{"id":37745,"date":"2014-10-15T19:09:31","date_gmt":"2014-10-15T19:09:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=37745"},"modified":"2014-10-15T19:09:31","modified_gmt":"2014-10-15T19:09:31","slug":"identity-in-pieces-when-you-dont-know-where-you-count","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=37745","title":{"rendered":"Identity In Pieces: When You Don\u2019t Know Where You Count"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/theaerogram.com\/identity-in-pieces-when-you-dont-know-where-you-count\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em><strong>Identity In Pieces: When You Don\u2019t Know Where You Count<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/theaerogram.com\" target=\"_blank\">The Aerogram: A curated take on South Asian art, literature, life and news<\/a><br \/>\n2014-10-01<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/jayasax\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Jaya Saxena<\/strong><\/a><br \/>\n<em>Queens, New York<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Last summer, I wore a pink and yellow sari to my cousin\u2019s wedding. As my Indian family lingered in the hotel lobby, dressed up and waiting for our shuttle, we received a few looks from other hotel patrons. Even in <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/New_York_City\" target=\"_blank\">New York<\/a>, it\u2019s not every day you see a group of formally-dressed Indian people, so we didn\u2019t pay the reaction much mind. To them, we looked like we belonged together, and if they noticed me I was just the lightest of the crowd.<\/p>\n<p>A few months later, I went to another Indian wedding in <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Boston\" target=\"_blank\">Boston<\/a>. This time, my then-fiance (a tall white guy with a red beard) and I traveled alone on the T, dressed in Indian finery as we\u2019d been asked. The stares we got were different this time\u2013they were wondering what these two white people were doing dressed up as Indians.<\/p>\n<p>A common refrain when talking about racism is that it\u2019s not about race. Or that it is and it isn\u2019t. It is in that hundreds of years of built up context have given people of color the short end of the stick, but obviously there is nothing inherent about whiteness that means it deserves more (and if you think there is, kindly stop reading and find yourself a bog to suffocate in). What makes racism is power and lived experience. It\u2019s that a white kid who shoots up a school is taken alive, while a black kid walking down the street is shot dead. It\u2019s that resumes with \u201cwhite\u201d names are accepted over identical ones with \u201cethnic\u201d names. And it\u2019s why I really have no clue if I can call myself biracial&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/theaerogram.com\/identity-in-pieces-when-you-dont-know-where-you-count\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Identity In Pieces: When You Don\u2019t Know Where You Count The Aerogram: A curated take on South Asian art, literature, life and news 2014-10-01 Jaya Saxena Queens, New York Last summer, I wore a pink and yellow sari to my cousin\u2019s wedding. As my Indian family lingered in the hotel lobby, dressed up and waiting [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,395,125,8,20],"tags":[18159,18157,18158],"class_list":["post-37745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-asia","category-autobiography","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-aerogram","tag-jaya-saxena","tag-the-aerogram"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37745\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}