What is it about non-whiteness that gets the most attention? Is it standing out against a vanilla sea? Doing things others aren’t comfortable doing or don’t understand because they can’t relate to?
NO ONE likes a bully. And yet...
Every day, people get judged for what they look like - not just by their skin color, but also by what they wear.
In every classroom, is at least one person who doesn’t feel like he or she fits in with the rest.
All across the world, organizations may employ workers from all racial backgrounds, and still never really know much if anything about what life is like for their cultures, nor do they necessarily ask.
Assumptions run rampant, as do moods. People are quick to feel threatened or afraid. We come to expect certain things out of people - individuals or groups - sometimes without even realizing it altogether. Such stereotyping can be deadly because it minimizes a person’s individual worth and lumps them in with what we associate with bad outcomes. It’s not a new problem by any means - people from the Bible itself were quick to shun outsiders, and saw nothing wrong with employing them or even lower classes of their own people as servants.
I’m a minority WITHIN a minority, and if that sounds confusing, welcome to my world. I’m not fully Southeast Asian Indian, but I check it off on all those annoying forms I constantly have to fill out at doctor’s offices and for my child’s schools anyway, along with White (even though I don’t look it) because otherwise I’d be checking almost every box.
And quite honestly, I detest those forms because they automatically discount the amazing blend of cultures I have within me. In some ways, it’s made it worse for my daughter, because at least both of my parents have similar ethnic ancestry between them, whereas my girl has only a fraction of those traits, what with my having married into “the average white family.” On the surface, she looks white to me, but feels far from that herself, and actually the older she gets, the more she is asked if she is partly Southeast Asian or some other non-white race, and she is torn with what to identity with.
The thing is, when I look at my beautiful daughter, I see the best parts of her dad and I, along with traits from other relatives down the line, all melded together. But anything “White” is assumed by outsiders to be from her dad. For example, her thick, dark hair with reddish highlights can be attributed not just to being a mix of my Indian hair to match my husband’s Scottish ancestors, but my own Scottish ancestors, along with help from my German, Italian, and even Portuguese roots, too!
I really wish our ancestors of each ethnicity had passed down their culture and not just their physical features, so I could understand the people they come from. Only a few of them passed down their stories, some even with photos, but so many questions yet remain. To clear up some of those mysteries and find clues on where to find records of my ancestors’ existence so I can keep working on my family tree, I took one of those DNA analysis tests and discovered so much more than I would have ever imagined I would. Just listen to these statistics:
According to 23andMe, 56% of my relatives are likely to have red hair (further proving the fact about my daughter’s locks!).
Also, 99% of my relatives are likely to have British or Irish ancestry. 99%!
64.6% of me is classified as Central and South Asian, broken down further into 1-20% from various parts of India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.
28% of me is European. No surprise, of course, considering my maiden name is German, after all. What WAS surprising was how little German I actually have - only 0.7% mixed in with French. Overall, my British and Irish ties are the majority of my European ancestry, followed by Northwestern European, and to a lesser extent, some Southern and Eastern European.
Some final twists - I have 3.5% East Asian and Native American, including Chinese, plus 1.1% West Asian and North African, with yet 2.8% left to identify, but that last number shrinks a little every time my results get updated. So, you could say, I am linked to pretty much all nations in one way or another!
I mention all this to make another valid point. All my DNA is loosely split 50/50 between my parents, with some variance depending on whose side had more of certain ethnicities than the other. But right off the bat, my 64% Asian is really only 20-30% in my parents, and only 20-10% in my grandparents, until we get to the generation where the Indian married the Anglican, and had children. This plays out in different areas of my tree, some of which are still not fully known. What I do know is, all four of my grandparents and their parents were light-skinned, and I have some cousins who are pale enough to look white to an average observer. But, then, how can I justify calling myself “East Indian” or “Indian,” or “Asian,” even “White?” Yet that is what people expect me to do.
When you live in the same country or region for all or a good part of your life, as I have, you identify with it as a national, with habits and behaviors to match the locals. Eventually, you lose sight of where you come from, until you identify it solely in terms of color. And just as White can mean more than one nationality, so can Asian, Black, and Hispanic. Thus, you begin to lose a part of who you are for the sake of fitting in somewhere, unless your family has passed down specific culture practices and mindsets down to you to live out. What I’ve come to realize in recent years, and definitely from reading the book White Awake, is that I’ve been primarily raised White - White American, to be exact. And it’s ironic how that happened, too, considering my parents were both immigrants from India who definitely didn’t fully adapt in that exact same way. They still posses traces of British English, both from their land of birth and from the years we spent living in New England. I usually tend to forget I’m a minority, especially in a room with Caucasians, until someone reminds me. Until recent years, I thought that was a good thing, because it just meant I was finally comfortable with who I was.
I have found that picking up habits from other cultures is not particularly hard to do or learn, if you really want to - I did it twice in going with my parents to India as a child and as a teen. I had embraced what my parents and their families refer to as their Anglo-Indian culture, and had to work hard to become “American” again each time that we returned. And to me, that meant being White, not Anglo-Indian. Also switching our location from East Coast to Midwest changed me further over the years, so that now, most people never would guess I was ever born in Boston. Plus, I’ve also been exposed to a whole gamut of nationalities and other cultures I didn’t initially grow up around, which today has constantly shaped and reshaped my awareness and appreciation for them. The common denominator for such assimilation is my relationships with people outside of my culture (White, Indian, and Anglo-Indian) which is why I’m not uncomfortable around any of them now, and I continue to take strides to that end so I don’t let myself hold back in fear or ignorance just because people are different. As a minority, I know what it feels like to be singled out, told to be with "my own kind" (whatever THAT was?!), and having to endure being talked to in languages I don't even speak because it was assumed I would know what was being said, and I don’t want to do that to anyone else.
That’s why I appreciate that White Awake deals with the topic of diversity with such honesty and sensitivity needed that everyone ought to read and put into practice if they want to truly make a positive impact in this world. Going to church helps. Being part of a diverse work culture is important. Having neighbors and school contacts from all walks of life is the essence of community.
If we don’t know the people around us, how well can we ever truly serve them in their time of need?
