You Will Never Be Able To See Yourself As Others Do

I just got home from an event hosted at NYU's Kimmel Center for University Life (yeah, that's really what it's called) that was intended to examine ten years of South Asian arts and activism in New York City. It functioned as an interesting reflection on the progressive/artistic groundswell that was just coming into being in the city at the time. Or at least that's what I gathered from the panel, which was composed of several female artists and educators.

During the Q&A an older man who identified himself as a third-generation Chinese American asked a question I had been wondering myself: where were all the men? The panelists seemed to take the query as an insult, dismissing it with comments like, "studying finance." I was taken aback at how quickly some of them had assumed the mentality of those elements of mainstream and south asian culture set on presenting desis as the "model minority," a phrase that functions as a perjorative within some elements of desi culture.

I attended a university with an undergraduate population of 30,000, but met only one other desi male who was active in the political activist community on campus. I had never thought about that fact before this evening. So where were the men? Was there a male gender vacuum in this political and artistic movement? Are there any progressive or artistic role models for 15-year-old boys?

I did not raise the point for fear of seeming quarrelsome.