Sanjaya Malakar’s attempt to become the next “American Idol” is recent history. But what he represents is probably the future, albeit a distant one.
People of South Asian descent make up a relatively new immigrant population in the United States, just about 2 million people out of 300 million here.
They don’t yet have the clout to create a runaway hit, says Aseem Chhabra, a columnist for Mumbai Mirror and freelance entertainment writer.
But South Asians have made great strides in gaining solid footing in the American cultural landscape in the past decade as the children of a large wave of immigrants from the late 1960s began coming of age.
Henna tattoos, saris, Punjabi folk music and Bollywood all have left their mark on the mainstream. Madonna and Gwen Stefani made wearing bindis a fashion statement. The television season’s only breakout hit, “Heroes,” has an Indian narrator.
“It’s not just a mystical little community anymore,” says Arun Venugopal, who runs a blog for South Asian journalists (SAJA forum). “There are enough of these reference points that people have of South Asian culture: arranged weddings, Bollywood, music, dance, strict social taboos, professionals, doctors that sort of stuff.”
In the world of literature and art cinema, South Asians – especially Indians – have a solid résumé. Most recently, “The Namesake,” a film based on the book by Pulitzer Prize-winning Indian-born American author Jhumpa Lahiri, has reached beyond the immigrant community. The film stars Kal Penn, the go-to actor of South Asian heritage in the United States.
While Penn occasionally lands roles that are not based on ethnicity, his greatest success has come as a comedic actor in the film “Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle.”
Many Indian characters and cultural references in the media are used for comic effect. Even Malakar didn’t completely ride a wave of love to the top. Backed by Howard Stern and the website votefortheworst.com, his endurance was partly based on his wobbly voice.
“It’s not like people are going, ‘Wow, this guy’s really talented.’ It’s a bit like Apu from ‘The Simpsons.’ It’s kind of like everyone is laughing at it,” says Dipa Basu, professor of sociology at Pitzer College. “There’s still not that complete kind of acceptance and inclusion because there is that notion of hilarity, spectacle and that kind of stuff.”
This predicament is not new. Blacks and then Latinos struggled for years before finding acceptance on
television and in movies in roles that celebrated their culture rather than playing on racial stereotypes.
Blacks, who make up about 12 percent of the U.S. population, needed 1980s hits like “The Cosby Show” and “Do the Right Thing” to start being taken seriously by network and studio execs.
“I think what’s happened is that black pop paved the way,” Chhabra said. “I think that if Bill Cosby and ‘The Jeffersons’ had not made it into the mainstream, if that kind of work had not been done, Indian Americans would have had much more of a struggle.”
The South Asian immigrant arc in the United States has been significantly easier than the black narrative, though. Besides not sharing a long history of oppression in the country with blacks, South Asians, especially Indians, are on sounder economic footing.
Their median household income is more than double that of the median black family, according to census data, which makes their demographic more marketable.
It also helps that in the major cities more than 25 percent of the South Asian population is in the advertisers’ magic under-25 age bracket.
