One of these things is not like the other...
I read this article recently about Rashida and Kidada Jones (daughters of music producer Quincy Jones and actress Peggy Lipton) and their struggle with growing up biracial.
Although I'm not biracial (my parents are both of Indian origin), I found myself relating to the Jones' story.
My mom is fair-skinned with green eyes and often mistaken for Caucasian. On more than one occasion, Indian women have come up to me and commented on "how well my mom speaks for a white woman." Paps, on the other hand, has skin the color of burnt toffee and (much to our amusement and his chagrin), looks an awful lot like Erik Estrada from CHiPS (Call him 'Ponch' and watch his face suffuse with rage -- good times).
Genetics being what they are, my sister and I inherited a combination of our parents' features. I'm tan...but not really dark. My hair is naturally dark, but it's not really that river of black ink associated with most Indians.
Not only do we not 'look Indian', apparently -- we don't 'act Indian.'
It's been this way since we were kids. Growing up in Southall (a predominantly South Asian neighborhood on the outskirts of London known for its role in Bend It Like Beckham), most of our friends wore a school uniform during the week and slipped into salwar kameezes and lehengas during the weekends. Sparky and I, on the other hand, were more comfortable in jeans with Ninja Turtle patches on the knees. Our cousins went to Saturday school at local temples. Sparky and I ate Coco Pops and watched cartoons.
As children, we weren't particularly 'Indian' and as adults, little has changed. The tea I drink isn't hot and spiced with cardamom, but rather cold, diet and bottled by Arizona. When it comes to movies, I can rattle off the most obscure Hollywood trivia, but can't name one Bollywood feature released in the past five years. and unlike most model minority Indians who study medicine or business, I went in a completely different direction and majored in journalism.
I've never really understood how to integrate into the Indian crowd. I gave it a try, but was rebuffed because despite not having an ounce of Caucasian blood, I'm "too white." A coconut, if you will -- brown on the outside, white on the inside.
How does one 'act' Indian, anyway? Watch insufferable plagiarized tripe churned out by Bollywood? Spend hours meditating underneath the statue of some poly-limbed, blue skinned deity? How does one 'act' anything -- white, black, Japanese, Cuban, Greek, Polynesian?
I don't understand why it makes sense to perpetuate the stereotypes of your culture in order to fit in with your culture? Especially when people have worked so tirelessly to abolish aforementioned stereotypes. I mean, there's much more to African-Americans than hip hop and slang. There's much more to the Japanese than video games and anime. There's much more to Cubans than booming sound systems and gold jewelry.
If I bought into these stereotypes, I'd be selling out who I really was.
So -- I'm 'too white' for the Indians (despite not being Caucasian) and I was once called a 'goddamn cockroach' by an insufferable fifteen-year-old with less brain cells than teeth (and that's saying something).
I don't have kids yet, but I will one day and but I worry about how they will be treated. I want to believe that the world will be a much more tolerant place, but know this is naive. While there are substantially more biracial people in the world now than there were ten years ago, there's still lunatics out there who believe that miscegenation is immoral and depraved. Hell, I'm sure I personally know some.
I've been lucky in life and found amazing people who are completely colorblind and would rather judge me for belting out the worst songs possible at the top of my lungs rather than judging me for the color of my skin or my heritage. Hopefully, my kids will find people like this too. Hopefully, everyone will.