Dance Your PhD 2016- 'Steps to Our Culture': Indian Immigrants, Identity, and Belonging HD

‘Steps to Our Culture’: Indian Immigrant Identities and a Constructing a Sense of Belonging Pangri Mehta Doctoral Candidate, USF In a world where physical and symbolic racism treats the existence of black bodies as a problem, W.E.B. Du Bois poses a question in the Souls of Black Folk: How does it feel to be a problem? For decades researchers have studied the impact of racism on black folk, but Dubois’ question gives rise to a new, unexpected question that Vijay Prashad poses: How does it feel to be a solution? Prashad directs this question toward South Asians who are frequently used as a “weapon” against blacks for the “right way” to be a minority. Though the “model minority” stereotype and “honorary white” label appear to be positive, they also dismiss the racialized experiences of South Asians in the U.S. Recognized by the University of South Florida with a fellowship, my dissertation explores the complex ways that racism shapes the lives one of the most successful minority groups in the U.S.: South Asians. Using a local Indian dance studio, which proclaims to offer “Steps to Our (Indian) Culture,” as an entry point, I draw on 24 in-depth interviews with Indian immigrant parents and their children to examine ethno-cultural and racial identity-making strategies. This project makes four specific contributions to research on socialization and minority identities. First, I coin and develop the term cultural cultivation to describe strategic ethno-cultural socialization efforts immigrant parents use to preserve a culture ‘left behind.’ Cultural cultivation adds a nuanced dimension to ethno-cultural socialization studies by demonstrating that these efforts are laborious, often regarded as women’s work, and effectively operate as an ‘added step’ to Hochschild’s work on the ‘second shift.’ Second, I utilize an innovative research technique of having children draw self-portraits. While cultural cultivation helps children develop a meaningful attachment to Indian culture, self-portraits and interview data uncovered experiences of being teased and feeling ‘left out.’ As a result, many children forged a ‘reactive ethnicity’ as a way to cope with prejudice and discrimination, and construct a sense of identity and belonging. Third, I examine the ways Indian parents minimized and internalized experiences of prejudice and discrimination. Rather than recognizing them as a part of structural racism, many immigrant parents regarded racial offenses as a deserved response to individual misbehaviors or inadequacies that were to be pointed out and corrected. This internalization prompted several of the interviewees to police their and their children’s actions when in the presence of non-Indians in an attempt to preemptively minimize prejudicial statements and discrimination. Fourth, by revealing the enduring hardships related to socialization and assimilation, I argue that high levels of assimilation and acculturation were also commonly accompanied by what I c