{"id":40173,"date":"2015-03-01T01:07:11","date_gmt":"2015-03-01T01:07:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=40173"},"modified":"2015-03-01T01:07:11","modified_gmt":"2015-03-01T01:07:11","slug":"i-became-so-exhausted-with-proving-my-south-asian-identity-that-i-started-to-ignore-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=40173","title":{"rendered":"I Became So Exhausted With Proving My South Asian Identity That I Started to Ignore It"},"content":{"rendered":"

I Became So Exhausted With Proving My South Asian Identity That I Started to Ignore It<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

xoJane<\/a>
\n2015-02-24<\/p>\n

Anjali Patel<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

The rules of miscegenation were set long before I came along, and my self-determination to \u201cbe myself\u201d was not going to change it.<\/em><\/p>\n

A couple of years ago, I was at a rooftop party in New York with some of my cousins. I was too young to drink and too shy to mingle, so I hung around awkwardly while they chatted with an attractive blond man who appeared to be in his late 20s. They tag teamed as he pried them with exoticizing questions about their \u201chome country,\u201d flashing his white teeth in jovial approval when they played along with his racist quips. They seemed to be having a good time amusing one another, so I was shocked when pointed his glass in my direction to acknowledge me.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd what about you?\u201d he said. \u201cYou don\u2019t even look Indian.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before I could open my mouth, one of my cousins chimed in, \u201cOh, she\u2019s not. She\u2019s half black.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh,\u201d he said. They resumed their conversation and I resumed trying to look like I was having a good time.<\/p>\n

This happens when I am with my cousins. I was at a St. Patty\u2019s<\/a> party with one of them about a year ago when I heard someone whisper into her ear, \u201cIs your cousin black?\u201d A few months later I was out to dinner with their group of friends when someone asked me, \u201cAre you guys actually related? You look like you\u2019re from Eritrea<\/a> or Ethiopia<\/a> or something.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m from Pennsylvania<\/a>, and we\u2019re first cousins. Believe it or not you don\u2019t actually have to look alike to be related,\u201d is what I would have liked to have said. But I was tipsy and there were too many people around, so I said something along the lines of \u201cYeah, we get that a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

My mother tried to explain to me when I was younger that I was black, and only black, because that is how the world would see me. I resented that. In my eyes, I had an African American mother and a Gujarati<\/a> father, and that is how the world would see me, because that\u2019s what I was…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I Became So Exhausted With Proving My South Asian Identity That I Started to Ignore It xoJane 2015-02-24 Anjali Patel The rules of miscegenation were set long before I came along, and my self-determination to \u201cbe myself\u201d was not going to change it. A couple of years ago, I was at a rooftop party in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,395,8,20],"tags":[19450,18659],"class_list":["post-40173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-asia","category-autobiography","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-anjali-patel","tag-xojane"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40173","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=40173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40173\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}