This is going to be another one of my long posts and I apologize in advance.
Feel awkward calling yourself pakistani? Then the other option would be to live in a country where you will not be embarrassed about who you are. It is the same instinct that all capable and educated brown people have. Not fixing the problem but rather masking it to the point that these articles are printed.
No electricity -> buy a UPS -> UPS stops working -> Buy a generator -> No fuel for the generator -> Start applying for visa's.
Plus, I do not think any brown person is in turmoil over what to choose. Dignity or Money? They have made their decision and now baffled at how their choice is being upstaged by the uneducated people they left behind to represent them.
I would go as far as saying that they are just as bloody handed as the ones who have stayed back, if not more. It is easy to claim grandiosity for these people; I left because I didn't like the system, I couldn't take the jahiliyat, I couldn't take the mentality, yada, yada, yada. In truth they were the system, they are the jahils, they have that mentality and they are the leaches that bled the country, and that is exactly why they left (This is quite apparent the moment they land back for their holidays). You can see the insecurity dripping from their mouths and their desperation to make you believe that they were always goras at heart and way above the 'Pakistaniat'. But funnily its pretty easy to break them apart to what they really are. My uncle tried to give me this speech when he picked me up from the airport, doesn't talk to me any more.
What of the man's claimed 'principles' who can't identify his duties and responsibilities? I laugh at that.
ps: Of course there are always many exceptions and many different stories. I know of people who don't wish for anything more than to have not migrated at all.
I agree, Pakistani is just a nationality anyway.
Maybe to you but there are those of us for whom it is our identity, goes with our names. And we are proud of it.
Pakistani is not an enthno-linguistic/racial identity,its like being an Australian or a Canadian. If you are not born and raised here, you are not one of us as a matter of identity. It takes living and experiencing a culture, its goods and ills, strengths and weaknesses, in order to adopt that identity.
Overseas born and bread kids are technically not Pakistanis - they have British/American/Canadian with 'Pakistani heritage'.
Not quite, Pakistanis are overwhelmingly natives to the lands which belong to Pakistan. Canadians and Australians are the ones who hold the respective passports. But of course your main point is quite true.
For the article and OP:
The first thing that needs to be realized is that you cannot expect affinity from someone who has had no link to the subject except for an ancestorial link. Separated children don't feel any affinity to the absentee Parent either. Couple this with the current international image that Pakistan is shown in I'm not surprised that she did that. Just to drive in my point further, I had a neighbor who is as brown as brown can be but is named Scott, identifies himself as a Canadian. Took me two weeks to get out of him that his parents migrated from India when he was born. "My parents used to be Indian, but not any more. I was never Indian", is what he said. Their's another named Hriday, responds only to the name Friday and another named Preetam who only responds to the name Peter. I don't really blame these second generations.
All that said there certainly is this sense of inferiority in us brown people to the whites. I've seen them take ridicule after ridicule from a whitey and still lick his jewels. As if answering them would make one's face melt off. We always wan't to be their friends, hang out with them, even if it costs us our dignity. I've seen a Pakistani change his tone the day he got his citizenship. I don't really agree with @
notorious_eagle, people are perceptive doesn't matter which color they are of. And these perceptions always play a roll in every relationship. Due to the dynamics of different societies, in some places the effect is more in some it is less. But it is not correct at all that a westerner living two doors away from you will take you as just another neighbor. The first perception they have of us is that we are pushovers, idiots and lesser, due to the reasons explained above. But all of this, more often than not, has nothing to do with Pakistan. It's the people and, for all I care, they can do whatever they want.