Neither Here Nor There:
Reflections From the Diaspora All my life, I’ve been identified by people as “basically white” or “not super Indian,” because I don’t practice Hinduism or conform to the Type-A stereotypes like Apu from “The Simpsons” or Raj Koothrapali from “The Big Bang Theory.” On the flip side, my non-Indian friends have gawked at or joked about my love for Bollywood cinema and Indian food (I will swear by my mom’s biryani), and I more or less accepted the jokes as well-intentioned ribbing. But recently, my cousin was ranting about the marginalization of people of color at her university. She addressed how they are a rare presence in Greek Life (and more to the point, not expected to be a part of it), how other friends have claimed, “The only Indian thing about you is that you’re brown” and yet strangers view her as Indian because her parents work in Silicon Valley. These points finally spurred me to ponder the jokes my own peers had made about me growing up, and I came to a disturbing conclusion: the performances of race and culture are constructs of white people and the West.
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