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The shocking racial epithet hurled at USC’s Indian student body president

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Utterly shocking and disgusting! Is it what the Indians who flock to US Universities and pay through their noses deserve! I do not think it is isolated! Ms Sampath had the guts to question this in public domain..For one such Rini we have hundreds others who bury these personal insults, taunts, disparaging comments and private/public humiliation voiceless and dumb!

Thank you Rini for standing up against this incident valiantly and not wallow in stupor!

The shocking racial epithet hurled at USC’s student body president


By Lindsey Bever September 21, 2015

imrs.php

Rini Sampath at the University of Southern California. (Courtesy of Rini Sampath)



When Rini Sampath decided to run for student body president at the University of Southern California, she said some students told her she would never win. She was a young woman and a minority, and she was running on a ticket with another woman, who was also a minority.


Their advice? Choose a white, male student as your running mate.


Sampath, 21, is no stranger to discrimination. She was born in Theni, a district in Tamil Nadu state in India, and she moved to America when she was 6. Classmates in Arizona asked whether her mom was from Mars, she said. Others told her she couldn’t play with them.


Why? Because she had brown skin.


“I had self-esteem issues because I was an immigrant,” she told The Washington Post. “I was struggling to learn English and I was struggling with what I looked like, in a sea of kids who didn’t look like me.”


Sampath and her female running mate, Jordan Fowler, won the election and now serve as president and vice president, respectively, of USC’s
Undergraduate Student Government. Still, Sampath said, she doesn’t believe many USC students see her first as a student leader. Instead, she said, she thinks they see her — and judge her — based on where she is from.



Sampath’s struggle — no doubt the same for many minority students, she said — came into focus Saturday night when she was walking back from a friend’s apartment.


Someone leaned out of a fraternity house window, she said, and shouted: “You Indian piece of s—!” Then he hurled a drink at her.


“Once his fraternity brothers realized it was me, they began to apologize,” she wrote in a Facebook post. “This stung even more.


“I couldn’t quite figure out why their after-the-fact apologies deepened the wound. But one of my friends explained it to me the best this morning: ‘Because now you know, the first thing they see you as is subhuman.’ ”
After the incident, Sampath said she was in shock.


“It brought back all these memories of growing up as immigrant in America,” she told The Washington Post. “All the things people said started playing back in my head, over and over, like a broken record.


“It makes me wonder what would have happened had it been someone else. That’s an aspect that concerns me. It just makes me wonder: ‘Is this how they see us first and foremost — for the color of our skin?'”
12041396_10206704269102058_1546950560_o-200x300.jpg
(Courtesy of Rini Sampath)


Sampath, a senior international relations major, opened up about the incident on her Facebook page Sunday morning because, she said, she wants to call attention to racism on her Los Angeles campus and to encourage other students who have been victimized by it to come forward and share their own stories.


“Some people don’t believe racism like this can happen on our campus,” she wrote in her post. “Some people continue to doubt the need for safe spaces and the need for expanded cultural resource centers or the need for gender neutral bathrooms or the need for diversity in our curriculum or the need for diversity in our professors or the need for diversity in dialogue.


“And to those who continue to believe we’re just playing the ‘race’ card, I ask you this — what’s there to win here? A sense of respect? A sense of humanity? A sense of love and compassion for others regardless of how they look like?”


Almost immediately, Sampath said, university officials reached out to her in support, students sent messages showing they care and the person responsible for creating what has turned into a nationwide uproar contacted her to apologize.


“I appreciate it, but hope it becomes a learning experience,” she told The Washington Post. “Apologies don’t fix these deep wounds. … [the slur] was a verbal assault on my identity — on who I am as a person.”


USC Dean of Religious Life Varun Soni said the university has a zero-tolerance policy for such behavior, which he called “cowardly and hateful remarks.” He said that he has asked Sampath to file a formal complaint with the university’s Bias Assessment Response & Support team, which will review the case and decide how to proceed.


“USC and higher education in general tries to look at incidences like this as learning and growing opportunities, not just punitive opportunities,” Soni told The Washington Post. “We want to create a dialogue.”


Sampath declined to publicly identify the person who verbally attacked her. Soni said he does not know who the person is or what his punishment may be. But, the religious-life dean said, the focus should not be on the alleged assailant but rather on the university’s overwhelming response to Sampath’s story.


If anyone can ignite a conversation on campus, he said, Sampath can.
For minority students, Sampath said: “Racism is alive and well.”
” ‘You Indian piece of s—‘ ” is the type of language attackers have used before brutally murdering someone,” she wrote on Facebook. “Just look at Inderjit Singh Mukker” — a Sikh man who was brutally attacked by an Illinois driver who yelled “Terrorist, go back to your country” as he punched him in the face.


And the racial epithet that came from that fraternity house window, Sampath said, “continues to ring so loudly in my ears I still can’t shake it from me.
“Whether racism or sexism or homophobia or transphobia happens on the Internet, or behind closed doors, or in a small group setting, or as ‘just a joke,’ it’s not okay. It’s never okay.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...nt-body-president/?postshare=6441442892436310
 
The shocking racial epithet hurled at USC’s Indian student body president.

Racial prejudices are always there from time immemorial and will continue so for ever in future as well. The defect is in creation itself.

When people have to compete with each other, they use all epithets on each other to gain the position. Indian society has shamelessly used these degrading methods for generations against the oppressed in the name of caste and colour. Even today inspite of Social Reformers and Strict Laws, segregation of people prevail in various forms. Let us be honest in evaluating our attitude towards others when it comes to economic and social competition. Here in Bangalore we have seen this trouble cropping-up in frequent intervels. Apart from Religious and Caste prejudices, the discrimination against language minorities can be seen often. SeasonalTamil migrant labour which has been working for generations here have to return to Tamil Nadu, when ever Cauvery water dispute raise its head. Some time back migrants from N E States vacated the city in panic, because of fear of their safety due to different look and life style.
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US, a nation of migrants is better in this respect, because of stringent laws against any form of discrimination. How ever no one should forget that the first generation of migrant is viewed as second class citizens in any Counrty where they replant themselves. Next generations will get absorbed into the Society with ease.

Brahmanyan,
Bangalore.
 
We all live with discrimination of some sort or other -it could be religion ,caste, income disparity, family status etc .

So it hardly matters , In US it could be race or colour.

How to tackle it?. One must empower oneself and refuse to put up with it.

Or escape to a better place if not possible to minimise the chances of discrimination.

there are some who look for discrimination when none exists due to one or two bad experiences.

ultimately it is a matter of self worth. If one ignores discrimination, normally one is happier.
 
"Indian" is hardly a negative racial epithet. There may always be dirty fighting in any election or competition. But Indians are doing very well in California and overall in the US, thank you very much.
 
We all live with discrimination of some sort or other -it could be religion ,caste, income disparity, family status etc .

So it hardly matters , In US it could be race or colour.

True..each country has its own version of discrimination.

No big deal..its a known fact out here itself where I live that for certain business to thrive one take a partner of a particular race just to get stuff done easily.

When I was in college in India running for student body was very state based...many only wanted a local boy cos he would know the way around better.

So a local boy won..a non local guy was threatened not to stand.

This is politics..its everywhere.

Just to add I had attended a medical talk some few weeks back where I was quite shocked to know that fellow docs did not have a good opinion of patients from Africa and some females were saying that "how can you treat them when they are known for all sorts of crime and weird behavior?"

Now I totally believe my African patients when they tell me they are badly treated by some docs.

So you see discrimination is everywhere..everyone of us would have faced discrimination at some point in our lives and will face more to come.
Very few humans actually do not practice discrimination..in fact hardly anyone does not practice discrimination....we all have some minor forms of discrimination that we might not display ..so no one is sans discrimination cos we have certain "preferences".
 
It is only 'majority' versus 'minority'. Discrimination is quite common and prevalent in all countries. Even it is there within the caste with different sampradayas, if one caste has more numbers than other caste. We will have to accept it and move on.
 
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