Indian Buzz at the Spelling Bee

Scripps Spelling Bee is an annual competition for kids who have neither turned 16 nor passed beyond the eighth grade. I have been following the competition since 2000 and it has come to become lot more popular now than in 2000. Kids of Indian origin tend to win the competition beyond comparison and there leads to a lot of stereotypes and spite. I will address them in this post.

I started this post about a year ago. I left it unpublished having not found clarity to my thoughts. Having struggled with vocabulary for the GRE exam, I had a sense of what is invloved in the spelling competition. I appreciated the effort put in by the young kids who manage to spell out arcane words that nobody has heard and they do all this under the glaring eyes of the TV spolight and pressure from fellow contestants. The first few years I saw this contest on TV, I felt deep sympathy for the kids. The stress was very visible on the faces of the contestants. It is hard to not notice that majority of these kids are geeky looking and more so that they belonged to the minority South Asian(Indian) community. Over the years the geekiness of these kids is replaced by a witty sense of humor in some of these kids. That was a welcome change.

The South Asian kids have dominated the event(ever since I have been following it) and their participation has grown over the years. Eight out the last twelve winners were of Indian origin. Here are some links on 2010 spelling bee champion
Spelling bee winner part of Indian-American streak
Veeramani wins for Cleveland
Washington Post Image gallery on National Spelling Bee

It is astounding if you see the statistics of how many Indian kids make it to the top and win it. Consider this, last year 14 out of 41 spellers in the semi-finals were Indian Americans. This year(2010), an estimated 30 Indian americans will compete among a total of 273 - 11 percent in all. This is a big if you know that Indian Americans are about only 1% of the US population. The winners of the last three years were all Indians. In 2008 it was Sameer Mishra from Lousiana, in 2009 year it was Kavya Shivashankar from Kansas and this year it is Annamika Veeramani from Ohio. The list of all the champions so far can be found here

However every success by an ethnic minority surely leads to stereotyping and mockery of the group by regular folks and mass media alike. I know the sterotypes associated with successful children of immigrant parents - they have pushy parents, not well rounded, book worms, geeky etc. Here is a recent article by Washinton about spelling bee contestant stereotypes - 'Spelling bee participants work to dispel the stereotypes'. While trying to find the stereotype on Indian parents, I found a clip from a famous sitcom Goodness Gracious Me. You can view it here or embedded video below



To see the sterotype associations, one just has to view the comments on any of the articles covered in the major news websites to see how much negativity is fostered by people. The negativity is fostered in International portals as well as in Indian websites by both Indian and Non-Indian readers alike. Here are some excerpts of some negative comments on news about kids of Indian origin winning

Belittling the efforts is a comment at slate.com -
Rote memorization is a waste of time. They should focus on more creative problem-solving skills: science, math, even art and literature. Thankfully, neither I nor any other Indian kid in my area cared about the spelling bee.


Mockery in a comment at nytimes.com
14 year old Anamika Veeramani from Ohio won the National Spelling Bee. She won when her opponent was unable to spell “Anamika Veeramani”.


Ethnic insult at rediff.com
Indians are best "parrots"..they can like parrots memorise words and keep uttering..rediff reporters are junk..


Jon Stewart, with all due respect for the topics he covers, could not avoid the stereotype either. But his daily show takes aim at everybody and that he what he does best-satire on current affairs.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Headlines - Asian Fusion
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Brushing aside the stereotypes, the competition itself is gaining in popularity and was telecast live primetime on abc this year. The journey to primetime has been slow but is aided by the documentary Spellbound made in 2002 which was very popular. In 2005 there was a movie titled 'Bee Season' staring Richard Gere. Then in 2006 the movie 'Akkelah and the Bee' starring Lawrence Fishburne was also based on the Spelling bee competition. Spelling Bee is now mainstream and covered as a sporting event on ESPN every year.

Popularity is good as it brings exposure to the competition and hardwork of the kids. But the real question stills remains. Why are Indians so good at Spelling Bee? My Google search did not give me a closure.

Here are some links to what I found myself looking for answers to the above question. I answers ranged from
Silly by joe six packs at Yahoo Answers! -
How come indians or east asians always are the winners of Spelling Bee?
to sensible at Slate - Why Are Indian Kids So Good at Spelling?
and rumination at The Root -
Is Spelling a Cultural Activity?

While success can bring stereotypes, it can also bring patronizing people to the front. Look here - Indian Americans: The New Model Minority. You can find refutation here -Nobody's Model Minority

I am still looking for answers. Let me know what your thoughts are on this.

---------------------The End-------------
What to know more, here are some more links
Striving in America, and in the Spelling Bee
Once again, yet ANOTHER Indian kid wins the National Spelling Bee
Spelling Bee contest in US: Indians cast a spell
Kansas gal Kavya Shivshankar bee-comes spelling princess
W-I-N-N-E-R! Desi Kid Wins Spelling Bee, Again

Why Blame Culture?

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about blaming the culture. I felt that it was incomplete without some more questioning as to why people do that. This post will outline some thoughts on why people blame culture. I conclude this post with what an individual can do without falling into the trap of blaming culture.

In the wild, most animals stick to their own type. It is mutually beneficial for their long term survival to trust their type. Trusting a different species can most times mean end of life or severe physical harm. It is the reason you see birds flocking together, fish swimming in a school, lions hunting in a group and hyenas hunting with their gang etc. It is very easy to find this mistrust of other types in humans as well, after all humans are descendants of vertebrate animals. However we humans have become so vast in numbers that we have sub-groups who differ in the way we look physically. This difference is loosely called race sometimes, it is also referred by the term ethnicity. Whatever name we call it; there is an inherent mistrust among these different looking people. May be we are genetically disposed to mistrust.

My previous post had two anecdotes where people were blaming culture. My European colleague did not say that Japanese hide truth, he just said 'It must be Japanese Culture to stay silent in crisis'. The colleague of my friend did not say that Indians lie, he just asked 'Is it common in Indian culture to lie.' But they can be linked indirectly. When a person belonging to a different race does something negative, our genetic mistrust is switched on and we seek answers. We need to associate that negative trait to something and somehow satisfy our animalistic mistrust. According to me, satisfying this animalistic mistrust is the key.

I would like to know what my colleague would have to say about the current corporate disaster from a company bearing the name of his home country - BP. Toyota had always been apologetic about the safety of its vehicle. But BP had constantly lied about its involvement, it never owned the problem, had been blatantly trying to find a victim, lied about how much oil was flowing into the ocean (Recent estimates put the outflow of oil at 11k/day while BP stated it is close to 6k/day). I could generalize this behavior from BP to a statement - it is in British Culture to lie. While colonial history can be cited as a validation of that statement, I cannot agree to the generalization of this statement to represent the habits of common English people, and I am sure my colleague would agree with me.

Thanks to some great social and political movements, we live in a time where it is a must to be sensitive and politically correct at work. That has not stopped some people making unacceptable comments, but by and large today's work environment is very conducive for people from different races and countries to work harmoniously. So this expectation of diverse workforce does not allow the negative association with race, a nation, religion or a region. However, culture is a term that is associated with all the above and not with a single person. When a person blames the culture, the person is safely blaming the race, religion or region of the person who looks physically different than him/her.

What can we do? Though this is a very sensitive issue, there will always be people who will hold on to the theory that other people hold value systems different than themselves. They attribute culture to these values. It is important to take a stance and refute these claims whenever they are mentioned. But do so subtly and without being argumentative. While defending your values, do not fall into the same trap yourself. It is very easy to get carried away in conversations when it involves a third person that is different than all the people in the conversation. The same guy who gets offended when his 'culture' is blamed will not think twice when it comes to a different persons 'culture'. It is the nature of the conversation and our inherent mistrust that causes us to do it. It is important to subdue that subconscious criticism. Be very careful of what you say in such conversations. Don't get carried away. It is important to listen rather than say something irrationally to be a part of the conversation. Most times our urge to get heard makes us say something, that in retrospection, we do not even agree with. It does not mean that you have to stay silent, but just think and know what you are saying. The world will be a better place for others and yourself when you do that. It is also time for me to put these principles in action myself.