From Voice of America Hindi

Shilpi Jha reports on Raj Patel

Archie on Voice of America Hindi

And yet another ancient topic ! But since this concerns India......well

Archie and his friends are quite popular in India from way before Raj was even a concept. The stories and themes did a lot to shape the image of the USA in young Indian minds before India opened up to the world.

I read a story yesterday that soon there will be a story where Archie and the gang will visit Mumbai to act in a Hindi film directed by Raj. The boys will be in kurtas and the girls will be in Sarees.

I hope that it doesn't go overboard. Young people in India rarely wear traditional dresses, you can't tell apart a modern Indian workplace / school / college from the US or European versions ( except probably that everyone is Indian ).

Decades ? How long has been Raj around

Huh My bad. My memory is shot when it came to how long Raj was a minor character featured on the Archies.

4 years versus 70 years ?

And if the Archies are talking about inclusion then they should get a Chinese character too. The Chinese are more visible (greater numbers etc.)  in the US than Indians.

I thought they already had an Asian character of some sort.

In this part of the country, there are a lot of Indians or people from similar areas.

That would be Raj, I am not aware of a Chinese character

They have Japanese.  Two of them, in fact.  Kumi and Tomoko.

Good thing the Riverdale High school student body is diverse and integrated, many races and peoples are featured on the Archies. There was a rumor of a cancellation of an Archie digest issue featured an inter-racial relationship back in the 1960s.

I like to see a Native American character in the future, despite the miniscule percentage (1-3% are American Indian and Alaska Native) of the US population compared to Asians (est. 5% could be higher to 8%), Latinos (15-18%) and African-Americans (12-14%) all based on the latest US census data compiled in the 2010 beancount.

I began to think Veronica Lodge is Native American in some way, and the forum has a Veronica's ethnicity thread especially concerned on her exotically erotic appearance. 

Veronica Lodge ? Native American ?

I don't think so.

I read a French story ( well, saw the pictures ) in Levis where Mr. Lodge describes how he worked his way up and met his wife while he was working at a library. None of them had any Native American ancestry.

And anyways, in the 20th-21st century, you don't need genetics to look exotic.

As for the inter-racial thing, the Archie-Valerie arc is proof that we are past that era ( wonder how Betty and Ron felt ? )

The embarrassing thing is that "era" went on to a whole lot more recent than the 60's though.  Stories say the editorial policy, written or unwritten, was against mixed-race dating at least into the 90's and even possibly past that.  Obviously, we should be glad that the current people in charge do have their heads screwed on right, but this shouldn't be over looked as far as the comic's history is concerned.