An Open Letter

One of the memories I remember is that when I was in middle school I told my mom on the drive home that I didn’t like being Indian. She stopped the car and yelled at me to get out and walk home, and I had to beg her to not do that and to take me home. That never helped my internal view of myself and my identity. It doesn’t help that I grew up completely detached from any form of culture that was not of my own, and so I was never able to really relate or interact for that matter with Indian people. The only interactions I have were with my immediate family, and the Indian boys at school that were very crass and immature and I did not hang around them. I don’t know exactly how or when, but without knowing a lot of racism became internalized to me. I became one of those people that betrays their own group to show that they are one of the good ones, and it was never a conscious thing. But to me I believed and I would say that Indian guys were weird, and I thought Indian women were unattractive. Being Indian was always like a stain, or it was a mark of shame. I think that still carries with me now, and it’s something that’s really difficult to put down when it’s been instilled in me consistently. I always try to avoid Indian content on the Internet, because until very recently I’ve always seen it in a very negative light, and the comments are just filled with racism and it just reinforces in my head. Recently I’ve started to get positive sentiment, and it shocks me to see people saying things nice about Indian people. It feels like pandering, or people lying in the interest of equality, and the difficulty I have accepting it is further proof of how much it’s been internalized in me. I don’t go by any nicknames which is kind of ironic because I don’t really like my name. I don’t wanna change it or anything, but at the same time I always feel like I’m asking people to accommodate me and to put up with me when they have to learn my name. I feel like if anyone tries to convince me otherwise, by saying something like “it’s an unique and cool name” it would only feel like pandering. I feel like in my eyes the way to be desired as an Indian person is to imitate being another race. Whenever I see attractive Indian people online, it always feels like it’s meant to mimic white people, or when I think about Indian people in media it feels like they aren’t like me. I guess no one necessarily is like me, in the sense that everyone is unique, but there are very little Indian people online that are popular, I’m really thankful for Squeex, because he is Indian and proud about it, and it doesn’t feel like a drawback for him. I am working on seeing myself in that same light. I look in the mirror and I see my face and I hear my voice and I think of my name and I see my skin color and I don’t see Indian. Until I do, and then I just feel sad. It feels pathetic that I’ve been beat down so much that I’m ashamed of who I am, and it’s not an intense thing, but that’s mostly just because I don’t consciously identify as Indian in my mind or in my view of myself. I believe that you grow from adversity, but I don’t really know how I feel about this. This hasn’t been a loud fight or a big battle, but rather just a slow bleed that feels like it adds friction to so many of the things that I care about in life. I want to be wanted, and it kind of hurts me that no one is ever going to have me as their type. I am not a traditional Indian man, but rather I’m an amalgamation of different cultures that I see and the environment that I was raised in, none of which have anything to do with being Indian. And so I’m just a discount white person.

Getting that off my chest and seeing what sticks isn’t how I feel about myself completely accurately. Even now there’s already things that I wrote that I disagree with, and there’s things that I know that I am objectively wrong in. But I think a soft version of that sentiment does hold, I would love if I could see being Indian as something other than a drawback.