplay with Rap, Latin, and Reggae isn't readily associated with Jewish cultural products to say the least -- in fact, it's precisely this disconnect that feeds an ironic sub-genre found in Jewish comedy like  The Hebrew Hammer.

Nevertheless, I'm a bit of a cultural geek and I readily acknowledge that I've spilled more bits on this topic than Krantowitz et. al. could ever within the confines of an introductory article in a mass media pub like Newsweek.   The article is a flattering portrayal and is hopefully a harbringer of more good recognition to come.