Tag Archives: Biracial Identity

I Am Human

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I am Human
I Am Human

As a woman who is biracial, half East Indian and half Caucasian, and embraces both as my total racial identity, I have found it difficult to find acceptance of myself either from the Caucasian or East-Indian community. People in white society see me as wholly white. Sometimes when someone finds out I am a person of color (POC), she lumps me in as a POC without considering that I am also white. In the East-Indian community, most believe I am a white woman married to an Indian man. My last name, Kothari, is assumed to be my husband’s rather than my father’s.

Many in America think of biracial identity as one where someone is half black and half white. There is not a sense in the greater society that many people lay outside or beyond that norm who identify as biracial or multiracial. In American society, it’s hard to see how someone fits outside of black and white. And yet there are so many of us who dwell in multiple racial identities outside of this construct.

Yet, people want to fit you in somewhere in how they understand the construct of race. This is why this video, “I Identify As Human” feels important to me and captures the spirit of being a biracial and multiracial person in this world. I love how it ends with the people saying boldly, “I am different,” and “I am a human.”

It is difficult to walk in this world meeting people ready to box you into a racial identity. Another poignant part of this video is the question we receive all of the time, “What are you?” People are seeking to put you in a place in their minds that they can understand. “Oh, you’re Asian.” all of a sudden that title of race gives someone a whole lot of information about you for the other to decide how to treat you, what ways to think about you, and more. You are now in the box.

Biracial and multiracial people make the status quo uncomfortable. What? Someone is half white and half Indian? How does that work? It makes people in society uncomfortable. This video allows for people to proclaim, “I am human!” With that, everyone knows the feeling of being a human. It is universal. Perhaps in people feeling reassured that we are more alike to you than we are different, a genuine curiosity about our unique selves will emerge with space for both parts to be integrated, seen, and understood.

Little Women Viewed from a Multicultural Lens

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I was perusing the New York Times the other Sunday and came across an interesting article regarding another Oscar contender, Little Women. The author’s point of view on the film was written from an African-American perspective. The article is titled The Bearable Whiteness of Little Women.

The author’s take is that Louisa May Alcott has written a book about the March sisters that transcends their whiteness and simply inhabits their times and offers one filter on how to move in the world as women navigating difficult waters in the 19th century. When the author talks about being black and watching the film and says,”empathy looks less like identifying with the other and more like emotional hegemony” I can understand her perspective.

Little Women is certainly a book of Alcott’s time and her characters and their struggles do offer only one lens through which to view it and is not the only defining way to have interacted during those times. However, reading the book today, seeing this movie on screen during the times we live in today, it is hard to suspend one’s feelings regarding race, particularly if one is made up of more than one race.

I look at the March sisters and I identify with them, not only on an emotional level, but in looking like them, i.e. white. I am not wholly white, but the March sisters invite me into their world and into myself that is racially made-up of two parts, I find it easier to embody my whiteness and abandon my color so I too can be like them.

It is one thing to say clearly, I am wholly another race and I can appreciate this film not by identifying with the white characters, but by being emotionally present with them and their experiences. It is another to be half white and half color and be seduced by these characters to the point that biracial and multiracial people end up forgetting a part of their racial identity – even if only for a time.

In watching films like this, I notice how I am apt to completely identify with one part of my racial make-up and sort of feel grateful that I look like these courageous characters. Simultaneously, I can see myself abandoning my East-Indian identity, grateful that I don’t appear Indian as then I would not be like them, i.e. the other. The cascade of shame descends upon me.

When one is half white and half color, the line one walks is one that challenges us to remain whole in our identity — neither putting down the side that the media glorifies nor feeling shame for taking distance from our color.

I loved Little Women. However, after the film, as I thought about the March sisters and their trials and turbulations, I found myself completely identified with them. Where did my Indian side go? I didn’t see her there nor did I want to.

Book Review: Good Talk by Mira Jacob

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Looking for an interesting memoir that is hip and takes on the uncomfortable topic of race, particularly for those of us who are biracial?

Then, let me recommend Good Talk A Memoir in Conversation. I heard the author, Mira Jacob, discuss this book on NPR earlier this fall and I knew I had to read it. If you are interested in hearing an interview with Mira Jacob via PBS. To my surprise, it is a graphic memoir.

Don’t let this format fool you, though. this book takes on the tough topic of racial identity, especially for those of us who identify as biracial. The author was inspired by her son, who started asking many questions after he got into Michael Jackson after his parents, the author being one of them, gave him all the Michael Jackson albums to listen to. Out of curiosity, her son starts asking about Michael Jackson and if he is black or white or both? And, whatever the answer his parents came up with, they knew their answer was going to have a profound influence on him.

As usual, the issue of color often comes out in our daily activities, such as the music we share and listen to each day.

The author was asked during her NPR interview about the faces she had drawn on the characters’ throughout her memoir. There was the comment that the people in her graphic memoir do not appear to be sad over the experiences she is drawing our attention to. This was a deliberate choice on her part to allow the reader to carry their feelings and not have the characters do more of the “feelings work” for the reader. Aha! This is a hard-hitting book!

For my part, this is a thought-provoking book about one’s own racial identity. Her message across these many conversations is delivered in an interesting medium that seeks to get at truths, universal ones experienced intimately by this author and her family, in an interesting, culturally relevant way.

I would love to hear if you have any books on racial identity that you would suggest I read.