My Culture is Not Yours to Take: A Guide on How to be a Better Ally for the BIPOC Community by Ananya Gondesi
Every single kid wants to be something when they grow up. It’s usually a long shot job, like being the President of the United States or being an actor. It also changes a lot. But as a kid for me, I had one goal and one goal only- to be white. No, seriously. I wanted to be white. I dreamed that I could go to sleep and wake up with shining, white skin. Suddenly, I would be popular, boys would like me, and I would be the coolest person in the world. My skin wouldn’t be called “poop”, “mud”, or “brown sugar” (ironically the nicest backhanded compliment I’ve ever gotten). As a kid, I would be embarrassed to admit if I had a small crush on an Indian guy because the mere thought disgusted me. Brown skin guys? Nasty. Their skin was the color of poop. Because of the damage done by the same racist kids who would say my skin was anything other than beautiful, I slowly began to believe what they were saying, and internalized their racist comments surrounding American beauty standards. I wanted my last name to be a white last name, like Johnson or something so that teachers would call me by my last name and make me look cool. When I watched American TV shows, I didn’t even see people that looked like me. It was and still is so bad that my mom gets excited and points out where the token Indian person is every time we watch an American movie together.
With my parents being immigrants from another country, their accent is different, and the way they pronounce words is not the same. As a young girl, I adapted their way of speaking and went to school pronouncing things differently, which led to kids making fun of me for that, automatically assuming that I was dumb. Over the years I’ve seen my culture repeatedly made fun of and then stolen. Yet if we call it out, we are “snowflakes”, or “can’t take a joke”. It’s offensive, period. Saying an offensive joke is funny, sure, but repeating it makes it offensive. My skin, my religion, and my culture have been called disgusting, unimportant, and something that doesn’t matter. But to all of my brown skin brothers and sisters, we matter. We do. We might not have as many problems in this country as our black brothers and sisters, but we still have a long way to go in terms of social justice for racism in this country. In this blog post, I will teach you, Indian or not, how to be a better ally to the community of BIPOC. I will talk about the hypocrisy racists face when they love to make fun of a culture different from theirs, but they also love to take it and claim it as their own. More importantly, I will focus specifically on the cultural appropriation happening in the Indian community.
I’ll start this off by talking about two separate times in which I faced racism head on-and did nothing about it. The first time was in my 8th grade social studies class. We were doing a small activity in the class about American history. We were supposed to do it by ourselves and not collaborate with anybody. I finished my work but was double-checking and I found a mistake in it. I realized that my pencil didn’t have an eraser, so I turned to my friend, tapped on her shoulder, and asked for an eraser. Before I could finish my sentence, I heard a voice come from the front of the room asking, “Why are you trying to rub it in her face that you’re done?” I wasn’t, but the teacher didn’t stop there. He continued to talk about how I shouldn’t make everything a race and that a group of Indian boys in the front of the room last year would do the same thing, and that Indians are always like this. It happened so fast and I was so embarrassed, that until I went over the event in my head again, I didn’t realize that it was racist. He was stereotyping all of us. And although it doesn’t sound extreme, it still is an insensitive thing to say. From then on, I would wait for a few minutes at my desk before turning stuff in so I wouldn’t be told that I was just making everything a race or competition. What I should’ve done was to educate the teacher and call him out on his racism. Stereotyping someone, no matter how small, is STILL racism. Calling all Indians I.T. experts that constantly consume curry, have strict parents, and are “sweaty-tryhards” in school, is STILL racism. We’ll find it funny the first time, but the minute you start to force the stereotype on us or continue to say it to us, we will get offended because we should. Because it is blatant racism.
The second time wasn’t one specific event-it was repeated multiple times over my life. Since I was a little girl, I’ve been doing Bollywood dance. Bollywood is a style of dance that is from India, where we dance to Indian music while combining and blending different styles to find a perfect mix. It also has an authentic style. To truly understand what I’m talking about, you have to experience it for yourself or watch some Bollywood dancing. Since it’s such a cultural thing, we didn’t branch out in terms of performing. But a few years after I had started, our dance team started to attend dance competitions. There aren’t many Bollywood competitions in the area, so we mostly had to compete in American dance competitions-meaning we were the only Indians there, and in all cases, the minority. We were very flattered when someone complimented our costume, of course, but there was a certain way that people did it that is wrong. They would call our costumes “exotic”. This is an example of a racial microaggression. According to apa.org, a racial microaggression is “one of the ‘everyday insults, indignities and demeaning messages sent to people of color by well-intended white people who are unaware of the hidden messages being sent to them.’” Of course those people meant well, but calling us exotic is singling us out, and making us feel like we don’t have a sense of belonging. It adds to the fetishization of women of color but also devalues us at the same time, making us feel like an object for them to stare at us like we’re a statue in the Louvre. It makes us feel so uncomfortable. Mostly female people of color get these kinds of microaggressions all the time. Next time, just use the words, “beautiful, vibrant, or nice”. I was also told multiple times by white people that Bollywood isn’t a dance form. As a reminder to the audience, just because you haven’t experienced or seen a different type of dance from another country, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.
These next few examples will show underlying racism, and focus more on the aspect of cultural appropriation. The first example is of a dress on SHEIN’s website. This is a clothing company that was recently banned in India. They started selling clothes that were labeled “top and pant set” when they were ripping off the style of a kurta with traditional Indian designs and colors on it. They even used white models. It’s okay to sell Indian clothes on a non-Indian website, just make sure to give the country credit for what they invented and created, and don’t take all the credit for yourself. They could have also used a south Asian model, but they didn’t. SHEIN has now taken down the item on their website.
Another example is when white girls used to make fun of Indian girls’ skin color when I was little but get fake spray tans that are the exact color of our skin. They get praise for it, and they seem to not encounter any racism because it is fake and it will show on their skin. Everyday we face racism and hate for having that skin color. And yet, a white woman can get a fake spray tan of the same color and get praised for it. They don’t face the same hate we get, they just get compliments from it. No one calls their skin “poop” or “dirt”. It’s frustrating for our community to see this happen when we hated our skin colors for so long because of those same girls making fun of us when we were little. They will also come up to you and say, “I’m almost as dark as you!” Yes Meghan, the same dark girl that you called “poop” and made believe that having my skin color was disgusting, yes you are “almost as dark” as her. Don’t get fake spray tans that are a couple of shades too dark. Just stick to lighter colors that match more of your skin tone rather than a person of color’s skin tone and proceed to continue to make fun of it. It's a subtle blackface. Don’t do it; it’s racist.
There comes a point when a person’s point of view should change, especially when they come to see what life is like for colored people. This article is NOT asking for pity. This article is asking you to acknowledge and validate our experiences and learn from them. Don’t repeat the same mistakes that other people or even you have made. If you do, you continue a vicious cycle of racism that will never end. The oppression of BIPOC is not an opinion, it is real and it is violating the basic rights to human life. People that want to say that racism doesn’t exist are wrong. There is racism still alive and vibrant in the world. To be a better ally, you have to be anti-racist. This just doesn’t mean that you stop saying the things that are racist or apologizing for your past actions. It means moving forward and fighting alongside the BIPOC community to reduce racism. I don’t believe that in my lifetime racism will fully go away. White people cannot just post stuff on social media, like a black screen and then sit back and do nothing. That’s called performative activism, which makes you look like you’re doing something when in reality you’re not. Those same people that posted a black square without doing anything else are also the same people who culturally appropriate and say offensive statements. If white people are willing to be active allies, they can help us by doing so many things. One, they can call out someone when they are racist or supporting racists. Two, they can support the work of BIPOC artists, celebrities, businesses, etc. Three, white people need to educate their families as well on racism and how to work towards a better, safer, and more comfortable future for BIPOC. There is so much inequality and I could sit here for days typing out all the ways that you can help, but these are the basic ways that you can do it. Other ways can be by calling out cultural appropriators and educating them on why what they are doing is not correct and why they need to change their ways and apologize for what they have appropriated. It’s wrong to take someone else’s beliefs that they have been mocked for and claim it as your own when it never was. We must accept and respect others’ cultures, skin colors, and religions. Religions are opinions. Human rights are not.
We constantly, in this country, like to scream that we are number one. America was never fully great for people that aren’t white, cis, straight, and rich. There are so many things that we can work on, but it will never happen if white people aren’t willing to be better allies to us and help us work towards a better tomorrow. We want this to be a safer place for our children and the generations to come, and it can only happen if we are actively being anti-racist. If you have done something racist in the past, apologize for your mistakes, educate yourself, and become an ally. I’ve grown to accept my brown skin and love it. No matter how much I wanted to be white, I know that my purpose is to make sure that racism does not continue to prevail in and outside of this community. My culture and my skin is beautiful no matter what racists want to say. When we and white people come together and work for a better future for the BIPOC community, and many more, we can make sure that no other little south Asian girl believes that she has to be white to succeed or survive in this world.
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