A well-written story submitted to The New Yorker by an esteemed/eccentric and a lil off the senile side senior of mine from Bangladesh in high school.  A pretty interesting read...And thought it may in SOME ways reflect conflicting view-points of the members of the Nepali Diaspora in the US.  The good ol' sajha days of Hillary vs Obama comes to mind.

Expatriate-Aristocrats Versus Immigrant-Nobodies in the land of McCain and Obama

This is a tale of two brothers from Dhaka, Nuru and Toru, who have lived in the United States for some 35 years, but who find themselves on different sides in the current debate on race relations and presidential politics in America and whether or not to elect Obama over McCain for the U.S. presidency.

Toru is an American citizen and Nuru is not. Toru is moved that the African Americans are finally making their headway to the White House. Nuru is socially conservative who believes in majoritarianism and the true structural hierarchy of race as a political prerogative of the predominant white race in America. So he is not at all impressed with the bid of Obama for the White House and feels that Obama is not electable.

Nuru arrived in Ann Arbor in 1960 to study Engineering. Toru followed him a year later to study Computer Science at the University of Texas. When they left Bangladesh, they were almost identical in appearance and attitude. They dressed alike, they expressed identical views on politics, social issues, love and marriage in the same Dhaka Catholic school accent. Both Nuru and Toru would endure their four years in America, secure their degrees, then return to Bangladesh to marry the brides of their mother's choosing.

Instead, Nuru married a Bangladeshi citizen in 1962 who was getting her degree in Child Psychology at Wayne State University. They soon acquired the labor certifications necessary for the green card of hassle-free residence and employment.

Nuru still lives in Detroit, works in the Pontiac, Mich., General Motors headquarters, and has become nationally recognized for his fuel efficient and aero-dynamic automobile designs. After 36 years as a legal immigrant in this country, Nuru clings passionately to his Bangladeshi citizenship and hopes to go home to Bangladesh when he retires.

In Austin in 1963, Toru married a fellow student, an American of African decent. Because of the accident of her Illinois birth, Toru bypassed labor-certification requirements and the race-related "quota" system that favored the applicant's country of origin over his or her merit. Toru was prepared for (and even welcomed) the emotional strain that came with marrying a woman outside his Bangladeshi ethnic community. In 33 years of marriage, Toru and his African American wife have lived in every part of North America. By choosing a wife who was not his mother’s selection, Toru was opting for fluidity, self-invention, hot-dogs, hamburgers, blue jeans and T-shirts, and renouncing 3,000 years (at least) of ethnicity-observant, "pure culture" marriage in his Bangladeshi family. Toru’s opinions about this have often been unapologetic (and in some quarters overenthusiastic). His cultural and psychological "mongrelization” was joyous.

Nuru and Toru have stayed brotherly close by phone. In their regular Sunday morning conversations, they are unguardedly affectionate. Toru is the only blood relative of Nuru on this continent. They expect to see each other through the looming crises of aging and ill health without being asked. Long before Obama’s movement and campaign for the United States presidency, Nuru and Toru had their polite arguments over the desirability and electability of Obama versus Hillary and McCain while expecting the ushering of civil rights and ending of informal segregation in the American society from schools to workplace. Non-discrimination is a social benefit that both Nuru and Toru believe should come with living and working in America.

Like well-raised brothers, they never said what was really on their minds about Obama against Hillary or McCain and the possibility of any improvement in race relations in American society, but they probably pitied one another on each other’s political position and perceptions with respect to the electibility of Obama against McCain or Hillary.  Nuru pitied Toru for his lack of structure in political perception, the erasure of cultural authenticity and ethnic purity in the American presidential politics. Toru pitied Nuru for the narrowness of Nuru’s conservative political consciousness, his uninvolvement with the mythic depths of the rap culture or the superficial liberal pop culture of the American  society. But, now, with the scapegoating of the notion of "third” term for George Bush by electing Mccain on the rise, and the targeting of political conservatives like Karl Rove for new scrutiny and new self-consciousness, Nuru and Toru find themselves unable to maintain the same polite discretion. Nuru and Toru were always unacknowledged adversaries, and they are now, more than ever, brothers.

"I feel used," Nuru raged on the phone the other night. "I feel manipulated and discarded by the movement to elect Obama.” This is such an unfair way to elect a person to the United States Presidency who was invited on political Affirmative Action as an up and coming minority politician to lead the United States as the commander in chief because of his race in a time of rapidly changing racial demographics of America. Hillary Clinton had over 16 years of political service and 8 long years as Bill Clinton’s partner that took America and Dow Jones to the pinnacle of economic prosperity. Since Obama was a child in South Chicago, Hillary and McCain invested their knowledge, judgment, experience and creativity into the improvement of America’s welfare. McCain has fought in wars and risked his life. He then served for many decades in the senate foreign relations committee. Hillary prepared the Clinton healthcare plan and authored a successful agenda of economic recovery since the end of the First Gulf War (1991).  How dare America now change its preference in presidential choice in the democratic primaries to elect a modestly experienced, upstart African American and only one time elected senator from Illinois in midstream? If America wants to make better choices for presidential candidates, they should only risk their political decision on long experienced and well qualified candidates on good judgment. In Nuru’s opinion, Obama seriously lacked the former although he possessed the latter and Nuru strongly felt that the U.S. Democratic Party voters are on the verge of electing another Jesse Ventura to the White House or they found another way to loose another election, this time to John Mccain.

Nuru is an expatriate, professionally generous and creative, socially courteous and gracious, and that's as far as his Americanization can go. He is here to maintain an identity, not to transform it.

Toru asked Nuru if Nuru would follow the example of others who have decided to vote for Obama because they are also minorities in the U.S. like him. And here, he surprised him. "If the minorities in America want to play the manipulative game of race, the expatriates who support the White majority Americans will play it too," he snapped. "I'll become a Republican Party voter for this election only, and then change back to being a registered Democratic Party Voter next time when I see a politician from the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant mainstream nominated by the Democratic Party. I feel some kind of irrational attachment to the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Americans that I don't to the Democratic Party. Until all this hysteria about electing Obama, I was totally happy. Having my American nationality meant I could enjoy my apple pie in my upscale white suburb in Detroit with the peace of mind that the commander in chief represents the European cultural values of the mainstream of people in the United States and we will not be ruled by a rap subculture out of Harlem that could potentially disturb my Beethoven’s 5th symphony every morning.”

In one family, from two brothers alike as peas in a pod, there could not be a wider divergence of immigrant experience influencing presidential candidate preference.  America spoke to Toru -- He married it -- He embraced the demotion from expatriate aristocrat to immigrant nobody unlike his brother Nuru, surrendering those thousands of years of "pure Bengali culture," the Elish maach that he buys every week from the local ethnic grocery, the delightfully accented English. He retained them all. Which of them is the freak?

(submitted to The New Yorker)