ACLU-NJ's Amol Sinha on being Desi in this election

Amol Sinha, executive director of the ACLU of New Jersey, is a Garden State native who grew up straddling the state’s dichotomies in both literal and figurative ways. As a South Asian child of immigrants, he had to navigate racism and microaggressions to find his place in a society that is often seen as black and white. At the same time, his childhood in Lawrence meant that he was equal distances from one of the state’s most impoverished cities, Trenton, and one of its wealthiest, Princeton.

Sinha, recently recognized by the South Asian Bar Association of North America with the Public Interest Achievement Award and by the South Asian Bar Association of New York with the Access to Justice Award, has spent his career helping to advance racial justice and uplift communities in the tristate area.

Now, he’s leading ACLU-NJ through “one of the most consequential elections in our history,” as he puts it. “Nothing short of our democracy and who we are as a nation are on the line…. We’re ready to safeguard the election, defend democracy, fight for immigrants and abortion rights, and so much more.”

We spoke with Amol about the ACLU’s work, his life and career, and how being Desi fits into all that.

Ambreen: What was it like growing up in New Jersey as a Desi kid?

Amol: I grew up in Lawrence, and if you drive just kind of 15 minutes between one end of Princeton Pike to the other, you see so much segregation. Trenton is one of the most economically ignored communities of color in the state, one of the most under-resourced school districts, and one of the most over-policed communities. And Princeton is one of the most affluent. I realized early on in my childhood that there was an unjust racial hierarchy in our country. I also did not know where I fell on it as a South Asian.

I didn't know how to disrupt it, and I experienced all the things that any person of color or any person from an immigrant background probably experiences in their childhood. There was more than enough bullying. There was a lot of othering, microaggressions from teachers and the adults around us, being called awful things including the n-word. And then witnessing one’s parents navigate the world as well, which adds another layer of injustice and trauma: seeing people talk down to my parents, or seeing people making the assumption that they can't speak English.

It wasn't until college that I started learning and thinking a little bit more about systemic racism and the ways in which these experiences that I had were not just neighbors being rude to each other or kids being kids, they were symptoms of something bigger. And it wasn't until law school and then working in social justice that I realized I could articulate the solutions. There are policy solutions and opportunities for us that would make the world a better and more equitable place.

Ambreen: I'm curious what the inflection point was. When you went to college, you were a journalism major. Did you pivot at some point to law school, and when did the idea of a career in civil rights really formulate in your mind?

Amol: My first exposure to it was my first year of college, when I took a freshman honors seminar on the First Amendment. That really opened my eyes to the importance of free speech in a democratic society, and also the importance of the ACLU.

I loved writing, so I truly enjoyed being a journalism major and the skills-based classes that I had there. But I was also an econ major, so I was thinking about issues related to economic injustice as well. When I was applying to law school, I initially intended on becoming an intellectual property lawyer. During my second year, when we were finally allowed to choose our courses, I took a copyright class, and I realized then that copyright actually stems from the Constitution. I ended up taking more and more civil rights and Constitutional law classes.

When I came out of law school, I had purposefully engineered a career path for myself, which was that I wanted to be a civil rights attorney. I found a role at the NYCLU that spoke to me and ended up staying there for about six years, and then went on to a criminal justice role at the Innocence Project, where I was basically a lobbyist. When the job at the ACLU of New Jersey opened up, folks had reached out to me about it and I went through the process, and it worked out.

I'll tell you a quick aside about that. I lost my father in 2014, and it was sudden and tragic. Before then, when I was working at the NYCLU in Suffolk County, that commute back home to New York would take an 1.5 hours on a good day. And there were some Fridays when I would leave Suffolk County and try to come straight to where my parents were living in East Windsor, and sometimes it would take four hours.

One Friday evening, when I was making the drive and I was exhausted, I was on the phone with my dad, and he said, “Isn't there an ACLU in New Jersey where you can work?” I carry that with me every day. When this job opened up, I had to go for it.

Ambreen: I'm very sorry to hear about your dad. What are your thoughts about representing New Jersey now, as opposed to New York?

Amol: New Jersey is leading the country on diversity in a lot of ways. We have one of the highest concentrations of immigrant Americans in the United States. We have one of the largest South Asian communities in the country.

We also have one of the most welcoming states for immigrants in the nation. We have one of the most robust abortion protections in the country. We have some incredible voting rights reforms that have made voting easier in our state, and we are leading the country in having one of the lowest rates of incarceration.

So, we are doing a lot that should put us on the map. Yet New Jersey also has one of the worst racial disparities in prisons in the country, with Black people incarcerated at a rate 12 times that of white people.

I also think that New Jersey is under-resourced in a lot of different ways: Our public transit infrastructure is lacking and needs a lot more investment. We have parts of the state that are struggling without access to public transit or infrastructure or resources. There are food deserts in New Jersey.

There are rural parts of the state that do not have access to the things that the more suburban or urban parts of the state do, and some of the cities are dealing with pollution, lack of investment in infrastructure, and issues related to poverty and economic injustice on a regular basis.

So I think there's a lot of good happening here, but there's also a lot of room for improvement. And thankfully, because of organizations like the ACLU and many others, and because of some strong leadership in our state, we've been able to inch closer to a fairer, stronger, and more equitable state.

Ambreen: I want to ask about the South Asian community in New Jersey and their level of engagement with all of these issues. But before I get there, I meant to ask you where 9/11 fits into your narrative. At least, I found that to be really formative, and I don't know if that's the case for you.

Amol: I was a junior in high school, and it was obviously horrifying for all of us. Nobody knew what to make of it that day. It was a formative experience, because it allowed for what some saw as togetherness to be exploited, to become a way of othering people that look like me and people that have my skin color. It was palpable. I went to college at New York University soon after 9/11, and I felt the gaze—the questioning of my patriotism and my allegiance to the country.

A big part of who I am today was shaped by 9/11. The tragedy and its aftermath heavily influenced my decisions to study journalism, to go to law school, and to work in civil rights, and specifically at the ACLU.

I will say, though, that I had been bullied and been called a terrorist and all those awful names before 9/11 too. I think what 9/11 and the Patriot Act did—what the Bush administration and the national security state did—was enable that a little bit more, and we're still living with the consequences. I think there's a real peril that's felt by South Asian, Muslim, Arab American, and Middle Eastern communities right now.

I think about my identity every single day. I think about who I am, how I'm being perceived, the fact that I come from an immigrant family, the fact that I'm a racial and religious minority, the fact that my parents’ first language is not English. I carry that with me in every meeting, in every space that I occupy, and I think it’s a very common experience for people of our background.

Ambreen: I feel like at that moment, with the Patriot Act and everything that happened, there was a lot of activism in the community. It feels to me like the community is not as engaged as it was in that moment. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but what do you think about that, especially in New Jersey?

Amol: I think the South Asian community in New Jersey currently is very politically active. You see more and more folks who are running for office or are engaged civically in some way.

But I also think that those in power don't see us as civically engaged, and that's a disconnect. Asian Americans are 11% of the population in New Jersey. The vast majority of that is South Asian American. And I don't know if candidates for office really care about us.

Whenever I see a poll, it's white, Black, Latino. I don't really see the pulse of the Asian American community unless we're the ones to do the polling ourselves. We are not being respected as a voting bloc or as an electorate the same way other communities are, even though we have comparable numbers, at least in New Jersey. I think that's a struggle that we have to figure out and try to address.

Ambreen: Let's talk a little bit about this election. What do you think is at stake for South Asians in New Jersey and at the national level?

Amol: I saw an article recently that immigrants are becoming citizens faster than ever before in our history. And the second largest group of those new citizens came from India. The stated reason why they want to become citizens, in large part, is because they want to vote in the 2024 election. It's amazing that there is this entire generation, like hundreds of thousands of people a month becoming citizens, so that they can vote in the 2024 election. I think that is something to be celebrated. And the fact that so many South Asians are doing so is really something as well.

My mother has been in this country for 50 years. She only became a citizen in 2016 after living in this country for 42 years as a permanent resident. And the reason she became a citizen was because she said she wanted to vote. As I said, we had recently lost my father, and then all of a sudden she said she wants to vote. In the naturalization ceremony, though, they demand that you renounce your allegiance to any other country. That's a pretty profound loss for somebody. People are giving up a core part of their identity because they see it as their duty to vote in this country.

In terms of the issues that South Asians should care about, I'll say this: Every American issue is a South Asian American issue. We should care about every single issue impacting any community in the United States. Let's not be siloed into only being allowed to care about immigration, for instance. Of course, we should, but we should also care about criminal justice, reproductive freedom, schools, and education. We should also care about the way in which our tax dollars are being used overseas to fund wars. We should care deeply about racial justice and reparations for Black communities.

All of these things are connected, and we should care about them because we are part of the fabric of American society, and those issues are part of the fabric of American society.

Ambreen: Is there anything you wanted to add or say to the audience of Central Desi?

Amol: The model minority myth has done so much damage to our communities and the way we are perceived. I also think that the response to the model minority myth that many people take is a problematic one, which is a race to the bottom, like we are just as oppressed or just as harmed by injustice in the world.

I think we have to carry that nuance everywhere we go. Yes, we've benefited from white supremacy and from privilege in this country, and yes, we've also been oppressed by white supremacy in this country.

Our experience does not compare to the white experience in this country, nor can it compare to the Black experience in this country. It's important to hold the complexity of our identity everywhere we go, and make sure that we're talking about both the privilege and the oppression and the pain and the grief and the joy and optimism of being South Asian. It's simpler to think in terms of binaries, but let's not allow that.

Ambreen Ali is a longtime politics and policy journalist and the founding editor of Central Desi.

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