The black and white experiences of an immigrant of color in USA

For some time… for the initial few years in USA, I felt that undoubtedly black people are more racist than white people. After all, I have never been told to go back to my country by a white person. Then, as I immersed myself more and more in American culture, I realized that there are differences. White people have essentially fine-tuned their racist tactics of divide and rule to a sophisticated subconscious or even an unconscious part of their being.

I have been heckled on the streets, in the parking lots, in the trams, on the subways: the most common ones being, “you third world filth”, “go back to where you are from”, “you Hindu woman”, “go back Paki”, “you don’t belong here”, “that Muslim woman” … etc. These are just some of the saner ones, that I can write on this platform. There are others with expletives, more disgusting descriptions of what some of them would do to me. The surprising element here is that most of the heckling was done by black people. I recall exactly once when anything was said directly by a white person.

Understand this. This is dangerous and violent. And one is scared if one will ever get back to their home safely or in a body bag. It makes day to day living a challenge. One is constantly looking for different paths to go back home after school or work, or go grocery shopping in groups etc. It even breaks your spirit, because one assumes all people of color would be understanding of each other… no? But this doesn’t break your courage in the way of making one feeling inadequate. As a friend of mine said, it makes your life difficult, and you can always decide to go back to your homeland. Well, the first honest white man who said it to my face, though not in a tone of heckling.

What Americans don’t get, is that coming to America for most immigrants is to find better lives for themselves and contribute to Your Economy. If we had the option of going back, we wouldn’t have come in the first place. As for assimilation, you essentially want only a whitewashed person, who must toe the line of the way you think. You want them to be almost robotic, having minimal traces of their home culture. Having said that, once an immigrant does that, I have noticed, that the acceptance of an immigrant of color is higher than say that of a black American person in a similar situation.

White people have a sugar-coated way of saying things, things that one has to sift through. One has to see through it. “Oh, you could pass off as a white person” {but I am Brown! Thank you very much}. As if I should aspire to pass off as a white person; or someone assuming I am a white person will make me feel arrived in society. Or as if I am ashamed of my colored skin and being assumed white will wash away my color.

Another one that cracks me up is, “I did not realize you are pagan” {I did not either!}. I am still not sure if that one is said to make me feel inferior / feel bad, or am I being compared to “Native Americans”? A lot of Indians get this one; “Tell us about Hinduism” {you don’t have access to google?!}. Again, I am not sure if that is said in a genuine spirit of showing interest or just addressing my strangeness to themselves. Sometimes I would turn around and say, “well tell me about Christianity”, and most of them would be daft enough to respond, “where do I begin”, to which I would say “exactly!”.  

The push towards assimilation became really bad when I was job hunting. The prospect (aka an international student from India) often has to have a weird mix of expected Indianness and just the right amount of familiar American ways. If I do not fit their expectations of the candidate in terms of cultural immersion (read ‘American white washing’) and nerd factor (read ‘third world humility’) then “you are quite an Outlier”. I’ve heard that so many times, that now, I just own it.

A classic example of ignorance is how many times it was assumed that just because I am from a third world country I come from abject poverty. While it is true of a huge chunk of Indian population, most international students are able to pay for a graduate education in your country, so they are at least smart enough to manage their money, to afford a meal; right? These kind of encounters were most definitely the white kind. I could go on and on with examples of ignorance and bias, from talking about how good my English is, or how exotic my accent is. Or how I could pass off as a person from the Southern American area, like a Brazilian or a Mexican. It is not always directly in the context of racial bias, but too often is the case.  I share this because I hope that we all recognize that we are struggling to get along and curiosity and respect for one another will go a long way in stopping the cycle of harm.