Reuters claims that Pakistani-Americans are masquerading as Indians.

[A1Kaid]

Bogus Trend Story of the Week

Reuters claims that Pakistani-Americans are masquerading as Indians.

By Jack Shafer|Posted Tuesday, May 11, 2010, at 4:33 PM ET



The unbearable stupidity of this week's bogus trend story of the week begins in the headline. "Pakistanis Pose as Indians After NY Bomb Scare," declares the Reuters story that moved on May 7. The story's lede reasserts that bold claim, stating, "Pakistani merchants and job seekers ... are posing as Indians to avoid discrimination in the wake of the Times Square bomb attempt."

If Pakistanis are really posing as Indians in order to find jobs or attract customers, shouldn't Reuters introduce us to them? But even though five Reuters professionals contributed to this 635-word article—a writer, a reporter filing from London, another filing from Washington, and two editors—we don't meet even one Pakistani masquerading as an Indian. The best Reuters can swing is an interview with the chairman of Brooklyn's Pakistani American Merchant Association, Asghar Choudry, who says that lots of his countrymen are imitating Indians to land jobs.

The article also asserts that the Times Square bomb attempt, blamed on Pakistani-American Faisal Shahzad, is "leading to backlash against the Pakistani-American community." But five short paragraphs later, Reuters reports, "While there have been no reported incidents since the failed car bomb attack last Saturday, some Pakistanis are bracing for reprisals." [Emphasis added.]

Indeed, the only evidence of a "backlash" is Reuters' anecdotal observation that Brooklyn's Pakistani shops are doing "scant" business, presumably because patrons are lying low. That and testimony from merchant association head Choudry, who tells the wire service that more than 100 businesses along Brooklyn's Coney Island Avenue have "closed due to a 30 percent drop in business since 2001."

This isn't the first time Choudry has bemoaned the state of Brooklyn's Pakistani-American business community to the press. In July 2003, he told Next American Citymagazine that "neighborhood grocery store's sales are down 30 percent to 40 percent—these are stores that sell Pakistani food products to Pakistani customers" and added that some of the borough's Pakistani population was departing for other parts of the United States, for Canada, or for Pakistan. The alleged cause? Stepped-up enforcement of immigration laws after the 9/11 attacks.



Depending on your view, the search for sleeper cells, the enforcement of immigration laws, or the investigation of an attempted Times Square bombing in which the prime suspect is a Pakistani-American can all be considered backlash or "discrimination," as the Reuters lede puts it. But if it is, it's backlash and discrimination of the most timid sort.

So desperate is the Reuters article to make its discrimination case that it recounts this tale from the Washington, D.C., suburbs. It reports:

In Washington, an American of Pakistani heritage who would only be identified as Farhan, said a manager of a suburban home-improvement store prevented him from buying two bags of fertilizer for his family's lawn on Tuesday.

Farhan, who was born in northern Virginia, said police arrived soon after, investigated and allowed him to buy the fertilizer.

"What kind of a country are we living in when a 22-year-old male can't buy fertilizer?" Farhan asked. "I'm American. I'm not Pakistani."

Farhan said the store had subsequently apologized and the case appeared to be one of an overzealous manager rather than store policy.

Notice that neither the subject of the story nor the store are named. Also, nobody from the store or the police is quoted. Only the anonymous subject speaks. I invite you to ask if the incident really happened as described.

I have other quibbles with the piece. For instance, the closure of 100 Pakistani-American shops in Brooklyn over the course of a decade, which Reuters reports, doesn't translate into "backlash" or "discrimination" unless it comes with context. How many new shops opened in the area over that period? How many Pakistani-Americans have left Brooklyn? Did some of the shops move to Queens, whose Pakistani-American population is larger than Brooklyn's according to 2000 census data cited here (PDF)?



But I'll stop with my quibbling. No bogus-trend story should run longer than the story it critiques, and I've already exceeded the Reuters piece by about 15 words.

******

If you're a Pakistani masquerading as an Indian, drop me a line at slate.pressbox@gmail.com. I masquerade as a Dutch-American at my Twitter feed. (E-mail may be quoted by name in Slate's readers' forums; in a future article; or elsewhere unless the writer stipulates otherwise. Permanent disclosure: Slate is owned by the Washington Post Co.)

Track my errors: This hand-built RSS feed will ring every time Slate runs a "Press Box" correction. For e-mail notification of errors in this specific column, type the word Pakistani in the subject head of an e-mail message, and send it to slate.pressbox@gmail.com.

Source: Bogus trend story of the week: Pakistani-Americans masquerading as Indians. - Slate Magazine


Thank you to Jack Shafer for at least writing about this bogus, fabricated, and baseless Reuters story about Pakistanis "masquerading as Indians" utter rubbish. Pakistanis on this forum did their best to dispel these fabricated lies and rumors but it is good to read in the digital print.

 

[karan.1970]

^^ ...

 

[Teeta]

Pakistanis actually don't like when someone calls them "Indian". In my experience , Pakistanis will 'categorically' tell you "No! I'm NOT an Indian. I'm a Pakistani. There is a difference" ...

But again , I live in California. Can't say anything about New York or whatever.

 

[A1Kaid]

Pakistanis actually don't like when someone calls them "Indian". In my experience , Pakistanis will 'categorically' tell you "No! I'm NOT an Indian. I'm a Pakistani. There is a difference" ...

But again , I live in California. Can't say anything about New York or whatever.

I've personally never heard of any person of Pakistani origin calling themselves an "Indian", and I've lived here for many years and have traveled around, been to NY and certainly didn't ever hear of this false news, the article was a hit piece at best.

 

[Roybot]

So we are meant to believe slate magazine over Reuters

At Op,

 

[RazPaK]

I know from experience when Indians ask me where I am from, I will say Pakistan and they quickly say oh well it's the same country.

I'm like.. THE Faak?

Never heard any Pakistani calling himself Indian. Biggest Indian wet dream of the century.

 

[A1Kaid]

As for people doubting the source, Slate news is a sub-branch of the Washington Post. Nothing wrong with the source.

 

[karan.1970]

I know from experience when Indians ask me where I am from, I will say Pakistan and they quickly say oh well it's the same country.

I'm like.. THE Faak?


Never heard any Pakistani calling himself Indian. Biggest Indian wet dream of the century.

Ah! now that we are sharing personal experiences as a backup to a debate item, Let me tell you mine when I was living in New York in 2005. 2 different Pakistani friends at 2 separate occasions told me how they wished their parents had decided to stay back in Uttar Pradesh instead of moving to Lahore in 1947 and how their similarity of looks with Indians actually helped them avoid the backlash in the earlier part of the decade...

Take that as you may

 

[RazPaK]

Ah! now that we are sharing personal experiences as a backup to a debate item, Let me tell you mine when I was living in New York in 2005. 2 different Pakistani friends at 2 separate occasions told me how they wished their parents had decided to stay back in Uttar Pradesh instead of moving to Lahore in 1947 and how their similarity of looks with Indians actually helped them avoid the backlash in the earlier part of the decade...

Take that as you may

LMAO.

Dude not even Bangladeshis want to be mistaken as Indians.


Please stop. This is too funny.

 

[RajputWarrior]

Lmao the guy who wrote this article "Jack Shafer" has a history of making up his own stories. Here's from the source itself

Slate's author of "Monkeyfishing" now says none of his story was true. - Slate Magazine

Slate's author of "Monkeyfishing" now says none of his story was true.
By Jack Shafer|Posted Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2007, at 3:12 PM ET
In 2001, Jay Forman wrote an article about "monkeyfishing" that I edited and published in Slate. Almost immediately,bloggers, the Wall Street Journal's James Taranto, and the New York Times ($) gouged huge holes in the piece.
At first, Forman defended his first-person story—which described a trip he'd taken with a "monkeyfisherman" to Florida's Lois Key—as completely true. In Forman's piece, a monkeyfisherman casts a fruit-baited fish line from his boat onto the island where rhesus research monkeys were kept. A monkey perched in a tree takes the bait. Caught, the monkey is dragged down into the water.
Advertisement

The withering Times and the Journal investigations caused Forman to change his story. He now said that he had fabricated the lurid parts about monkeys being caught with baited lines, but maintained that he had visited the island and taunted the monkeys from offshore.
The scandal rested there until this week, when Forman telephoned me. Student journalists writing a story about the incident had contacted Forman, and this had prompted him to call me and confess that the story was a complete lie. He never even visited the island.
In a note to me, Forman apologized for betraying Slate's trust and for taking so long to come clean.
I, in turn, apologize to Slate readers for publishing the story. Although Forman still stands by the two other pieces he wrote for the magazine, there is plenty of reason not to believe him.

 

[veekysingh]

feeling insecure ?

 

[RajputWarrior]

^^ ...

I swear these people have the biggest inferiority complex.

 

[RazPaK]

LOL, even Indians don't want to be known as Indians, but somehow we Pakistanis do.

This is a mega face palm.

 

[RajputWarrior]

LOL, even Indians don't want to be known as Indians, but somehow we Pakistanis do.

This is a mega face palm.

Yeah sure whatever.

 

[A.Rafay]

LOL, even Indians don't want to be known as Indians, but somehow we Pakistanis do.

This is a mega face palm.

Yea even Muslim Indians here in Saudi feel shame to call themselves Indians.