The minorities dynamics in the age of Trump

Teimouri, Amir

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Description

Title

The minorities dynamics in the age of Trump

Author(s)

Teimouri, Amir

Issue Date

2018-04

Keyword(s)

Sociology

Abstract

In a beautiful rainy day in Chicago in March 26, 2017, I happened to see dozens of Hindu-Americans marching against CNN and one of the most prominent religion scholars and an Iranian-origin, Reza Aslan. Aslan and his colleagues had produced a documentary by the name of “Believer” for CNN. The show was focused on the extreme fringes of religions. One of the episodes was centered on the Aghori sect of Hinduism. The Aghori episode shows that a few Hindus eating human flesh and drinking urine from skull. These behaviors, as the documentary narrates, is a type of resistance against the Hindu Cast system. Even though the show attempted to call attentions to spirituality and the resistance culture embedded within this group, it disturbed a lot of Hindu-Americans when the US had just started a very contentious period of race relations. On that day, I saw Hindu-Americans calling CNN and Aslan racist. This protest, which is, in part, related to my research on Islam in America reveals some ironies of our time; theoretically, minorities should be able to get along when they are under the massive pressures. CNN’s show, however, revealed the irony that minorities cannot be always good allies.

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Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2018 Amir Teimouri

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