"Indo-Chic" & "Arabs, Islam and the Dogmas of the West"

The concept of the Indo-Chic, as defined by Sunaina Maira, is that they are the South Asian Americans who have trouble finding cultural authenticity in their own culture. As illustrated, the differences between the South Asian immigrants and the South Asian Americans include: different levels of understandings behind their traditions and having different attitudes towards sharing their culture with others. 

For the South Asians who have lived a part of their lives in South Asia, they know and understand the meanings behind the traditions through the culture that they were raised in. Meanwhile, South Asian Americans who were raised in the United States have less exposure to their native environment, losing out on some aspects of the ethnic authenticity that their parents or immigrant counterparts have. I understand this feeling because as a first generation American born in my family, I have a hard time being able to connect to my family's cultural traditions that they do back home, leaving me to fill in the blanks for why we do things with little to no assistance from others. Even though I am part of that culture, the history and the understandings behind it is not fully learned, making me question if I am any less part of my culture than those who were born their and were raised on that culture their whole life. 

The different attitudes that the South Asian immigrants and South Asian Americans exhibit may be based on what values and experience they were taught growing up. For the the South Asians who were born and raised in their home land, they were constantly surrounded by people of similar beliefs and cultural backgrounds, making it easy for them to communicate and spread ideas. Moving to a different country, they may see people who also partake in their culture as an opportunity for them to connect and communicate with each other as they can now share something of similar interest and like. Unlike those born and raised in their home country, South Asian Americans are more often than not protective of their culture when they see it being portrayed by anyone who is not of their same cultural background. Growing up in the United States surrounded by different cultures and attitudes towards their beliefs, they may have grown to want to protect what little they have to connect themselves to their home culture. Similarly, I recently saw a video done on the controversy on the American adaptation of Ghost in the Shell a Japanese manga. The video showed the host interviewing Japanese youth in Japan on what they thought about the Ghost in the Shell trailer. The Japanese youth responded in very positive reviews, saying that they really liked the production value and that the fact that it doesn't show a Japanese actress as the main character shouldn't stop people from seeing the movie if it's made well. This made me think of how people native to a country really enjoy their creations, ideas, culture, and language being shared through the world. 

Also, the idea that people are so quick to forget the bad in order to celebrate the good is interesting as it shows that people will nitpick the good things in a culture and choose to celebrate those parts whilst ignoring the prejudice and injustice that was done upon them previously.

Edward Said's idea on how the dogmas of Asians and Arabs and the non-western people is insightful on how it shows that prejudice and fear is something that the masses are willing to give in to. The fact that the West sees themselves as the superior moral, technological, and power of the world is very infuriating to the rest of the world that is not in that equation. Even though it may be true that they have accomplished many things, they should not just automatically assume themselves to be the best at everything, because then it just seems ignorant and cocky to the rest of the world. The prejudice lies here at the fact where the West sees themselves as superior to the Eastern nations. The fact that Western education has not even attempted to reform their ideas on how the powers work now just proves how arrogant and ignorant they are. I see this to be an issue because once they think of themselves as superior, they start to think that they have the power to do anything without any effective protest or discontent from the other nations.