The model minority having a rough go in the global economy: "Guerrilla Marketing" by Sanjay Agnihotri

The other day, I guy I know from high school posted something on Facebook about why, as he saw it, Chinese people once faced oppression in America but don't now live off social services like, as he believed, many African-Americans did. It was a stupid, offensive, misinformed post, and I'm not copying it here, but it serves to show that along with the negative stereotypes of some groups in America, the "model minority" stereotypes--usually applied to Asian-Americans, who are seen as over-achievers--are also alive and well.

South Asians (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Bhutan) aren't identified with exactly the same stereotypes as those from Northeast Asia (Japan, Korea, China). South Asians are often seen as Apu from the Simpsons while a stereotypical Japanese-American is an engineer or software programmer. But even Apu is still something of model minority stereotype: he owns his own business, he works hard, he is intelligent, although he's forced to waste his intelligence chasing delinquents out of the Kwik-e-Mart. And after Kwik-e-Mart owner, the next most prevalent stereotype about South Asians would probably suggest doctor or computer programmer.

The model minority stereotype is harmful in its own way to those it purports to describe. However, like with many stereotypes, there is some truth lurking behind those stereotypes, at least in this sense: different immigrant communities tend to target certain markets for start-up businesses, and those types of businesses tend to propagate more than others. That's because one family learns how to run a business, then helps train another to do the same thing, and it passes on until a significant number of people in a particular industry are from one heritage. A lot of Vietnamese-Americans run nail salons. Korean-American used to favor dry cleaning businesses, although that has started to fade a bit. Ethiopian communities, for some reason, seem to get into parking garages, although since your average person isn't going to have the start-up money for that, I'm not sure how this ever came to pass.

The groups that come into this story, a variety of South Asian entrepreneurs, run the stores we often associate with families from that part of the world. They run gas stations and Indian restaurants and a Baskin Robbins/Dunkin Donuts combo. (I once hung out with an Indian-American whose parents owned one of these. He brought me into one and treated me to lunch, which was nice, but while there, I thought he was extremely rude to the old man working behind the counter, who would have been the employee of his parents. I remembered this while reading this story.)

I don't even like to eat at one of these. Working at one can't be much fun. 

Of course, these family-run businesses really are something to celebrate. Each of them is an American success story. But in addition to the harm that can come from assuming every person from South Asia is a brilliant micro-entrepreneur, there is another dark side to the family-owned start-up, and this is the side that Sanjay Agnihotri explores in his short story "Guerrilla Marketing."

Hapless Vikram needs money in a bad way. His 35-year-old daughter back home finally found a husband, but he needs money for a dowry and to fly home to see her. But money's a big problem. He's got a low-paying job at an Indian restaurant, and he owes the owner money. He lives in an apartment with several other employees of the restaurant, and the owner's wife threatens them all with deportation if they don't tow the line.

Vikram has tried his own hand at entrepreneurship all over the world:

He was a fifty-seven-year-old accountant with a degree in finance from Baroda University. Since his family's apothecary business in Baroda had gone bust seven years ago, he'd traveled around--mostly in the Middle East--trying to start import/export and other businesses. He'd worked a bootleg tape shop in Yanbu, Saudi Arabia; sold rugs in Ethiopia; paved roads in Dubai; and peddled remote-control toy cars in the alleyways of Kuwait City. Los Angeles was to have been his breakthrough. 

But Los Angeles ended badly, and one of Vikram's debts is from having to borrow money to move in a hurry from LA to New Jersey, where he is now marooned. He lies to his family back home about his prospects. He has to endure the humiliation of working for boorish men who have also somehow succeeded in business where he failed over and over. The bitterness of being on the low end of capitalism's totem pole is that much harder to swallow when you've taken your shots at succeeding and failed, only to work for others who had better luck.

I enjoyed the story. It gave me a look at a world I don't have access to personally. It certainly is an effective critique of globalism, capitalism, and the model minority stereotype all at once. I was a little disappointed by the end, which I found a bit hammy. Vikram ditches his crap job for an accountant start-up company another rich Indian is launching for his son. But it turns out they just want Vikram to walk around in a Statue of Liberty suit and hold a sign to attract customers. (The business is called Liberty Tax.)

It just seemed a bit forced. In order to get Vikram into a suit that will critique American optimism and immigrant dreams, the story has to make us believe this is a good business decision. It isn't. I've seen people at a Liberty Tax around here wearing the Statue of Liberty get-up. They're teenagers. You can probably get them for minimum wage, and they won't have medical issues like Vikram did that make it hard for him to carry a sign in the cold. They could have paid him peanuts and gotten accounting work out of him, which would have generated far more income; it made no sense to pay him to do sign-flipping duties. It was only there for the symbolism.

In spite of that bobble at the end, I thought it was a strong story. There are plenty of criticisms of capitalism out there in the world, and plenty of gritty immigrant stories, but this one managed to be both without being a story I'd heard before.