The American Not So Dream
Photo by Andrew Caldwell
Over the last few years, I’ve been unraveling a lifetime of chasing the American Dream. What it means to be a first-generation American born person of color in the United States. I am American, but I look like my immigrant parents. What it means to be married to a person of color with a completely different experience in his set of intersections as a mixed Black man. We are raising our two daughters to see themselves in their wholeness, made up of different cultures, teaching them their skin color doesn’t define their worth, but also very much makes up who they are. It’s a tricky road to navigate in a space where people are directly defined by their skin color. Black, White, Asian, South Asian, Mexican, Immigrant, Mixed…I thought America was meant to be a melting pot.
Since the start of the pandemic, the side stepping and keen ability to sweep the issues under the rug became more and more difficult as the virus began to take over the spaces we once held our own power over. We could no longer hide behind our busy schedules or keep our conversations to the surface. There was too much down time available to some of us. The inequalities between different ethnicities became more and more apparent. Some were out of work and unable to social distance. Some were thankful for the time they could save commuting with the privilege of working from home. Our differences became the forefront of our conversations rather than the surface level commonalities we shared. For some, the commonalities we pretended to share.
Growing up, I used to hear all sorts of insults hurled my way. Our food made our neighborhood stink at dinner time. How come you’re not going to medical school, isn’t that what your people do? You must be good at math. Hey, does your dad own a 7-11 and sound like Apu from the Simpsons? Hey, Camel Jockey, where’s your towel head? I would get pulled aside and my photography equipment bomb tested at every single check point in an airport after 9-11. My family isn’t Middle Eastern, not that it made that racial profiling any better. But I was brown, and for them, I fit the bill.
Before long, as relationships shifted and my heart was finally able to digest the gross bias we all hold in our hearts, I knew I needed to unlearn many things the American Dream told me I needed to do. The narrative kept within faith, the narrative kept within the ways we succeed, the narrative that any one person deserves or is better than another. As a South Asian Indian American, I needed to fight for my own liberation while fighting for all marginalized communities, with an emphasis on our Black brothers and sisters. If this world will find solace and the ability to strive forward, it starts with humbling your heart, finding your own bias and actively doing something about it.
While on this journey, devouring whatever resources I could find, I stumbled upon an opportunity to learn from some incredible women. I joined a cohort of other South Asian American women looking to learn how to fight for our own liberation while liberating our communities from their own anti blackness. In turn, it gave us the tools to become true allies. We dove deep into one other, in a space where we didn’t have to fight for our own humanity. A space that we didn’t have to explain why what we were seeing in the media was like a thousand needles in our skin, poking, aching, and constant. Why we were fatigued when we woke up from a night’s rest and why one day we could laugh and the next sit in a puddle of our own tears distraught from the state of the hate we see daily. A space where we knew we must fight for all who are being cast aside as “other.” For the Black community. For the LGBTQIA community. For the Indigenous People. For Asians. For immigrants. For the Disabled. For Womxn. For all the marginalized communities. Social Justice wasn’t a choice for any of us. The value of our humanity cannot be separated from finding a space where we are all liberated and able to walk freely in our own skin, proudly, comfortably. Completely American and Completely Black. Completely American and Completely Asian. Completely nonbinary and completely welcomed. Whatever space you sit in, to be seen as whole and valued as you are. Whatever skin you operate in. Our value must not be in spite of these things, it must be because of these things. We are all Holy under the sun and we must learn to see not only ourselves, but others in this light.
Social justice isn’t a choice. It’s necessary. My eyes have been opened to the way I was taught to see people as getting in the way of my achievements. The American Dream forced me to operate as I felt I was supposed to in order to be successful. But in this process, I lost my culture. I became just American. As the fight for social justice came back into the light during the last year, I recognized that this pandemic was much more than a physical virus. It was time to stand up, fight for change, remove the layer of learned behavior and embrace all that was living in my skin. The history of our ancestors. The decolonizing theology that richly lives in the Indigenous People. The learning of our history of how Black people have been mistreated since the day the first slaves were brought here. As a mom of two mixed girls who sit in the abundance of beautiful cultures, I must teach them to see all of them. Their Indian heritage, Black heritage, and Dutch Heritage. Their ancestors may not have played nice together, but we’ll change this world to see that within the mix of these culture, incredible beauty is formed. It is through these crossroads, these intersections, this amazing next generation that we will see the fruits of our labor. We will see the toil of the lives lost, the battles fought, and the painful conversations become the blossoms of the seeds planted for change. This last year has been a hard road full of pain and watching our marginalized communities stand up against the loud silence of inequality and racism that has lived in our everyday spaces for decades. The pandemic opened our eyes, brought us out of our hiding spaces of self-preservation, and pushed sound into our lungs so that our cries are no longer hidden deep in our souls, but sounding loudly upon the rooftops as we fight to be seen in our entireties. Social justice is not a political stance, it is a fight to be seen as fully human and completely Holy under the eyes of all. It’s not a movement, it’s a way of life.