Episode 3: You Can Make Fun of Me, Not What I Represent

Moving back to the U.S.,  Ami is on a steep learning curve with race relations in America and grapples with the model minority concept when she sees rampant anti-black sentiments in the South Asian community.

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Ami: 0:10

I didn't feel I wasn't confronted by by people reacting to my race or the races, like when I went into small towns to go shopping or go to the Walmart or whatever. But I also know that I was viewed as like neutral. I don't know, being being Indian is like an interesting, it's an interesting position because you almost get treated like, you know, the model minority... I'm not seen as a threat.

DB Crema: 0:35

This is united states of race, personal stories of how our earliest memories determine a lifetime of relationships. I'm your host, DB Crema. When did you become race aware?

Ami: 0:54

My notion of being different, of being an other - I first noticed that when I moved to Australia when I was nine and a half or 10. Because for the first time, I was surrounded by people who really looked different from me. It took me a while to adjust to the notion that I was in this other bucket. You know, it wasn't part of the default, the default setting. And I think the first time I realized that that was or felt like that was a bad thing - I was in like, fourth grade, fifth grade. And we got paired up with kindergarten kids or first graders, as buddies or mentors. And I was like, Okay, well, sure, I'll do it. I was very academically inclined, like, really wanted to be help, very bossy. And this little girl, you know, we talk to each other or whatever. And one day, she just got upset with me about something. And she said, Get away from me and what she does get away from you smell like curry. And it was the first time that I'd ever heard anything like that. And I didn't understand. I was so confused. And I think I talked to my cousin about it when I got home. I was like, why would she say that? Do I smell? And that was sort of my introduction to it's not just that I look different. Or that people think I have elephants in my backyard in Bombay. It's like, no, it's, it's deeper than that.

DB Crema: 2:14

What was that about?

Ami: 2:17

When I moved to Sydney, the children I met there, you know, friends were very curious about what my life was, like, asked me about elephants and cows and like was I near a jungle. You know, just these very exotic ideas. When I went back to Bombay, Mumbai, my friends there wanted to know about kangaroos and you know, did I live in the bush? What was my life like. Like, there were these, these very obviously, like, entertaining childish notions of what life in a different country was like. And I'm just always delighted by that.

DB Crema: 2:49

It's this romanticized view, probably from watching Saturday morning cartoons.

Ami: 2:54

Yeah, it's interesting, because I think as a child, that sort of, it makes sense, right? Your world is small, you know. There can be this curiosity about somebody else's experience, or, or existence or whatever, even if they don't understand it, or can't. It's always this kind of amazing moment when kids realize, like, oh, your life is totally different from mine, like, you know, tell me more. It's not, it's not this automatic fear. And I think as adults, when you realize that somebody else's life is so different or somebody else's existence is so different. Their instinct can be denial, right, to say, I don't think that can be true. We tend to deny other people's experiences when we can't understand them, versus being curious about them.

DB Crema: 3:31

And what was it like when you came to the US? You came as an adult, and that was a completely different culture.

Ami: 3:36

Yeah, it felt very familiar. Like when I came out of the airport in Boston, and heard the accents and everything, you know, growing up, on like American TV, and movies, and all of that, I felt immediately like I knew where I was. So I was born in the US. My parents were here as grad students from India. And my parents moved back to India, when I was two, decided they wanted to go back and help, you know, fix the country, like make a difference at home. And I moved to the states in 2010, for Business School, so it didn't feel that jarring, actually, for me. I think those moments of like shock or surprise, were present for me at Business School, when it was like, our class split really along racial lines in terms of like, social interaction, and it was considered totally normal. And I don't think it was, you know, conscious, but it was clearly visible. Everyone knew it was happening. And the Indians would, you know, hang out with each other, like, the black kids would hang out with each other, the, you know, white East Coast, people that all went to the same schools would hang out with each other. And, of course, they were you know, there was mixing and there were people that you know, floated between groups, but when I noticed it was in my second year of campus. I had two roommates. One was a black woman from Memphis, and another was a white woman originally from out upstate New York. And like I was friends with both of them. And so we kind of got together and decided we're going to live in a house together. And for the rest of the year, people constantly forgot that we were in the same house. Every time. We'd already known everybody else in the class for like, one year at that point. People always assumed that I lived or, you know, was part of like, some Indian house somewhere. And more often than not, also always assume that our black roommate lived in this house with like four other black women. They just like, lumped her in with that group. And so every time I was like, Oh, yeah, we'll come together, because we live together. They were like,"Oh, right. Oh, I thought she lived in the other house. Oh, I thought you lived here." And it was one of those things where like, it seems very innocuous, but over and over again, it just kind of reinforced this notion that, oh, we're not supposed to, according to whatever unwritten rules exist, we're not supposed to mingle, or like her place is defined by everybody else already. And that drove me up the wall. And I think the more like, I think I asked questions of her, of other friends, just other people about, you know, why do people react this way? Like, what what is that? I was very naive about it, the more I realized that, like the lived experience of my black classmates was completely different, completely different from mine. So it was weird, I sort of came to this awareness that a place on surface or most of the time could be progressive, you know, appropriate, inclusive, and then have these like pockets of racism, that were almost more insidious, because no one had an issue with it. Like, I can feel like the anger like coming up 10 years later.

DB Crema: 6:33

It's like the housing version of all black people look alike, or all Indians look like. To your point, people just have... they deny the experience of others if they haven't experienced it themselves.

Ami: 6:45

Yes. Like, I think empathy has limits. And I may not be able to empathize with someone else's experience. But also, that shouldn't stop me from acknowledging that experience is real and valid. Like, I think I had this notion that I had to be able to walk in that person's shoes, to then engage and understand. But why isn't it enough for someone to tell me what happened, or what their experience is like, and for me to just believe them? Why do I have to be able to understand it? Or like, you know, feel like, Oh, I am there with you. Why can I just say, okay, that happened and that's real? It's important for us to get away from this notion that like, Oh, you have to be able to, you know, put yourself in somebody else's shoes to be an ally, or to be a friend, you don't. You should just be able to believe people as well.

DB Crema: 7:28

Isn't that the definition of sympathy?

Ami: 7:31

Yeah, I guess,

DB Crema: 7:32

I think the challenge comes up when, in the act of acknowledging other people's experiences, it requires of them to turn the mirror on themselves. And I think that's when it becomes uncomfortable, and it's easier to ignore and deny than to recognize it.

Ami: 7:52

Yeah. I think that's really well said. And it's important. It's a really, really strong point. Because it's, it's also like, it's always easier to point to other people in your, in your demographic. It's, you know, oh no, it's the other Indian people that are that are racist, you kno. Anti blackness exists in community, but with other Indians, I'm not part of the problem. And that can't be true. You know, other people like me are like this, but I'm not. I mean, everyone wants to believe that they're not part of the average. But yeah, confronting our own part in that is, I think, really important. You know, for me, like coming to the US, not knowing a lot about American history, not knowing and not understanding systemic racism, it made it so that like, when people don't talk about systemic racism, it's like, oh, this is just the way things are like, it made me really susceptible to believing that this is how things are, like, this is just normal. And like that denial, and that normalization is, is really, really powerful. Like, you know, the first election I voted in in the US was President Obama's re election. And so my memory of that was like, Oh, yeah, you know, like, what a progressive country like, this is such a big achievement. This is amazing. And so when people said, yeah, we live in a post-racial society, I was like, yeah, must be true. Which, now I'm like, what, what, what? It's, it's embarrassing to think about it, but also, like, I can't, you know, I can't judge myself constantly, becuase then I can't move forward. But like, the dominant messages in the media, or whatever it is, is like, yeah, we're past all that. That's all ancient history. And until, until that gets questioned loudly and widely and in every, every forum, people will believe it.

DB Crema: 9:28

It's interesting to hear you talk about it from a foreign perspective of being socialized to believe that this is how things are, and there's very little reason to question it.

Ami: 9:40

Yeah, like my questioning was very focused on me. And, you know, my race, my ethnicity here, like, I bristled and I still do. When people ask me, oh, you you work at Microsoft. Because I'm in Seattle, and whatever. I'm like, What?? Like, you know, that not all Indians are engineers, right? Like, you know that, right? You know, Uber drivers who will very sweetly, very sweetly say, oh, but you don't sound Indian. I really like your accent. And I'm like, there are like 26 official languages in India and then so many more. And just because like, like, no. And you know, some of them are like, why you're getting so angry. And I'm like, because this is ridiculous. So I have that consciousness on my own behalf. Right?

DB Crema: 10:24

Well, are we getting the point where we are so overly sensitive about every little thing that everyone said? Do we need... Should we be aiming to get to a point in our society where nobody ever says anything politically incorrect?

Ami: 10:41

You know, I, I think, I think actually, I think that... I think we will never get to that place. But I think that aiming for a society where everyone feels respected, is a really, really wonderful goal to have. I think there's a difference between like, political correctness, and I think striving for shared equal mutual respect. Like, is it okay for a taxi driver, Uber driver to make a joke like that? You know, and I don't blame him for doing it. But at the end of the day, I'm counting on him as like someone in my society to also make good decisions for our collective good. And so ishe. He wants, you know, he needs his fellow citizens to, to be behind, like, what's important for him. And if he doesn't have... or if he or many other people think it's okay to make comments, you know, that put me in a box. That's, that's not a good thing for our society. So it's not the objection to like, political incorrectness. I think it's more, Is it a symptom of underlying attitudes? Like, what is it signaling actually? Yeah, I find that in my experience, I think that people when I've talked to them about, who are most worried about, you know, political correctness, or like, Oh, why can't I make this joke, or like, you know, why don't you relax, it's just a joke? Those people have not been the people who are the target of the joke, or the punch line. It's been white male friends who are like, wait, but why? Like, why can't we just laugh about this? Or white female friends who have been making jokes about colonialism - like white husband and me. There was a period of time where people were making jokes about the Raj and how, you know, oh, yeah, like his people colonized Indonesia, which they didn't, but he has a Dutch last name, so you know, it was convenient for the joke. And Haha, now he's like, married this Indian woman. And that shit made me really mad.

DB Crema: 12:31

What we need is the perfect sentence that perfectly sums up why it's an issue. Because if you tackled that every single time and try to get people to understand why, in that case, it's not funny. It's not something we laugh about. You can't go through your day, explaining that to everybody and get anything else done. So it's like...

Ami: 12:53

Oh, actually, I think I read this somewhere recently. I think a person was like, she was saying, I asked them to explain why that's funny. She was like, when people say things, you know, that I don't find amusing or offensive. I don't laugh, because I think a lot of us also our instinct is to laugh, right to defuse the tension. She doesn't laugh and then she says, Why is that funny? And she said, that makes people so uncomfortable. Like immediately it makes them accountable. Right? It's like, well, can you tell me why that's funny? So I haven't used that yet, but I might. Although I will say I think once I started speaking up in my friends circle, when things made me uncomfortable, my friends responded really well. They're still funny, but they're not funny at my expense. At least not, sorry. Not at my demographic, like not at the expense of like, things I can't control about myself. Like they can still make fun of me for being sloppy, or not being able to cook or things like all of that. Like, yeah, there's plenty of material without having to talk about, you know, my gender or my racial makeup.

DB Crema: 13:53

Make fun of me. Don't make fun of everything I represent.

Ami: 13:57

Yes. Yeah.

DB Crema: 14:00

So how do we get to that post racial place?

Ami: 14:03

Yeah. Make America post racial again?

DB Crema: 14:06

Make America post racial again.

Ami: 14:09

Yeah, I don't know if we...do you think we can get to a place where we're ever post racial?

DB Crema: 14:15

Um, I don't know. I don't know if I have that much hope in mankind.

Ami: 14:23

Yeah. What's been giving me I think a lot of hope and like, almost excitement for the future is looking at how different already Gen Z is in terms of engagement. And not all of them obviously, but they seem far more willing to fight for equality and for equal treatment. My take on it is I think with every successive generation, we have a chance to do better. You know, as like the Black Lives Matter movement has gotten more press and more coverage globally. In India, the Dalits who are, you know who in the old times were called untouchables. Like, within the Caste system it was really... they've still been... they're on the receiving end of so much violence in all its forms. And it's been, again, normalized and denied. Because Oh, we abolished Caste in the 50s. That Caste doesn't exist anymore. No, it does. Just because you say that it's not there, it doesn't mean it's not there. Like everyone be aves like it's a real thing. So the Black Lives Matter mo ement has raised co sciousness around the Dalit mov ment in India. That's ama ing to see that the energy and the force of activists can mag ify like that globally, and at pace that's even faster tha I think it was before. Like tha gives me hope. Yes, there wi l always be things that you know need to be fought or addresse. There's always going to be an ther dimension along which we can be divided and split. B t this shows that we can be uni ed across these things that d vide us.

DB Crema: 15:55

Thanks for listening to United States of Race. This podcast was written and produced by me, DB Crema. Thank you t Aly Creative for designing our artwork. And to Nick D and Nick S for technical support. If yo love great storytelling, pleas subscribe to United State of Race on Spotify, Apple Podca ts, or wherever you get your odcasts. You can also show us so e love by rating and writi g a review on Apple podcasts or odchaser. And go ahead and shar this podcast with your frie ds and anyone who believes in t e power of building conn ction through sharing pers nal stories. You can also foll w us on Instagram at all one ord unitedstatesofrace. And as lways, if you - Yes, you have compelling story to share and would like to be featu ed in an upcoming episode, send s a message at unitedstate ofrace@gmail.com. Until next time.