"I am Indian. I am American. I do customer support."

That was the title of the article on Salon.com by a certain Sumana Harihareswara that annoyed me so much that it drove me to shoot off a response to it to the editor.

Sumana Harihareswara's article seems to reek of a certain condescending attitude that is quite typical of people who wish to believe and make others believe they are white people "trapped" in brown bodies.

I'd like to ask the author why there are so many americans learning spanish , complete with their R's as authentic as a farmer in Mexico ? Just so they can further their job prospects in America. So what is so wrong about Indians picking up an American Accent ( they already knew English by the way) or as Sumana believes, her "birthright", if that gets them some easy cash ?

So she waxes on about the average hapless Indian, almost as if all of them rushed to Call centers from paddy fields, ("And my cousins, riding out of the Indian rice paddies on a train that history accidentally left behind, are learning to replace me".) and how "We" (conviniently including herself with the "First Worlders") value results over process. Like as if the Indians, who are by now probably world reknowned for being engineers and doctors in our world and theirs, didn't know the first thing about "Results" or "Process". I thought the subject of the article was call center work, which normally attracts high school drop-outs in the U.S, not rocket science !

And finally, it's surprising for a person of Indian Origin herself to talk about the attitude of Indians as being innately Servile ("Does mystical Eastern stoicism make us good at this job? The empathy for the conqueror that all colonial people have to learn? For me it is a job, and for them it is liberation."). I for one believe that Indian call workers are more patient and well mannered because they are raised to be mannerful, not because of some misplaced notion of subserviance.

I strongly suggest the likes of Ms.Harihareswara take a good second look at the society they so easily and blatantly deride. Like it is for her, for many call center workers in India it's just a job as well. Many are college students who use it for some pocket change. And life is certainly extremely appealing in India right now where there's a great balance of the east and the west.

As for her column, I wonder if a white american writer using terms such as "The empathy for the conqueror that all colonial people have to learn?" would have gotten away with such an article without an apology ? If not, why is it considered okay for an Asian to make disparaging remarks about her own , rather, disowned society ?