{"id":4181,"date":"2004-05-06T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2004-05-06T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2004\/05\/06\/2004-05-06-denver-post-columnist-apologizes-for-racist-writing\/"},"modified":"2004-05-06T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2004-05-06T12:00:00","slug":"2004-05-06-denver-post-columnist-apologizes-for-racist-writing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2004\/05\/06\/2004-05-06-denver-post-columnist-apologizes-for-racist-writing\/","title":{"rendered":"Denver Post Columnist Apologizes for Racist Writing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a HREF=\"mailto:ved_chaudhary@yahoo.com\">Source<\/a><\/P><P>DENVER, COLORADO, May 6, 2004: The Denver Post received more than 60 letters as of Friday afternoon from angry Hindu Americans protesting the column by Pius Kamau (see HPI, May 1) reports Ved Chaudhary (&#8220;source&#8221; above). One letter read, &#8220;Like Pius Kamau, I am a first-generation immigrant to America. As I read his sweeping putdown of Hindus and Indian immigrants, I experienced a tremendous sense of sadness and anger. Sadness that someone whose ethnic heritage would undoubtedly have made him sensitive to caricaturing and viciously stereotyping a people has succumbed to the same age-old cycle of prejudice. Anger that the premier newspaper in a major metropolitan area would run such a slanderous column without exercising any editorial discretion.&#8221; Another reads, &#8220;I am shocked and appalled by this article. This is the kind of ignorance that I deal with every day, ever since I became a student in Colorado. Yes, I too have had bad experiences with Christians and Muslims, but I know that a few bad apples don&#8217;t represent the whole culture. Such utter ignorance of a religion, and to have the courage to actually write it with no understanding, is quite remarkable.&#8221; <BR><br \/>\n<BR><br \/>\nDr. Kamau responded, &#8220;The above letters show I touched on a subject important to many Indians. In some ways, I think my take on Hinduism is dated &#8211; from living with Indians in Kenya 40 years ago. Most of them were keen adherents to their faith; in the same way, we too were of our own, Christianity. Living side-by-side with Indians in Mombasa and Nairobi, we were always a rung below them, which brought the thought of a lower caste &#8211; the untouchables, to mind. Unfortunately, the feeling I had when confronted by new Indian arrivals here was quite similar to what I felt then. The feeling of being a new untouchable erupted in my mind, which led me to explain a shallow comportment on their part with a deeper religious explanation. Naturally I regret causing pain to good people with my unguarded illustrations and words.&#8221;<BR><br \/>\n<\/P> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SourceDENVER, COLORADO, May 6, 2004: The Denver Post received more than 60 letters as of Friday afternoon from angry Hindu,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4181\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}