The other day, I saw a facebook
post about a TV character of Indian descent who dates only white men. I
wondered why it deserved such a big news article (although I read it all). I
wondered why it mattered. I still don’t understand why it should matter. For I would like to believe that ethnicity or
skin color is not the only part of your identity. And it is not. But it is
something you need to carry with you.
The topic of skin color has popped up now and then in our home, especially when my daughter hangs out with friends who are mostly white. Not that she minds or they mind and she has even tried to teach them Bollywood songs and of course, to speak with an Indian accent. The other day I even warned a mom that her daughter was returning home with a well-rehearsed Indian accent.
And I try to see it from her point of view. These are friends she relates to whole and soul and yet is suddenly aware that there is something different about her. And I think she’s trying to figure that piece out. She has Indian friends too and sees a lot of Indians, but may be trying to figure out the place of skin color in the overall scope of things.
Having ventured into a non-homogenous culture only as an adult, I cannot necessarily relate to what may be ticking away in her little brain. I understand it is inevitable, even if I am saddened by the fact that this exists and will so for at least a few lifetimes.
I am really not trying to get into any deep discussion about discrimination and skin color of any kind. I’m simply trying to understand what being typecast into a certain ethnicity means for the day to day existence and interaction. And I’m trying to understand why I am still thinking about it, given that I don’t believe in it (or at least don’t want to).
For there are times, I forget my ethnicity and feel that it just doesn’t matter (and it doesn’t or shouldn’t). But my accent, skin color and mannerisms come in the way with certain groups of people, and may get more attention than I would like. It really doesn’t bother me that much. For it is a part of who I am. But fact remains that it does exist and there’s no getting around it.
Besides this phenomenon is global. In Central Africa, I was called ‘blanche’ (white). Yeah, you go figure… I think we try to understand where we stand with reference to others; or where others stand with reference to us. And I guess we are constantly trying to fit people into cubbyholes of kinds that we create in our mind. So the folks in Central Africa, didn’t have a cubbyhole for ‘brown’ and I was simply put into the one for ‘blanche’.
Or the confused looks I got at the Paris airport when I travelled from Africa to the US, spoke French (with an African accent), carried an Indian passport, my hair tied in hundreds of tiny African braids, wearing a University t-shirt. The woman checking my papers laughed and pointed out how I was a petite brown woman, with African hair and beads, French tongue, Indian papers and American destination and t-shirt. I hadn’t realized it till then. I felt so global. I loved it. For I want to believe that the world is shrinking. It truly is. Yet we have ways to go.
For in the end, we are the only ones who know who we truly are inside; and who we truly believe ourselves to be.
here's another link to an email I wrote from Cameroon that talks about similar stuff...
http://rootswrites.blogspot.com/2010/09/of-this-that-and-stereotypes.html
It's on a different blog - tried to archive here some emails that I wrote many years ago from Cameroon... this one is about stereotypes...
The topic of skin color has popped up now and then in our home, especially when my daughter hangs out with friends who are mostly white. Not that she minds or they mind and she has even tried to teach them Bollywood songs and of course, to speak with an Indian accent. The other day I even warned a mom that her daughter was returning home with a well-rehearsed Indian accent.
And I try to see it from her point of view. These are friends she relates to whole and soul and yet is suddenly aware that there is something different about her. And I think she’s trying to figure that piece out. She has Indian friends too and sees a lot of Indians, but may be trying to figure out the place of skin color in the overall scope of things.
Having ventured into a non-homogenous culture only as an adult, I cannot necessarily relate to what may be ticking away in her little brain. I understand it is inevitable, even if I am saddened by the fact that this exists and will so for at least a few lifetimes.
I am really not trying to get into any deep discussion about discrimination and skin color of any kind. I’m simply trying to understand what being typecast into a certain ethnicity means for the day to day existence and interaction. And I’m trying to understand why I am still thinking about it, given that I don’t believe in it (or at least don’t want to).
For there are times, I forget my ethnicity and feel that it just doesn’t matter (and it doesn’t or shouldn’t). But my accent, skin color and mannerisms come in the way with certain groups of people, and may get more attention than I would like. It really doesn’t bother me that much. For it is a part of who I am. But fact remains that it does exist and there’s no getting around it.
Besides this phenomenon is global. In Central Africa, I was called ‘blanche’ (white). Yeah, you go figure… I think we try to understand where we stand with reference to others; or where others stand with reference to us. And I guess we are constantly trying to fit people into cubbyholes of kinds that we create in our mind. So the folks in Central Africa, didn’t have a cubbyhole for ‘brown’ and I was simply put into the one for ‘blanche’.
Or the confused looks I got at the Paris airport when I travelled from Africa to the US, spoke French (with an African accent), carried an Indian passport, my hair tied in hundreds of tiny African braids, wearing a University t-shirt. The woman checking my papers laughed and pointed out how I was a petite brown woman, with African hair and beads, French tongue, Indian papers and American destination and t-shirt. I hadn’t realized it till then. I felt so global. I loved it. For I want to believe that the world is shrinking. It truly is. Yet we have ways to go.
For in the end, we are the only ones who know who we truly are inside; and who we truly believe ourselves to be.
here's another link to an email I wrote from Cameroon that talks about similar stuff...
http://rootswrites.blogspot.com/2010/09/of-this-that-and-stereotypes.html
It's on a different blog - tried to archive here some emails that I wrote many years ago from Cameroon... this one is about stereotypes...
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