‘Yo,it’s IST yo’: The discursive construction of an Indian American youth identity in a South Asian student club

Abstract

This study analyzes interactions among members of a South Asian Club (SAC) at an American university to illustrate how members construct a common Indian-American identity despite observable in-group differences. Members of this second-generation group differentiate themselves from White Americans and from natives of India, orienting to notions of both American model minority status and American youth culture and using humor as a strategy to downplay intra-Indian differences among themselves. While members of this student association succeed in achieving proud Indian-American youth identities – cool, socially mobile, and with cultural ties to another country – they unwittingly reinforce hegemonic racial structures in the United States. While ‘Indian-American’ is a positive identity for these students, it is also a racially marked identity that necessarily, however unintentionally, excludes them from the unmarked privileges of Whiteness.