Second- Generation Indians Navigating the Ethnic and Religious identities

• In Event: 545 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 18. Ethnicity Retention

Abstract

This article discusses the complicated intersection of religious and racial identities for second-generation Indian Americans growing up in America as Christians. Drawing on data from ethnographic study, this study shows that second-generation Christian Indian Americans feel marginalized not only because of the prejudices connected to their skin color but because their peers and others fail to acknowledge them as a Christian, a religious identity also closely connected to being an American. In spite of being Christians, their American peers and others identify them as a Hindu, which while is connected to the Indian identity, is at the same time also essentially opposite to the American identity. Contributing to the discourse on race, religion and national identity in the United States, this study makes a case that religion becomes an organizing principle for second generation racial minorities as they position themselves within the American racial hierarchy.

Author

• Soulit Chacko, Loyola University, Chicago