Das Racist's Dapwell on voting

Image source: Casey Fox on Flickr

Over at SPIN magazine, they are doing a series called “Spin Election 2012: Musicians on the Key Issues.” This week they talked to Dapwell of Das Racist (AKA Ashok Kondabolu, seen elsewhere starring in the indie film Dosa Hunt) and his views on the importance of voting, though his mother’s experience as a naturalized citizen. He grew up in Queens, in an apartment at 74th Street and Northern Boulevard in Jackson Heights.

A few bits from the piece – first, how his mother, an Indian immigrant living in Queens, saw the privilege of voting.

She took the 7 train from Jackson Heights, Queens, to take the oath of citizenship in Manhattan at the District Attorney’s office. She brought her naturalization certificate, which had been mailed to her home address. Her first time voting in an election was 1988. One of the reasons she decided to vote, she says, was the advantage of “choosing your own people” — and how that was a “privilege.”

And his initial feelings about voting, as a natural-born citizen.

The first time I voted, in 2004, it didn’t involve much other than filling out a voter registration card that was handed to me by a classmate, and waiting for it to be November of 2004…. At the time, I remember a general ambivalence about participating in the electoral process among my fellow students at downtown Manhattan’s prestigious Stuyvesant High — a school of supposed über-achievers and leaders.

Eventually, he felt differently, his mother’s experience helping him understand his eventual perspective.

So, why tell a lackluster and fairly commonplace story about my Indian mother living in Queens? I think it demonstrates a clear path to citizenship and how that sense of belonging encouraged to my mother to participate in the American electoral process.

Das Racist’s Dapwell on Respecting the Process – SPIN Election 2012 [SPIN]