Ferguson vs Madison

Another lesson from Alabama versus Ferguson: Money talks. To help the Patel family with medical bills, “Sureshbhai Patel’s Recovery Fund” was created on the crowd-funding platform GoFundMe.com. The campaign’s goal was to raise $100,00, but within six days, it has drawn donations worth nearly $190,000. The page was started by Aakash Patel, who is not related to the victim.

Meanwhile, on Feb 13, a page supporting Parker was started on crowd-funding platform Indiegogo with the same goal. The page has so far raised a paltry $3,246.

That’s the inverse of the economics of giving we saw around Ferguson.

In that case, police officer Darren Wilson raised much more money online than the dead teenager’s family. A Facebook page called “Support Darren Wilson” has more than 100,000 likes. Another Facebook page, “I support Darren Wilson” has nearly 92,000 likes. Supporters of the white police officer created T-shirts and bracelets that had the slogan: “I am Darren Wilson.”

What’s changed?

The near unanimous support for Patel has several reasons. One, it is hard not to sympathise with an elderly man who left his farm in India to help out his family on US shores.

Second, and more importantly, Indians form a wealthy and an influential minority in the US. According to a Pew Survey, Indian-Americans’ median household income is $88,000, the highest among Asian-Americans and way above the US average of $49,800.

In a post on the blogging platform, Medium, activist Anirvan Chatterjee wrote:

   Every victim of unjust racist police violence deserves this kind of response, and much more. But this is an exceptional response. Most victims and their families don’t get see guilty officers fired or charged, the FBI brought in, or outside nations showing concern. While this is just one case, this response correlates with the fact that Indians generally sit higher up on America’s racial ladder than African Americans.

Third, geopolitics don’t hurt. US president Barack Obama is keen to build closer ties with India, and his visit to New Delhi last month drew hype and headlines. The diplomatic response to Patel’s beating is significant.

In the last week, the Hindu American Foundation has begun developing a Hinduism 101 training for US police. But as Chatterjee rightly points out, this fails to address the “root cause.” Patel suffered this treatment because his neighbour assumed he was a “skinny black guy.”