Said the brown person to the white

A few days back, when the George Floyd protests had just begun, a white person said on social media that they don’t see color in any of this and that #alllivesmatter. The writer later posted an apology and said that they were trying to learn and become a better human and were sorry that it came out insensitive. America, how much learning do you still need to do, how many lives still need to be taken, and how does one make sense of any of it? The truth is, I think, for once, we do not need to make sense of any of this.

Being a brown person who didn’t grow up in America, I cannot even begin to imagine the struggles that black people in America have gone through, still go through day in and day out. My struggles don’t even come close to what they have faced and continue to face.

If there are a few things that I can say to the white people who don’t see color because they think they are doing a favor to us by saying alllivesmatter, those would be the following:

1. If alllivesmatter, why did you stare at me twice when I went to pick up food from your restaurant?
2. If alllivesmatter, why did you cross the street when you saw me walking in the opposite direction toward you?
3. If alllivesmatter, why does it take just one word to come out of my mouth and I am automatically judged based on where I came from?
4. If alllivesmatter… why does it never end?

Someone mentioned somewhere that explicit racism ended sometime back and that we need to end the subtle/implicit racism that is still prevalent. I ask this: Why do we live in a world where we need to create different levels of racism instead of thinking about ways to curb racism? Implicit racism is equally, if not more hideous than explicit racism. Having heard, ‘Go back to your country, you dirty man, fucking foreigners’ on different occasions, I don’t believe explicit racism ended at all. And if you are willing to make the argument that explicit racism against just one person doesn’t count in the grand scheme of things, then there is something very wrong with how we think.

Moving to America from India involves quite a bit of changes. First, let’s talk about the good changes that happen. The air is much less polluted. People give you personal space. Things seem much more organized. People seem polite for the most part. If you are moving for studies, everything on campus seems alive. The list goes on.

The flip side to the good changes doesn’t involve bad changes however. The flip side involves understanding your place in America. And that understanding works at a level much deeper than that of mere recognition. You go to the nearby grocery store and the cashier speaks much faster than you have ever heard someone speak in English. It takes a while before you become used to it. You understand that people won’t understand you well if you don’t roll your tongue while pronouncing certain syllables. Next, you realize that you have to follow walk signs while crossing the street(well, not all the time, but you get the idea).

One day at the library, you meet a lady. She seems humble and you both hit it off. You talk about the inception of punk rock, Robert Smith and The Cure, rock and roll and art in general. You ask her out for coffee. She agrees. You both go to a coffee shop. You foot the bill. Next she asks if you are hungry. You both then go to an Indian street food restaurant. You foot the bill again. Next she asks you if you’d ‘like to party’. You respectfully decline. You sense that something is wrong and say that you need to leave. Over the next few days, the lady tries to repeatedly contact you. First you ignore and eventually you say you don’t think it’s a good idea for you both to meet again. The lady gets angry and texts you ‘You dirty man, go back to your country, we don’t need you here’. You struggle hard to make sense of this new America that you have discovered. To the imaginary white person in your head, you say, ‘If setting boundaries is an American thing, who is clean and who isn’t?’

You are working as a cashier at the computer store on campus. Someone comes to buy a Macbook. The POS machine isn’t working for some reason. The manager has gone to take a leak. You inform the customer that it might take a bit before you can process the transaction. The customer grows impatient and asks for the manager. You say the manager isn’t around and that he’d be back soon. The customer starts glowering at you. The glowering reaches a fever pitch, and then you see the manager coming back. The manager is here, he makes the POS machine work and the transaction is processed. To the imaginary white person in your head, you ask, “If you were in my place, would you have been as patient with me, as I was with you?”

Truth be told, as a POC, I have suffered both explicit and implicit racism in America. Whenever I could, I have raised my voice against it, sometimes to some effect and at others, to no effect whatsoever. I do not have the imaginary white person inside my head anymore. I bid him farewell the moment I understood that one could assimilate into a different culture without losing one’s identity. Knowing and understanding that feeling on a visceral level helped me make sense of who I am, who I will never be, and why knowing and understanding itself is important.