Identity matters. And also, it doesn’t

Ahead of the upcoming midterm elections in the United States, what does the documentary “Seat at the Table,” filmed in the run-up to the 2024 poll, reveal about American politics?

When Mantra Roy, the director of the South Asian New Works Festival screening the film Seat at the Table, asked me to moderate the post-screening panel last month, I wasn’t sure I was the right person for the job. The documentary follows three Southsian* candidates’ rise in American politics during the 2024 election cycle. An immigrant from Pakistan, I know the corrosive effect of identity politics. It’s why so many of us are here in the United States.

“Why does it matter that they’re Southasian?” I asked myself rhetorically as I read the blurb.

But I did not want to disappoint Mantra. So, I showed up and watched the documentary in the packed Martin Luther King Library at San Jose State University, bracing for the politicians on the screen to push their identity, victimhood, and “intersectionality.”

My unease was also based on assertions, such as those advanced by Critical Race Theorists that racism is so deeply embedded and systemic that the U.S. cannot be redeemed.

Revealing answers

I often test this idea by asking friends and acquaintances how racist or bigoted they think Americans are in percentage terms. Are 10% of Americans racist? Or is it 50%? There is no right answer since Americans aren’t answering pollsters by admitting: yes, I’m a racist. But I still find the answers revealing.

The wealthier and more sheltered you are, the more prejudiced you believe the country is. In contrast, the working-class people I speak with, housekeepers, gardeners, handymen, hold a much more favorable view.

I expected the film to echo the popular narrative often held that America is fundamentally intolerant.

In other words, I expected Seat at the Table to be “woke.”

I need not have feared. It was not, for the most part.

The documentary turned out to be a refreshing reminder that politics in U.S. remains, by and large, local. While identity is part of politics, it is not the predominant concern of Southasian politics, at least as personified by the four individuals the film follows.

Take Nabeela Syed, the young, Indian-origin, hijab-wearing Muslim woman running for the State House in a suburban Illinois district. She could have leaned into the narrative of Muslim persecution. Instead, she spends her days knocking on doors in the cold, talking about inflation, property taxes, and rising prescription drug costs.

That local focus is tested when Syed’s political opponent labels her as anti-Israel, dragging a state-level race into the vortex of Middle Eastern, and national, politics. Syed weathers the smears and wins, proving that voters, at least in her district of Illinois, ultimately care more about her pragmatic platform than her identity.

The film’s two other subjects reinforce this reality: Appearance and skin color matter but rarely decide the race.

New Jersey-born Ravi Bhalla’s historic bid to become the first turban-wearing Sikh in Congress leans into his identity. But he ultimately loses his New Jersey primary to the entrenched power of the local Democratic machine, not due to xenophobia.

In Arizona, Dr. Amish Shah runs a moderate, policy-heavy campaign for the U.S. House, but narrowly loses to a Republican incumbent in a right-leaning district.

A reassuring truth

Together, their stories illustrate a reassuring truth about the American electorate: your identity does not guarantee you a seat at the table. How well you understand your fellow Americans and their needs, how well you can speak and empathize with them, is what can.

The documentary’s subplot, featuring Kamala Harris and her failed presidential run, seems to prove this point.

Harris, an Indian American, is shown delivering a speech, advising young women of color, that when they walk into a room where they are the only ones “who look like them,” they must remember their entire community is standing right there, applauding them. It is an empowering message for minorities based on their appearance.

I don’t mind this message. But it over-indexes on identity and not enough on economic realities, which is why, many have argued, Harris lost. Speaking to women, she could have also noted that women are outcompeting men in academics and jobs. Speaking to the Indian- Americans in the audience, she could have noted that the community isn’t marginalized, as it once might have been, but is one of the richest and most powerful in the country.

I’m not against identity, only that it must find the right balance with our identity as Americans.

Living in the Bay Area and working in the biotech industry, I am surrounded by colleagues from diverse races and nationalities. The large number of Hindus and Sikhs I work with remind me of what Lahore, my hometown in Pakistan, once was. According to data from the 1941 census, the city was roughly 65% Muslim, 27% Hindu, and 5% Sikh. Today, Lahore has almost no Hindus or Sikhs, and the few minorities who remain often live in fear, marginalized as an oppressed underclass. Yet here, I work alongside Deepa, Chirag, Jayashree, and Nalini—names that must have once echoed through Lahore’s historic streets.

Lahore lost most of its non-Muslims because people who had lived together for centuries in relative peace were swept up in religious identity politics. We focused too much on our differences rather than what made us one.

One of my deepest fears is that Americans are now re-enacting the same divisive politics that created India and Pakistan in a rupture of Biblical proportions called Partition. I fear we may be creating the “American Partition.”

As the credits rolled and the audience applauded, I stepped to the front of the room, microphone in hand. Director Sarita Khurana and editor Sunita Prasad joined us via Zoom from the East Coast. When we opened the floor, the audience’s questions were revealing. They asked about the shoot’s technical challenges, the intricacies of film financing, and the hurdles of distribution. Only a few centered on identity.

America’s wonder and the hopeful message of Seat at the Table is this: we are a nation renegotiating the balance between being different, and yet one.

Identity matters. And it doesn’t.

Taimur Ali Ahmed grew up in Lahore and lives in the Bay Area. He posts on X (formerly Twitter) @TaimurAliAhmed. On 19 September, he moderated a panel discussion post-screening of the documentary, ‘Seat at the Table’ that charts the rise of Southasians in American politics, at the South Asian New Works Festival at San Jose University.

This is a Global Southasia syndicated feature available for republication with due credit to sapannews.com

*Why do we write ‘Southasia’ as one word? Because our histories entangle, our struggles intersect, and our futures are bound together. This is not just a spelling choice, it’s a political and poetic one.

This article was written and edited by humans. Click here for the Global Southasia AI policy.

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