Life Is Gray
I wish our skin was too.
I’m Indian.
More specifically, I’m from the Indian state of Kashmir. But I’m in this weird gray zone when it comes to other people trying to discern my ethnicity based on how I look.
For context, Kashmiri people tend to be fair-skinned compared to the rest of India. But being an outdoor soccer junkie in my childhood never helped my skin match the Kashmiri complexion color palette.
In short, I’m not white enough for Kashmiri people to think I’m Kashmiri, but I’m also not dark enough for white people to think I’m Indian. And I kind of just roll with the “Are you Persian?” question I get from time to time.
And truthfully, people’s inability to pinpoint my heritage by way of my appearance has never bothered me. The color of my skin has never defined me, and it never will.
But not everyone seems to be on the same page with this concept.
During my senior year of high school, a fellow Indian classmate made it clear that I was neither “here nor there” when it came to my ethnicity.
Anjali was joking around with our teacher during the last few minutes of class and said, “Mr. B, you only asked if I was gonna major in biology because I’m Indian. That’s kinda racist.”
Mr. B in a somewhat frantic comeback said, “That’s so not true, I didn’t ask Sana if she’s gonna major in biology!”
And what stuck with me was Anjali’s response —
“Well, Sana’s different. She’s not really Indian.”
I didn’t react to Anjali’s comment because I knew she didn’t mean for her words to carry much weight. But internally, I was quite confused about what happened.
Like did I really just experience diet racism? Did my “own” people just turn on me?
Now don’t get me wrong, I’ll take diet racism from my people any day over the severe racism folks face all around the world — and I cannot begin to equate the two in any way.
But that little incident further validated for me the unfortunate power the color of our skin holds — it’s enough to even create divisions amongst people of the same ethnicity.
And it got me thinking, maybe we should all just be born gray?
