Where we stand
Strange when we consider racial equality — and find the surest attitudes against it from…. within us as minorities.
Indian-Americans just like any other minority struggle with the world they have been shown and taught to think is ideal. The larger propaganda is clearly effective. That racism that we are nonetheless so attuned to spot elsewhere so often lies unseen within us. And against us.
I have many times been confided in by fellow Indians, male and female, that white people possess true beauty. We value our friendships with white people. We praise other people’s relationships with white people. We pride ourselves on being on good terms with white people or being treated with regard by them.
So often, in the interactions between Indian guys and girls - we hold each up to the expectations that are not of our own making. Indian girls sometimes feel Indian guys don’t measure up. Indian guys sometimes struggle to see the beauty in Indian girls that we know is there but have been conditioned not to see.
Undoing these attitudes take a lifetime ….and sometimes more, which is a tragedy to perish from this Earth before seeing your own people for what they are and not what you have been led to believe.
In some ways the real “tragedy” behind this dynamic is there is no conspiracy behind it. There are no corporate board room tables sat around and memos issued and depictions considered and propaganda designed. There is no directive to make Indians uncomfortable in our own skin. There isn’t a collective effort to construct masculinity after caucasian traits or femininity and chasteness after white ideals. Were there such consolidated an effort, undoing it would involve fixing the target and confronting it, daunting as that might be, it would have shape to it, it would have form. Instead we must tilt against unseen assumptions. We must question the manner in which stories are told. And perhaps most unlikely, we must look within ourselves and try to understand why we feel the way we do about our own kind. And be willing to acknowledge that racism won’t subside unless we ourselves confront our stubborn misperceptions and the damning self-image we have of our own people that we can no longer blame on society.
