[Three dogs are sleeping on a welcome mat of a shop of some kind. A cat is nestled in between them.]
Owner: Customers are coming. Theyâre scared of dogs. Hurry up. Customers are coming.
[Dogs slowly get up and walk off to the back in single file. Cat remains on the front step. Just before the last dog enters the back room, the owner calls out again.]
Owner: Teng (Dogâs name), go get Xiao Bao (Catâs name) too. Go fetch Xiao Bao
[Dog turns back to the entrance and gently drags the clearly reluctant cat back inside. The owner speaks softly as the dog approaches the camera]
Owner (softly): All right, put (the cat) down.
[The owner gives what looks like dried jerky to the dog]
Owner: Let Xiao Bao eat some. Let Xiao Bao eat some.
[The dog takes the jerky and lowers his head so that the cat can nibble on the other end]
mother-daughter relationships are fraught not because women are bitchy or hysterical but because a mother can be her daughterâs primary source of emotional support at the same time that she is enforcing against her daughter the very patriarchal dictates that hurt and constrain her.
A man in North Carolina has detailed the wringer through which both he and wife were subjected when trying to vote in the stateâs recent primary, as people with South Asian names in a state with a strict voter ID law. And this happened not once, but twice.
Rudy Ravindra, a resident of Wilmington, penned an op-ed piece in the Raleigh News & Observer about his experience when he went to cast his ballot during the early voting period.
âI gave my driverâs license to a poll worker, HW. He kept it face down and ordered me to spell my name,â Ravindra explained. âAlthough I go by Rudy, my legal name is Rudravajhala. In order to save time, I requested HW look at my ID. He barked, âYou gotta spell it!â So I took a deep breath and began. âR-U-D-ââ
During the encounter itself, there followed a scene reminiscent of an old literacy test â administered by somebody who mightâve had their own problems at passing it. Ravindra described it as a âspelling test.â
âHe repeated after me and typed each letter,â Ravindra wrote in theNews & Observer. âWhen he typed a B instead of a D, I had to correct him, âItâs not B; itâs D for dog.ââ
âThis farce went on a for a while, and each time he made a mistake, I patiently corrected. Meanwhile, voters in adjacent lines came and went briskly. I heaved a sigh of relief when HW finally entered my mouthful of a name into his computer and peered at the monitor. And then I had to pronounce it, and when he tried, he couldnât get it right.â
Finally â and after also being asked for his address â Ravindra was able to vote. He was tempted to tell the poll worker off â but was worried that if he did, they âmight summon the police to haul me off.â
Ravindra took his wife to the polls on Election Day itself, at a different location and with a different poll worker â who proceeded to give her exactly the same treatment he got: âKeeping her ID face down, he asked her to spell her name and pronounce it.â
And just as before, white voters around them were able to easily pass through with just a quick look at their ID cards.
Ravindra added: âMy wife and I couldnât help but feel that we were singled out. The poll workers could have simply looked at our IDs and saved a lot of time. That in a sea of white faces at both polling stations my wife and I were the only brown-skinned individuals also led us to suspect that we were victims of racial prejudice. In these days of Trumpism and shameless xenophobia and other assorted phobias, we canât be blamed if we are paranoid.â
After this entire saga ended for both Ravindra and his wife, he called the state Board of Elections to lodge a complaint. The director apologized and confirmed to him that poll workers only have to look at the photo ID â there was no necessity for him to have to spell out his name.
