The Spelling Bee And Its Indian-American Winners

The story of the Indian-American winners at this year’s, last year’s, the year before last and the year before that (und so weiter) here. It’s an outlet and a sweet focus of attention on the part of young immigrant strivers.

One question immediately comes to some minds: But where are the similarly striving children of immigrant Chinese? To which a moment’s thought provides the answer: some of those Chinese immigrants  are still learning English, while the strivers among the Indian-American immigrants already have English.

But I have a different question. Why are all (judging by the names)of  the Indian-American winners who are Hindus (or possibly, in some cases, Christian or Jain) or “of Hindu background”? I don’t see a single name that suggests Islam to me. The educated Muslims (all those engineers and doctors we hear so much about for the supposed “ease” with which they integrate into American society, an attempt to suggest that under American conditions — as opposed to those in Europe — Muslim immigrants are far from being immiscible)  who  arrive from the subcontinent or England,  surely speak English just as educated Hindus do. Is it possible that the indifference to anything outside of Islam, an indifference that Islam itself encourages or even inculcates, has something to do with this paucity or possible absence of Muslim spelling-bee-ers?

Question for study and discussion.

Meanwhile, just see if you can spell “naprapathy.” And if you get that right, try “pseudocusis,” then “moxibustion,” then “geheimrat,” then — oh gosh, under the circumstances, this will be too easy —  “satyagraha.”