It was both the best and the worst of times for Louisiana in the fall of 2003. The gubernatorial race had graduated from being fought between a current prisoner of the law and a member of the Ku Klux Klan to a series of debates between a female, white Democrat and a Republican man of East Indian descent. Apparently progressive for the current national ethos; yet, the issues were still Louisiana’s long-sought-after upward mobility in the fields of business, education, and general American popularity. Both of the candidates' platforms seemed only mildly convincing to the booth-weary voter.
Wait, what did you say? A white woman and a brown-skinned Indian man openly vying for the governorship of Louisiana, and with support? The crowds screamed in bouts of excessive self-delightment, “What a contest! What progress! Do we vote for one minority or the other? How far we have come!” Louisiana had indeed arrived and the complexion of southern stewardship had changed. But, was this the same ol’ two-step disguised as a modern medley? What ever happened to standing for someone who was going to be a voice and hand of positive change?
Hence, this voter’s quandary. Did I want to vote for Kathleen Babineaux Blanco whose political principles are closer to mine? Or ought I help get elected Bobby Jindal, the first Indian-American governor in the history of the United States even if I don’t agree with his views? While not naïve enough to back a candidate just because he looks more like me than the other person does, I did feel the pull of responsibility towards my ethnicity. And this wasn’t an obligatory stance, as it turned out to be for the majority of East Indian voters in this state. One has to admit that despite the immense contribution of Indian-Americans to this nation’s economic and scientific infrastructure, we are a grossly under-represented political minority. Few of us voluntarily run for office; in fact, lots leave our civic fate in the hands of the white, black and Hispanic politicians we choose to represent us.
Yes, this is America and not the Old Country where it is each faction to itself. Or is it? Why then do we have national Black caucuses, leagues of Hispanic voters, and the like? Historically, these are groups with limited participation in government, who feel that their interests are not going to be acknowledged if they don’t appoint their own to government. Their perspectives and situations are missing from the process; their voices are not part of the dialogue that seeks solutions to problems. This in turn serves not only as a statement of the gap between political representation and social reality, but also as a slight admonishment of the participatory void rendered by Indian-Americans in this nation today. Quite simply, if we as Indian-Americans are going to be treated as “a people,” it’s about time we get our cultural viewpoints in the mix.
All of this said, I kept arriving back at the original question: Blanco or Jindal? Common sense prevailed, however, and I utilized my INS-given right and ability to listen to the candidates and their platforms, as painful as Louisiana’s myriad issues can be. Who was it that said, “Judge not a man by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character?” This advice applies to people with brown skin, too.
Was I glad my dilemma prolonged itself into the wee hours of election morning, aided by horrid negative campaign ads on the part of both parties. While Kathleen Blanco is no Shakespearean oratrix and does not possess any special gifts of vision and originality, Bobby Jindal was his own undoing. It was a close election, with Blanco earning only 4 more percentage points than her competition. But, what happened to Bobby, the Republican media darling who had his name splashed in red, white, blue, and lights all over the state compared to Blanco’s demure baby blue and black? When I began to pay attention, I noticed how many things the man had going against him. Some were factors that would be considered my own bias, but other important ones that were just plain political suicide.
Having recently arrived from Washington D.C. after a key stint in Bush’s Department of Health and Human Services (he worked for Tommy Thompson – my old governor – two de-merits right there!), young Jindal had to work very hard to get the attention and backing of this state. Of course, he wouldn’t have left his old job to run for this one if he didn’t have the vote of confidence from important Republican players in Louisiana such as the state GOP and Mike Foster, the current Republican governor. Shortly thereafter, he began to get the support of most of Foster’s interests and constituents, and the adulation of the Indian-American community, particularly those with business affiliations.
Following the primary began the series of campaign ads and debates that truly exhibited Jindal’s color. Again, Blanco's performance was not particularly stellar, but along with his own gawky and unemotional style of communication, these displays brought out the nature of a state government under Jindal. One that would serve the businesses and not necessarily the healthcare and educational needs of this state. When people are homeless, penniless, and dying, and schools cannot graduate literate children, there is no justification to line the pockets of business interests of Louisiana. In his last few years in office, Ray Nagin, the mayor of New Orleans, has strikingly shown us that there isn't a viable conduit for wealth to trickle down from the economic gains of a few parties, much less pour. These people need basic healthcare and education to save them from their abject poverty before they can start to accept the jobs that a government-corporation agreement can bring in. Jindal was not out to win hearts, or maybe he was but not aware that it wasn’t on the agenda.
Coupled with Nagin's surprising endorsement of Jindal, a business-oriented stratagem began to emerge from the pieces of the “Who’s Going To Be Governor?” puzzle. The Jindal consortium could not satisfactorily address the education and healthcare void, refused to meet with key activists, and nicely surrounded itself with the air of the moral winner (thanks in part to Bobby’s ample reserve of politically transparent yet ecumenically nebulous ramblings – problems solve themselves if he prays on them, reminds me of someone). Despite all of this, Jindal was poised to win sheerly by the power of numbers – the votes of Foster’s backers, Nagin’s gifts of crucial black votes, the buoyant anticipation of Indian-Americans, and a variety of conservative and corporate concerns throughout the state.
Why didn’t Jindal win? Blanco has no particular magnetism either, so what happened? The most popular explanations are a) that Blanco knows the state well of late and surpassed him in exhibiting concern for the people of Louisiana, while Jindal was just a new kid on the block who needed to be less impassive and more charismatic to win the hearts and votes of this southern state, and b) Jindal nobly opted out of responding to and reciprocating the pivotal radio and television campaign ads right before election day.
While I do not argue the probability of the above theories, I have a strong suspicion that Bobby Jindal did not get elected simply because the south is not yet ready for an Indian-American governor. The same forces in conservative deep-Louisiana, that the Republican Party so badly needed to get itself in power, are the ones that I contend did not vote for a brown-skinned, Indian-American man to be their leader. The racism inherent in the party that Jindal stands for, especially its southern extension, got the native Cajun daughter in power before any other minority ever would. Blanco may have won on her merits, Jindal may have lost on his disadvantages, but it is possible that this was a simple case of the state cutting off its nose to spite its face – “I’d rather vote for a white gal than a brown boy.” Do you really think Bubba and Cooter would stand for a Jindal or a Krishna at the helm of their shrimp boat?
Regardless of who won and why, what still remains is Louisiana’s Indian-American body politic. These are people who ethno-consciously cheered for the Indian son done good, regardless of his platform and the political outcome. Would they all have benefited and been represented by him? Yet, they backed themselves into an interesting corner by backing Jindal. A lot of them are hurting because of the crash from euphoria to defeat, yet most exhibit a sense of disenfranchisement by association. They feel that the political process has let them down, even though it is one they did not use with realism (and I don’t mean the “fact” that an Indian man cannot be an American governor, but the one that states that any candidate one supports can lose at this game). We are left with a generation of Louisianan Indians who are Republicans simply to vote for Bobby Jindal and what he promised the party could deliver to them. Name recognition is manna from heaven for a political party, and the Republicans may have these votes in the future even if they don’t run someone of Indian descent.
The Indian community can definitely pride itself on the fact that one of their own has risen this fast and that far. My hope is that Bobby Jindal’s campaign serves as a beacon and an anti-deterrent for young Indian-Americans to take more active roles in the government that professes to represent their interests. We are not merely cut out to be doctors, software engineers, researchers, businesspeople, or yet another minority. We are Americans, we can break the political glass ceiling, and we are to serve all Americans as leaders, not just our own community and special interests. Some day, we will overcome reality and our own self-imposed limitations. Bobby Jindal made the mistake of marrying himself to Louisiana business interests and not those of the people. He was too unemotive, too removed, and frankly too different. The end result was his rejection and his ethnicity with it. Getting back into a position of a winning chance is an uphill battle for any political candidate; it is markedly harder for minority Americans. And that was the taming of Bobby Jindal.
Just flew back from Europe and, man, are my arms tired from the turbulence over the Atlantic. I was gone for 7 weeks ... you did know that, didn't you? Work-related mundania, mostly consisting of training on stuff I already know. Regardless, never bite the hand that signs your expense statement and sends you on an almost-all-expense-paid trip to Europe.
The weekends were fulfilling, spent mainly in London, Paris, Cologne (or Köln, for you purists), and Amsterdam, not to mention a whole week in Barcelona towards the end. An unplanned trip into the new British library by St. Pancras station put me face to face with the Magna Carta, one of the first 50 Gutenberg press Bibles from 1459, Leonardo da Vinci's Codex, the Codex Sinaitica (the oldest version of the New Testament), and many more ancient scrolls and texts. To imagine that Caroline and I went into the building merely to get out of the rain!!! A short walk away, the British Museum was also highly impressive, owing to the ancient Egyptian, Babylonian and Sumerian artifacts, Rosetta Stone, and the 800,000 year old quartz spear head from Olduvai Gorge from which I had the honor of standing less than 1 foot away. Can you believe it - human technology from 800,000 years ago??? Despite my being a geologist who deals in millions and billions of years and who considers 800,000 years to be a blink of an eye, the visceral nature of this particular object and the thought of an 800,000-year-old hand chiseling it out of a chunk of quartz had chills running down my spine. Almost a million years later, and we are as sophisticated.
Returning to the States just in time for Halloween was a great decision, which I will describe in a later entry. Back to REAL food, Cajun and Creole cooking, the mother's milk, the elixir of satisfaction, as opposed to the culinary products that result from the terrible spice shortage that seems to plague the Netherlands.
Yet, a longing to go back to the tiny kingdom on the North Sea. I think I now know why. The Dutch are the perfect blend of obsessive-compulsive and laid back. While they are not pathologically cleaning their cities, beautifying their parks, and outdoing each other in dressing well (and I mean well), the people of Netherland really know when to call it a day and have a good time. They don't sweat the petty stuff, either. They don't care if you are black, white, brown, or purple; they couldn't care less if you are gay or straight. But, they do care if you litter or if you don't purchase a round of beer when it's your turn. Additionally, did you know that Spanish voters can check a "None of the above candidates" box and their vote gets counted? If more than 50% of voters do not want any of the listed candidates, another election has to be held. What a great way to reduce voter apathy and get the populace excited about choosing their government representative! I really think these guys have their priorities in the right order.
While on the topic of European priorities, a socio-religious motif I discovered in the continent is the need to explicate the phenomenon of Jesus via architectural channels. The tallest building in almost every village, town, and city is the church, specifically the Catholic church. Ranging from the austere and minimalist to the ornate and carved, these places of worship delved and probed and shucked and tilled into the stories of the Bible through sculpture, stained glass, paintings, and writings, aside from the obvious and almost obligatory Jesus hanging from a cross at the far end. The most logical and straightforward explanation would be that the building is a place of worship and that the art and architecture was put there purely to illustrate the tenets of the religion at hand. However, I feel that it was done for more than illustrative purposes. If it were, why wouldn't there be the exact same expression at every church? Why the differences in style, and between churches in the same town? Why confuse the under-educated locals if the sole object were to awe these folk into prayer and good Christian living? The architects who designed these churches and their patrons were trying to display their religion and find additional meaning in it through their art. This was their method of contemplation and meditation on what they considered sacred.
Take Barcelona's churches, for instance. On one end of the city is the Gothic cathedral, gargantuan and respectable in its own right. And almost on the other end is Temple de la Sagrada Familia, envisioned and created by Antoni Gaudi. Two large churches, housed by the same city, that explore the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus in completely different ways. Gaudi was a strict Catholic, but he truly revolutionized the structure and appearance of a traditionally somber church. It had to be because he found for himself the connection between god, Jesus, and all of the things on this planet, and elucidated that discovery by designing a colossal dazzler that does everything to connect the earth and the sky.
Barcelona was constipated until Gaudi came along and made the city worth looking at. The man's work is a testament to following your passion with discipline. Function before form; the function of celebrating all that is benevolent before throwing columns and crosses at it. And what forms they are. Ones that make you want to fall back on your ass in wonderment, and drop your jaw to the ground in sheer admiration of Gaudi's sensitivity to nature, his sensibility in incorporating the beauty of this earth into a tangible home for the weary, and his impeccable architectural timing. Notre Dame and the Dom in Cologne were beautiful, too ... how could the good Christian not feel the spirit in places like that? (And that's what the "pious" popes and their coffers were going for, let me tell you. Feel god and pass the cash.) Gaudi's architectural marvel, however, doesn't bring out guilt and humility in you. Quite the opposite, it makes you want to revolutionize worship. Standing there in the unfinished nave of the temple, I could envision the priests wearing robes and vestments by crazy designers like Gaultier and Galliano, the choir singing from missals written by C.S. Lewis topped off with an aria by Aretha Franklin, communions of tropical fruit cocktail from the Caribbean and red, red Shiraz from Australia ... draping myself in crimson velvet to stare at the top of the spire in congratulation of god. What a fine world the spirit did make that we could worship it this way. How much respect and love would we have for each other then? Isn't that what religion originally set out to gain? That would be my recipe for the new Catholicism. Guilt shmuilt.
Europa Europa ... may common sense continue to shed its grace on thee. While elsewhere in the world, tyrants and spindoctors do their best to demote character and culture, you still have something of great value that lives and breathes on your land. I hope that you find the answer to your ecclesiastical mystery, and in more than just shrouds and saints. Until then, here's a toast to your hospitality. This ethno-junkie will be back for more.
Copyright © 2003 Maitri V-R All Rights Reserved for a rainy day