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Devon Avenue in Chicago, Illinois is home to South Asian American homes, businesses, and communities. Devon Avenue grew swiftly to become recognized as Chicago’s Little India contributing to Chicago’s diverse collection of neighborhoods exhibiting foreign celebrities, ethnic foods, and exotic dances of the South Asian American communities. Along with the rest of America, South Asian communities residing on Devon Avenue were affected by the shocking and devastating 9/11 terrorist attacks, when the terrorist group Al Qaeda crashed airplanes into the Twin Towers in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. The United States government swiftly responded to the attacks claiming a war on terror, passing the USA PATRIOT (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) Act in 2001 –legislation that expanded the FBI’s authority to surveil United States citizens, residents, and institutions–, and establishing the special registration of foreign-born residents from majority-Muslim countries in 2002. Muslim-looking people were constructed as the enemy of the war on terror in mainstream American society, thus racializing South Asians and Arabs as a tool for the war on terror. In this essay, I seek to answer the question: Given the racialization of South Asian communities in America, how did the 9/11 terrorist attacks politically impact the South Asian community living on Devon Avenue in Chicago, Illinois? I will focus my analysis on the 10 years before 9/11 and the 5 years after 9/11 centered around Devon Avenue in Chicago. I believe that while Orientalist tropes, such as the only language Orientals understand is the language of force, and The Orient being an exotic place of mystery and marvels, were used to racialize South Asians before and after 9/11, such tropes were politically advantageous to South Asian communities on Devon Avenue before 9/11, but politically disadvantageous after 9/11.
To begin, through the early 1900s, South Asians were unable to attain citizenship because of their perceived filthy tendencies. The 1965 Immigration Act allowed South Asian workers to immigrate to the United States in response to the Cold War against the United Socialist Soviet Republic. These incoming workers were deemed as “model minorities” because of their work ethic but were denied “Americanness as they were seen as failing to achieve normative white masculinity" (De 2016, 52). This highlights that, before 9/11, South Asians were seen as an unassimilable group despite a model minority status. Additionally, with the emergence of the model minority construction, Orientalist tropes persisted. This can be seen in a 1993 Chicago Tribune article about Devon Avenue’s local business. Reporter Colleen Taylor Sen describes Devon Avenue with “the air [being] filled with incense and exotic spices,” describing South Asian culture as a phenomenon to be indulged in but too strange to be accepted as mainstream. Specifically, the article refers to a street of stores as a “colorful international bazaar” instead of a commercial center because of the nature of products being unfamiliar using Orientalist tropes of food being exotic because of their South Asian origin. Therefore, this proves that although South Asians were viewed in a positive light because of their work ethic, they were still unable to achieve the highest level of assimilation: proximity to whiteness.
While South Asian communities were viewed as not able to fully assimilate, Chicago’s identity as a city of neighborhoods allowed South Asian communities’ cultural backgrounds to be respected, as it was seen as politically advantageous to cooperate with South Asian communities in Chicago. In October 1997, 4 years before the 9/11 attacks, Sadruddin Noorani, a Bengali man that resided on Devon Avenue, worked with the City of Chicago to establish a Sheikh Mujib Way to honor the founding leader of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh. After the street was established, the mayor of Chicago, Mayor Daley, wrote to the community. Mayor Daley welcomed the new honorary street name and congratulated the Bengali community. Mayor Daley expressed his appreciation for the community to retain their Bengali culture as American citizens; Daley referred to Chicago as a “cultural mosaic” rather than a melting pot and diverted from traditional American values of assimilation. Additionally, Mayor Daley characterized the Bengali community of Chicago as “wise” with voices who “inform and instruct us”. Such a characterization may be used to flatter the community, assert Mayor Daley’s respect for the community, or play on Orientalist tropes of Eastern people as wise due to their perceived spiritual connections. Overall, the respectful and flattering words Mayor Daley used to engage with the community demonstrated a willingness to cooperate with the community. Mayor Daley went on to serve as the Mayor of Chicago until 2011, which means at the point in time that the letter was written, Mayor Daley wished to continue building political connections and affiliations throughout the city. He must have considered working with and respecting the Bengali community as advantageous for his political career and the advancement of Chicago as a cultural center. Thus, in the political sphere, South Asians on Devon Avenue were viewed as wise and valuable voices who were seen as politically advantageous to engage with.
In contrast, though South Asians were able to informally represent themselves through collaboration with elected officials, the South Asian community did not represent themselves through elected positions prior to 2001. In 2000, History Scholar Padma Rangaswamy wrote in her book “Namaste America”, “. . . the alderman of Chicago have often represented their own ethnic groups, but in the case of Chicago’s Fiftieth Ward, which covers Devon Avenue, the representative is Alderman Bernie Stone. . . [who] beat an Indian candidate in the primaries”(Rangaswamy 2000, 95-96). Though Indian candidates ran for office prior to 2001, none were successfully elected. Rangaswamy (2000) states that "many Indians in the area still cherish hopes that someday they will be represented by one of their own," proving the lack of formal political representation was noticeable and discouraging to the residents of Devon Avenue. Though South Asians were told that their voices were wise and valued by Mayor Daley, a prominent political figure, the constituents of Chicago's Fiftieth Ward did not elect those voices. The discrepancy between what South Asians were told about how they were viewed in letters and election results proved that though supposedly positive Orientalist tropes were projected upon them such as being wise, South Asians were not valued as political voices by other constituents in the ward.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, commercial airplanes hijacked by the radical Al Qaeda terrorist organization crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, marking the first foreign attack on American soil since the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941. At 8:30 PM, President George W. Bush addressed the nation, condemning the terrorist attacks, consoling the nation, bolstering American exceptionalism, and proclaiming a “war against terrorism”. In his speech, President Bush stated, "America has stood down enemies before, and we will do so this time,” (Bush 2001) asserting that the war is against an enemy that America will definitively defeat, without ever naming a formal enemy. After the proclamation of the war against terrorism, an unnamed enemy without a face, South Asians who appeared to be Muslim were racialized as terrorists and unassimilable, regardless of their actual beliefs. This racialization is a result of the image the United States developed of Muslims and Muslim-looking people after 9/11. Commonly, Historical Geographer, Aparajita De argued that in a post-9/11 America, "the U.S. public envisions Muslims as always committed to their homeland and bent on destroying the foundational fabric of the American nation”. After 9/11, the United States public saw Muslim-looking South Asians as being more loyal to their homeland than America. Before 9/11, South Asians were seen as people who enriched the melting pot due to their connections to their homeland. However, after 9/11, these connections made South Asians perceived as a threat because people viewed them as disloyal to America.
Localizing this sentiment, the government adopted targeted harmful rhetoric against Muslims after 9/11 which left South Asian Muslims on Devon questioning their belongingness in America. In 2006, the New York Times released an article about how Pakistanis found it easier to assimilate in the United States than they do in Britain. This article used reasons such as more economic opportunities, a flexible melting pot culture, and how the derogatory term “paki” is unfamiliar and unused in the United States. At the very end of the article, there is a quote from Abdul Qadeer Sheikh, 46, manager of Islamic Books N Things on Devon Avenue. “The attitude of the American government in adopting terms like ‘Islamic fascists’ and deporting large numbers of immigrants, he said, makes Muslims feel marked as if they do not belong here. ‘The society in the United States is much fairer to foreigners than anywhere else,’ he said, ‘but that mood is changing’” (MacFarquhar 21 Aug. 2006, A2). Rhetoric that targets Muslims, and ultimately Muslim-looking South Asians, was perpetrated by the United States government and made South Asian Muslims on Devon feel othered. Shiekh acknowledged the shifting attitudes towards him as a South Asian Muslim. Muslim-looking South Asians were now racialized as threats and targets by America’s society and government. Therefore, the rhetoric used to construct the enemies of the war on terror transformed South Asian immigrants’ feelings of being welcomed in an America that politically acknowledged them as a rich and valuable community to feelings of being othered as a racialized political enemy.
Furthermore, beyond harmful rhetoric, the United States government used detention and deportation to harm the South Asian communities on Devon Avenue. After 9/11, the United States government required immigrants from a list of Muslim-majority countries to register with the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s Special Registration Program. When Pakistan and Bangladesh were added to the list of countries from whom people had to register in 2003, many immigrants on Devon Avenue registered. As a result of the registration, “hundreds of. . . men in Chicago had also been detained,” (Nguyen 2005, 66) sometimes for as little as working when not being authorized to work. Sadruddin Noorani, the same man who exchanged letters with Mayor Daley just a few years prior, was a politically involved proponent of Special Registration and urged his fellow community members to register. After seeing the devastating effects of detention and deportation on his Devon community, Noorani stated, “I was promoting registration even more than Immigration did. . . Knowing this is what was going to happen, I would not have promoted it” (Nguyen 2005, 67). The exercise of excessive power over the South Asian community on Devon Avenue made it clear that the government was no longer working with them, but against them and projecting the Orientalist trope of force as being the only language South Asians can understand.
In conclusion, the United States’ response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks caused the South Asian communities on Devon Avenue from going from a group that was a politically advantageous group to a group that was a targeted enemy due to the transformation of the racialization of South Asians. Prior to 9/11, South Asians were racialized through a model minority and Orientalist tropes of exoticness and wisdom, thus they may be flattered to be politically leveraged by the United States government. After 9/11, South Asians were racialized as Muslim-looking people whom Orientalist tropes of being stuck in time and only understanding the language of force were projected upon, thus becoming targets and enemies of the United States government. In 2022, with the help of South Asian organizations like the South Asian American Research and Policy Institute, Devon began to emotionally recover from the devastating impacts of the United States’ response to 9/11 which targeted hundreds of its inhabitants. The rise, fall, and recovery of Devon Avenue may be observed as the harmful consequences of political work performed by the racialization of South Asians, and motivation for the empowerment of ethnic neighborhoods throughout the nation.
References
Daley, Richard M. 1997. “Letter from Mayor Richard M. Daley Re: Sheikh Mujib Way,”
October 28, 1997. https://www.saada.org/item/20120217-625.
De, Aparajita. 2018. South Asian Racialization and Belonging after 9/11 Masks of Threat.
Lanham, MD: LEXINGTON Books.
MacFARQUHAR, NEIL. 2006. “Pakistanis Find U.S. an Easier Fit Than Britain: Assimilation Is
Rule--Siege Mentality Is Largely Absent,” 2006.
Nguyen, Tram. 2005. We Are All Suspects Now: Untold Stories from Immigrant Communities
after 9/11. Boston: Beacon Press.
Rangaswamy, Padma. 2000. Namasté America: Indian Immigrants in an American Metropolis.
University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Sen, Colleen Taylor. 1993. “Incense and Spice: Traveling to That Exotic Crossroads Called
Devon Avenue.” Chicago Tribune (1963-1996), September 9, 1993, sec. Food Guide.
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