Aside from movie quotes, more direct slurs were thrown around, too, albeit none of them were especially creative.
Hey dothead: A reference to a bindi, or dot, that some Indian women (and Gwen Stefani) wear. In Jersey City at the time, a gang called the Dotbusters was thriving. These racists would go around harassing, assaulting, and even killing Indian people. A man named Navroze Mody was murdered by four men who were ultimately only sentenced to between six months and ten years. It was a scary time. My aunt lived in Jersey City. My grandmother would stay with her often. Grandma regularly described how she’d hold her head high as groups of young men taunted her on afternoon walks. I guess after marching with Gandhi, a bunch of morons in New Jersey seemed pretty B-list, but it was all terrifying to me.
Speaking of Gandhi, they managed to turn this into an insult too. Which obviously never made sense. Are you comparing me to the guy who nonviolently kicked the British Empire’s ass—and inspired Dr. King and others in the American civil rights movement—because you’re trying to insult me? These kids confused nonviolence with being docile. Confounded use of force with strength. And why wouldn’t they? Our favorite TV shows were riddled with racist tropes, and one of Navroze Mody’s murderers only got six months in jail.
I don’t recall much of the Indian community’s reaction to Dotbusters, but I remember there being more fear than shock. This sort of racism was a fact of life. It was up to the community to look out for itself, which was harder with big newspapers like the Jersey Journal14 giving a candid platform to these terrorists and their hate crimes:
We are an organization called dot busters. We have been around for 2 years. We will go to any extreme to get Indians to move out of Jersey City. If I’m walking down the street and I see a Hindu and the setting is right, I will hit him or her. We plan some of our most extreme attacks such as breaking windows, breaking car windows, and crashing family parties. We use the phone books and look up the name Patel. Have you seen how many of them there are?… You said that they will have to start protecting themselves because the police cannot always be there. They will never do anything. They are a week [sic] race Physically and mentally. We are going to continue our way. We will never be stopped.
“Jersey City Dot Busters,”
The Jersey Journal, September 2, 1987
Anyway, that’s the message I was getting. An entire brown lifetime is worth six months.
* * *
Something that made middle school a little more tolerable15 was drama club. I know what you’re thinking. “How can this be? Drama club kids are teased mercilessly at middle schools across America.”
The crazy thing about drama club meetings in our town was that the school thought it was a good idea to hold them during soccer practice on a stage inside the gymnasium, directly across from the locker rooms. That meant the athletes (aka the worst offenders of bullying) would catch the beginnings and ends of each rehearsal as they jogged to and from the practice fields outside. In a bizarre twist of arrogance, the soccer players were so into themselves that for better or worse, little attention was ever paid to anything the drama club was doing. So, we had the creative solace of an after-school bubble, buttttt had to endure the late-bus ride home with them. You had to really love drama club to put up with it.
In the spring of eighth grade I was cast as the Tin Man in our school’s musical, The Wiz. For two hours each day after school, the six weeks of rehearsals were everything I’d wanted: an escape from the frustrations of the day, discovering artistic expression, being able to play a character who was confident when I was anything but.
I couldn’t wait to sing his iconic song, “Slide Some Oil to Me.” I was going to kill it!
A week before The Wiz was set to make its evening debut on the illustrious middle school stage, our director enthusiastically gathered the cast together. “Guess what, everyone? We’re going to be doing three scenes from the play for the whole school at a special assembly on Thursday morning! Your peers will get a little teaser of the musical to entice them to come see it in the evening!”
Now, look. Doing a play in front of a hundred gracious parents who willingly paid $4 a ticket to watch thirteen-year-olds put on The Wiz was very different from 750 obnoxious and entitled middle schoolers forced to watch a show. The bullying was bad before the kids saw parts of our play. When I imagined what it would be like after, I wanted to slide something else down my throat.16 There was no way I was going to say yes to this nonsense. The rest of the cast agreed with me: We were a hard pass.
“If you guys are too scared to go up in front of your own school,” the drama teacher scolded, “then we aren’t going up at all. I’ll cancel the play.”
We didn’t have a choice.
The special Thursday assembly rolled around and I was convinced it was the end of my existence on Earth.17 As the kids started to arrive, we could hear the jeers all the way backstage. “Doro-THEE!” Ben Garber yelled. “Nice TITTIES!”
The vice principal grabbed the mic. “Rude and disruptive behavior will not be tolerated because our school community is based on respect and kindness toward each other.”
“PPPRRRRRRRR!!” David Cohen made an annoyingly loud fart sound with his mouth. To follow up, he put on a talentless Indian accent, yelling, “I am excited for dee Tin Man!”
I heard him from backstage and wished I could go out there and slice his throat open. One of the drama-nerd stagehands saw the look on my face, knew exactly what rage I was feeling, and said, “Don’t waste your energy on them. We can’t let that bring us down. Let’s just get through this. Remember, the whole reason for this journey is for you to get courage!”
“That’s the Lion. I’m getting a heart.”
He shrugged.
The curtain went up on the first scene. Everyone was—surprisingly—respectful. Second scene: also fine. Third scene: my turn. After the Wiz gives the Scarecrow some brains, here’s what was supposed to go down:
TIN MAN: (Realizes he finally has a heart, crosses downstage, poses with ax blade on deck, handle in his right hand.) All you fine ladies out there… ha ha ha… (He kicks the ax blade with his right foot, sending it up to land on his right shoulder.) Watch out!
Since this was an eighth-grade production, we couldn’t use a real ax. Mine was made out of plastic and cardboard, spray-painted to look as metallic as it could on a middle school budget. But flimsy, fake axes cannot be kicked and landed on shoulders. So, during rehearsal I decided I would instead point to the audience and say the line.
TIN MAN: All you fine ladies out there… ha ha ha… (He points to the audience.) Watch out!