Multicultural exceptionalism: Race and gender in the Sikh diaspora of the transnational Pacific Northwest

ABSTRACT

Multiculturalism discourse simultaneously produces, celebrates, and erases differences. This paper explores racial violence within the Sikh diaspora of the transnational Pacific Northwest (PNW) to understand how multicultural discourse has obfuscated the criminalization, incarceration, and surveillance of the Sikh diaspora. I draw from an analysis of Deepa Mehta's film Beeba Boys as well as ethnographic fieldwork to analyze the tropes of the ‘Surrey Jack' and the ‘Kent Boy,' two pervasive stereotypes attached to young Punjabi men in the PNW. I show that these caricatured masculinities reveal the limits of racial inclusion by reproducing stereotypes that characterize Punjabi Sikh men as ‘dangerous.’

KEYWORDS:

• Multicultural exceptionalism
• racialization of religion
• Sikh diaspora
• Pacific Northwest
• state-sanctioned violence

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 See for instance: Hong 2023 and Hussain 2023.

2 Chin straps refer to a particular style of facial hair which involves grooming hair so that the sideburns join with the beard below the chin.

3 Definition from UrbanDictionary.com by Ray Kumar (2007).

4 The letter is on behalf of the Darbar Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Gurdwara Sahib Dashmesh Darbar, Gurdwara Dukh Nivaran Sahib, Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara, Gurdwara Guru Teg Bahudur Sahib, the Gurdwara Amrit Parkash, and the Laxmi Narayan Temple.

5 ‘Letter to Minister Mike Farnworth from Surrey Temple Leaders.’ July 2, 2019.