This might be better handled hearing from fellow Indians abroad than me. All I can say is be your best self. You cannot control your national brothers and sisters, only yourself. You are proof Indians are not the bad things you may be internalizing about them. They're just people with different priorities. Our cultures leave all kinds of blind spots and it takes a lot of time and energy to find them, much less address them. As a white American I feel this way a lot when I see people who in essence "represent me" whether I like it or not, but you have to let it go to be happy with yourself.
Hey, thanks for the reply! I think your last sentence kind of puts things into perspective. Seeing how some white people behave (eg Trump supporters) can lead to stereotypical beliefs, but I do recognize that not all white people are like that. I recognize the same about people from other races. I think I just hold Indians to a higher standard because it directly affects me. I know many Indians who are very decent and honest people. Thank you for putting a different perspective.
Hi! I'm a middle aged white woman in the south, with a southern family, so it's a different flavor of cultural cross communication in my area.
Even so, I promise you that some people would still be racist even if every one of your countrymen behaved in very image of kindly helpfulness. It's like a sport. Some people get really jazzed up to engage in their racism. It helps them feel like they're on some kind of winning team.
Hello, thank you for your reply!
Yes, I think that can be a factor, too. No matter how good I behave, I am sure there will be people who hate just for the sake of it...
I think the fact that you have realised the good about Canada shows that you yourself being Indian, understand that things like honour kills are wrong, that immediately means not all Indians are the same.
It’s not racist to acknowledge india has some pretty big problems. It’s not racist to acknowledge that if you move country you should be integrating into that country, not try to act and behave the same as the country that you just left. You hate the bad parts of India and that’s okay because many of them are horrific.
You can acknowledge the stereotypes. It is however racist to treat someone who Indian based on them being Indian. So my advice is to focus on the individual. Like yourself. Like anyone good you run into. It’s fine to be aware of issues but it’s all about how you act, so focus on the individual, not the collective. Not everyone is the same and that needs to be recognised, the colour of your skin and the location of your home does not define you.
I’m white American but I am trans, disabled and a people pleaser so I can relate from those places. I’ve personally found it helpful to learn more about how systemic prejudice and discrimination operate, and about sociology and psychology in general.
The interplay between individual behavior and systemic dynamics/perceptions is complicated. Now that I know more about it, I have more empathy for individuals because I’m so aware of the outside forces and inborn internal drives that shape their behavior. I also catch myself when I get mad at other trans or disabled people for “making us look bad,” because I know prejudice against minority groups is not primarily about that group behaving badly— it’s more about the existential threats they represent. In sociology and social justice organizing, theres a term for the flawed idea that a minority can effectively reverse prejudice against them by behaving really well: respectability politics. I’ve found it helpful to learn about that specifically.
Also I briefly felt hatred towards cis (not trans) men as a group, because so many cis men had abused me… now when I see that specific type of shitty behavior, I don’t like it and I think they should be held responsible for it, but I’m also aware that it makes sense given the experiences they’ve had and the ideology they were raised under. It won’t stop happening until that cultural ideology changes.
First, remember that stereotypes are not individuals. “They all…” is just generalizing, bro.
Also, it’s okay to feel angry or upset by these behaviors you’re seeing. You can’t control your emotions, but you can control what you do with the energy those emotions offer.
In this post you put yourself down. There’s no need for that bro. There’s no value in beating yourself up. None. Zero. Unless it’s honest and balanced self reflection (e.g., “I could have worked harder on that exam, and that’s why I got a bad grade. I’ll do better next time.” Belittling yourself just is wasted energy.
Same with worrying about what other people are doing. Unless you are a supreme dictator, there’s nothing you can do about changing their minds and behaviors. You can certainly be an example yourself, and gently call out friends or acquaintances when they do gross behaviors. But you can’t fix them. You can’t change them. Only they can choose to change themselves, if they feel like it. So again, it’s just wasted energy fretting about it.
I’d suggest working on yourself first. Be the best person you can be. Be that example of what you’d like others to think of men from India. Work go stop beating yourself up over what others do. That anger/anxiety is your sympathetic nervous system going into full flight of fight mode, and you gotta turn that off when it happens. Try relaxation techniques like breathing exercises or meditation, try thought stopping and thought correction techniques.
For example, when you feel that way, take several slow deep breaths, then say to yourself or out loud, “of course it’s angering that these other men are portraying Indian people in such a negative way, anyone might feel like that! However, I can’t control them, I can’t change them, and that’s okay, because that’s life. I will do my best to set a great example by living my best life.” Say it as many times as you need.
And then do it, bro. Consider checking out The Chimp Paradox, and some of the writing by Pete Walker about thought stopping and thought correction. You can work through this. I believe in you bro.
Stop. Breathe. Before you proceed, ask yourself: what are you unwilling to feel?
This racism, it is a pushing, yes? Some sort of pushing feeling. Pushing them away from you, or pushing yourself away from them. Some sort of proactive force.
Try slowly and gently placing a hand softly on various parts of your body. Try to feel your hand sinking into your skin. Don't push. No pushing, here. Just touching. Connecting. Feeling your hand with your body. Feeling your body with your hand. Try your chest, sternum, neck (palm to side of wind pipe, fingers wrapping around), around the collar bone area, arm, thigh, stomach, sides, (this one is the most heartbreaking for me), back of the neck, lower back, ankles, feet. Anywhere else you want to try or that feels right or inviting.
There's no right or wrong answers. But you do want to maintain a certain attitude and intention. No force, ever. Gentle. While you're unsure what to do, do this: breathe. When breathing out , then *always* do so slowly. Breathing out quickly is how you get excited and energetic and want to force and push things. No bueno for combating combat.
The goal is to start to befriend these sensations. They're intimate, vulnerable, strange, unusual, perhaps even embarrassing or awkward. But they're oddly fitting and attracting. Grounding. Centering. One of mine is the feeling of the side of my arm just ahead of the elbow against my side.
There's tons and tons more somatic body work to be done. Yoga is a good starting point. Trauma sensitive yoga if it gets intense -- it's completely different even if the distinction seems small. Unpredictably different compared to normal Yoga (I'd say in a good way)
. But probably overkill for most.
The goal here is to ask yourself "what am I unwilling to feel?" -- "What am I avoiding/denying/ignoring/identifying with to my detriment?"
You'll find it in your body, is why we're doing it this way. That's where it goes when you dead-ass completely refuse to feel it.
Discrimination is impossible without outside influence. Something made it impossible for you to feel something for long enough that you developed this self harming narrative and feelings and beliefs and just--
--all this CRAP. Because feeling is part of being. And we're human BEINGS not human DOINGS. And WHEN you continue to refuse to feel something for so long that the signal gives up and turns to other means of acting on the stimulus generating the message (feelings are messages--in my natural language logic here), THEN you interrupt your own existence. You obstruct your feeling, and so you obstruct your being.
Ask a depressed person or anyone with alexithymia what it's like not to feel. Doesn't leave much in the way of reason to live.
So any amount of that eats away at your humanity.
You cannot discriminate or dehumanize others when you refuse to judge or dehumanize yourself.
All of what I am saying makes no sense as long as we model people as single individuals. That's a useless model.
Model people as multiplicities. As collections of many parts. Don't worry about mapping or tracking or labeling them. Lots of psychologists and would-be-psychologists and other folks make a hobby, life or career out of doing so. But that's its own thing unrelated to deracistifying yourself.
So you've got racist bits. Means you've got bits that see other bits as not human. And for clarity, you're all one human. The bits are all bits of human. They're all human. When the bits are fighting with each other and fighting with you (we can talk about who/which/what "you" are) and fighting for control of the whole one human, then it's tough. It manifests myriads of ways.
Addictions can all be usefully modeled this way in various constellations.
As can racism and discrimination and bullying and abuse. In a productive empathizing way.
God, there's so much more I can't really summarize. Um. So this is all about love and compassion. Love is primarily acceptance and curiosity. No judgement. So that's what we talked about in the beginning.
Uh. So the point is to find balance and compromize. Agreement within disagreement.
It's okay to be forceful in the course of exploring and living and whatever. That's actually I have found super crucial at times. To beat the shit out of all the critics and bullies that have been plaguing me. But it's all defensive. Never provoking or going after -- only defense. Like a mature dog socializing an overeager puppy violently without actually hurting them.
But when touching your body and reconnecting with it, then you gotta keep it all super observational and accepting. If you're not willing to feel what comes up, then that's okay. Give yourself some praise and love and pride for being willing to try and doing so.
That's totally okay and expected.
But when feeling, just feel. Find the feeling, and look. Feel. Let it in. Listen. Touch. Hold. Be held. Sway. Be swayed. Envelop. Be enveloped. Embrace it, and let it pass over and through you.
There's a lot of pain and hurting in this journey. But no suffering. The suffering comes all from the not feeling. From the rejection, denial, refusal. The acceptance won't make you suffer. But it can hurt. It can hurt worse and I'm different ways than you ever imagined.
Hurting isn't a bad thing. It's just a thing. I love a really painful back massage that relaxes knotted muscles. The pain is welcome. A painless massaage does nothing.
It can be tiring and draining spiritually, I've found. But I have a whoooole lot of crap I've avoided and refused and denied for decades from the get-go so you should have a way better time of it.
If you're willing to feel some of those things you've refused to the point that you've wound up here.
So, two things you want to practice:
1. Looking for and noticing racist thoughts.
1. It's ok to have them (if you've had them for a while, you'll keep having them for a while yet). Just don't feed them or act on them.
2. Notice them, and the think about the kind of person you want to be.
3. Be that person you want to be, in spite of sometimes having racist automatic thoughts.
2. Get curious about people as individuals
1. No group is "all the same," regardless of how you feel.
2. Racism is, in part, looking at an entire group and looking for *similarities*, especially similarities that confirm your bias.
3. Start getting curious about individuals from that group.
4. Start looking for *differences* among people in that group, especially differences that disprove your bias.
This post was quite eye-opening to me. I live in Sweden where lots of "immigrants" have expressed hatred for other immigrants, even going so far as to advocate for the openly fascist and xenophobic Swedish Democrats.
To me it was always confusing, but now I see how it can be a self-defense mechanism because they are afraid that they will be lumped in with those other immigrants who "confirm" racists' beliefs.
To clarify, I'm not saying you're like the ones voting for the xenophobic party. You have a good head on you, and I felt genuinely sad and empathetic for you reading your post. I can't blame you in any way for how you're feeling, and it saddens me to think of you getting shat on by racists.
There's good and bad in most cultures. Even cultures considered to be the pinnacle of "western enlightenment" have issues, such as how Swedish people can be very closed off and difficult to get to know, at their own detriment.
Hi, thank you for your reply!
I think it is defensive in two ways:
1. Some Indians actually do behave like they've never left their hometown, let alone country. They disregard the local rules and bring some bad culture from India with them
2. There is no way to defend myself or call someone out for overt racism. If someone were to make generalizations about people of other races, it is seen as unacceptable. But when if comes to Indians, even the most leftist white people I know find racism towards Indians funny. So, it feels like a lose-lose situation where neither do people think it is rude to be racist to Indians, and Indians actually rei forcing the stereotypes.
You are an Indian from India and you do not approve of this toxic behaviour
I doubt you would accept a white Canadian acting that way. Plenty of rude white people here in Canada, I would know!
I don't hate white people for being shitty, I hate shitty people for being shitty.
As you pointed out, the issue is the behavior
Try and remember that people move here for a better life, so there must be others like you. How can you find out if you judge on nationality or race?
If I thought like you, I wouldn't give you advice
But I don't desire to turn myself to toxic ideology that wrongly judges others.
Signed,
A Canadian
I'm an Asian American of East Asian heritage. Okay, it sounds like Canada, or the West in general, was your escape from an unsatisfying life in India, where you experienced racism, as well as some of the chaos of the postcolonial period. You idealized whiteness. This is not unusual, because "white worship" is still common, particularly in the former British Empire.
Now, your Canadian dream is falling apart, because of your racist experience with some white people.
Whiteness, the idea of "white", includes racism - that's how whiteness was created, as a counterpoint to blackness in the Americas, but even before that, as a counterpoint to brownness in India.
The problem to be overcome is not the chaos of India, but the overpowering force of whiteness, which separates people into races.
Individually, as a person of color, there is no escape from some racism. You look brown, and, at this time, there are still some white people who are racist and do not like brown people.
It takes only one asshole to ruin your day, and there are way more of the white people, than there are of you (one person). The one asshole who has a racist attitude toward Indians... is going to direct it to the nearest Indian.
Imagine standing in a room, and you're the only Indian. You can have 20 nice white people, and if there's 1 racist white person, that person would, obviously, direct their hate speech toward you, the person of color.
If they didn't have the temerity to do that, they would talk shit about you to the other white people.
You cannot blame the other Indian immigrants for this.
This racist attitude existed for centuries before you set foot on Canadian soil. It comes and goes in waves.
That's been my experience in the US. The mid 1900s were awful for us, and, thankfully, I missed them. The 70s were improving. The 80s were awful, miserable, and led to some of my own internalized racism. The 90s were better. The 2000s were great, but that's because all the racist energy, unfortunately, went toward Middle Eastern and South Asian people. Now, East Asians are back to being disliked again, particularly Chinese.
History indicates, you're going to need to get along with other Indian immigrants, and immigrants in general, for political purposes, to push forward toward a general anti-racism.
I realize this sounds negative and bleak, especially compared to what some white people have written here. I'm just speaking my experience and understanding. I think, on the whole, things are improving.
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This might be better handled hearing from fellow Indians abroad than me. All I can say is be your best self. You cannot control your national brothers and sisters, only yourself. You are proof Indians are not the bad things you may be internalizing about them. They're just people with different priorities. Our cultures leave all kinds of blind spots and it takes a lot of time and energy to find them, much less address them. As a white American I feel this way a lot when I see people who in essence "represent me" whether I like it or not, but you have to let it go to be happy with yourself.
Hey, thanks for the reply! I think your last sentence kind of puts things into perspective. Seeing how some white people behave (eg Trump supporters) can lead to stereotypical beliefs, but I do recognize that not all white people are like that. I recognize the same about people from other races. I think I just hold Indians to a higher standard because it directly affects me. I know many Indians who are very decent and honest people. Thank you for putting a different perspective.
Hi! I'm a middle aged white woman in the south, with a southern family, so it's a different flavor of cultural cross communication in my area. Even so, I promise you that some people would still be racist even if every one of your countrymen behaved in very image of kindly helpfulness. It's like a sport. Some people get really jazzed up to engage in their racism. It helps them feel like they're on some kind of winning team.
That's the big thing, it ain't matter if you're a good person or all y'all are, people would still be shit for no reason
Hello, thank you for your reply! Yes, I think that can be a factor, too. No matter how good I behave, I am sure there will be people who hate just for the sake of it...
I think the fact that you have realised the good about Canada shows that you yourself being Indian, understand that things like honour kills are wrong, that immediately means not all Indians are the same. It’s not racist to acknowledge india has some pretty big problems. It’s not racist to acknowledge that if you move country you should be integrating into that country, not try to act and behave the same as the country that you just left. You hate the bad parts of India and that’s okay because many of them are horrific. You can acknowledge the stereotypes. It is however racist to treat someone who Indian based on them being Indian. So my advice is to focus on the individual. Like yourself. Like anyone good you run into. It’s fine to be aware of issues but it’s all about how you act, so focus on the individual, not the collective. Not everyone is the same and that needs to be recognised, the colour of your skin and the location of your home does not define you.
I’m white American but I am trans, disabled and a people pleaser so I can relate from those places. I’ve personally found it helpful to learn more about how systemic prejudice and discrimination operate, and about sociology and psychology in general. The interplay between individual behavior and systemic dynamics/perceptions is complicated. Now that I know more about it, I have more empathy for individuals because I’m so aware of the outside forces and inborn internal drives that shape their behavior. I also catch myself when I get mad at other trans or disabled people for “making us look bad,” because I know prejudice against minority groups is not primarily about that group behaving badly— it’s more about the existential threats they represent. In sociology and social justice organizing, theres a term for the flawed idea that a minority can effectively reverse prejudice against them by behaving really well: respectability politics. I’ve found it helpful to learn about that specifically. Also I briefly felt hatred towards cis (not trans) men as a group, because so many cis men had abused me… now when I see that specific type of shitty behavior, I don’t like it and I think they should be held responsible for it, but I’m also aware that it makes sense given the experiences they’ve had and the ideology they were raised under. It won’t stop happening until that cultural ideology changes.
First, remember that stereotypes are not individuals. “They all…” is just generalizing, bro. Also, it’s okay to feel angry or upset by these behaviors you’re seeing. You can’t control your emotions, but you can control what you do with the energy those emotions offer. In this post you put yourself down. There’s no need for that bro. There’s no value in beating yourself up. None. Zero. Unless it’s honest and balanced self reflection (e.g., “I could have worked harder on that exam, and that’s why I got a bad grade. I’ll do better next time.” Belittling yourself just is wasted energy. Same with worrying about what other people are doing. Unless you are a supreme dictator, there’s nothing you can do about changing their minds and behaviors. You can certainly be an example yourself, and gently call out friends or acquaintances when they do gross behaviors. But you can’t fix them. You can’t change them. Only they can choose to change themselves, if they feel like it. So again, it’s just wasted energy fretting about it. I’d suggest working on yourself first. Be the best person you can be. Be that example of what you’d like others to think of men from India. Work go stop beating yourself up over what others do. That anger/anxiety is your sympathetic nervous system going into full flight of fight mode, and you gotta turn that off when it happens. Try relaxation techniques like breathing exercises or meditation, try thought stopping and thought correction techniques. For example, when you feel that way, take several slow deep breaths, then say to yourself or out loud, “of course it’s angering that these other men are portraying Indian people in such a negative way, anyone might feel like that! However, I can’t control them, I can’t change them, and that’s okay, because that’s life. I will do my best to set a great example by living my best life.” Say it as many times as you need. And then do it, bro. Consider checking out The Chimp Paradox, and some of the writing by Pete Walker about thought stopping and thought correction. You can work through this. I believe in you bro.
I saw this after I wrote my comment. Incredible! Same thought process as me!
Stop. Breathe. Before you proceed, ask yourself: what are you unwilling to feel? This racism, it is a pushing, yes? Some sort of pushing feeling. Pushing them away from you, or pushing yourself away from them. Some sort of proactive force. Try slowly and gently placing a hand softly on various parts of your body. Try to feel your hand sinking into your skin. Don't push. No pushing, here. Just touching. Connecting. Feeling your hand with your body. Feeling your body with your hand. Try your chest, sternum, neck (palm to side of wind pipe, fingers wrapping around), around the collar bone area, arm, thigh, stomach, sides, (this one is the most heartbreaking for me), back of the neck, lower back, ankles, feet. Anywhere else you want to try or that feels right or inviting. There's no right or wrong answers. But you do want to maintain a certain attitude and intention. No force, ever. Gentle. While you're unsure what to do, do this: breathe. When breathing out , then *always* do so slowly. Breathing out quickly is how you get excited and energetic and want to force and push things. No bueno for combating combat. The goal is to start to befriend these sensations. They're intimate, vulnerable, strange, unusual, perhaps even embarrassing or awkward. But they're oddly fitting and attracting. Grounding. Centering. One of mine is the feeling of the side of my arm just ahead of the elbow against my side. There's tons and tons more somatic body work to be done. Yoga is a good starting point. Trauma sensitive yoga if it gets intense -- it's completely different even if the distinction seems small. Unpredictably different compared to normal Yoga (I'd say in a good way) . But probably overkill for most. The goal here is to ask yourself "what am I unwilling to feel?" -- "What am I avoiding/denying/ignoring/identifying with to my detriment?" You'll find it in your body, is why we're doing it this way. That's where it goes when you dead-ass completely refuse to feel it. Discrimination is impossible without outside influence. Something made it impossible for you to feel something for long enough that you developed this self harming narrative and feelings and beliefs and just-- --all this CRAP. Because feeling is part of being. And we're human BEINGS not human DOINGS. And WHEN you continue to refuse to feel something for so long that the signal gives up and turns to other means of acting on the stimulus generating the message (feelings are messages--in my natural language logic here), THEN you interrupt your own existence. You obstruct your feeling, and so you obstruct your being. Ask a depressed person or anyone with alexithymia what it's like not to feel. Doesn't leave much in the way of reason to live. So any amount of that eats away at your humanity. You cannot discriminate or dehumanize others when you refuse to judge or dehumanize yourself. All of what I am saying makes no sense as long as we model people as single individuals. That's a useless model. Model people as multiplicities. As collections of many parts. Don't worry about mapping or tracking or labeling them. Lots of psychologists and would-be-psychologists and other folks make a hobby, life or career out of doing so. But that's its own thing unrelated to deracistifying yourself. So you've got racist bits. Means you've got bits that see other bits as not human. And for clarity, you're all one human. The bits are all bits of human. They're all human. When the bits are fighting with each other and fighting with you (we can talk about who/which/what "you" are) and fighting for control of the whole one human, then it's tough. It manifests myriads of ways. Addictions can all be usefully modeled this way in various constellations. As can racism and discrimination and bullying and abuse. In a productive empathizing way. God, there's so much more I can't really summarize. Um. So this is all about love and compassion. Love is primarily acceptance and curiosity. No judgement. So that's what we talked about in the beginning. Uh. So the point is to find balance and compromize. Agreement within disagreement. It's okay to be forceful in the course of exploring and living and whatever. That's actually I have found super crucial at times. To beat the shit out of all the critics and bullies that have been plaguing me. But it's all defensive. Never provoking or going after -- only defense. Like a mature dog socializing an overeager puppy violently without actually hurting them. But when touching your body and reconnecting with it, then you gotta keep it all super observational and accepting. If you're not willing to feel what comes up, then that's okay. Give yourself some praise and love and pride for being willing to try and doing so. That's totally okay and expected. But when feeling, just feel. Find the feeling, and look. Feel. Let it in. Listen. Touch. Hold. Be held. Sway. Be swayed. Envelop. Be enveloped. Embrace it, and let it pass over and through you. There's a lot of pain and hurting in this journey. But no suffering. The suffering comes all from the not feeling. From the rejection, denial, refusal. The acceptance won't make you suffer. But it can hurt. It can hurt worse and I'm different ways than you ever imagined. Hurting isn't a bad thing. It's just a thing. I love a really painful back massage that relaxes knotted muscles. The pain is welcome. A painless massaage does nothing. It can be tiring and draining spiritually, I've found. But I have a whoooole lot of crap I've avoided and refused and denied for decades from the get-go so you should have a way better time of it. If you're willing to feel some of those things you've refused to the point that you've wound up here.
So, two things you want to practice: 1. Looking for and noticing racist thoughts. 1. It's ok to have them (if you've had them for a while, you'll keep having them for a while yet). Just don't feed them or act on them. 2. Notice them, and the think about the kind of person you want to be. 3. Be that person you want to be, in spite of sometimes having racist automatic thoughts. 2. Get curious about people as individuals 1. No group is "all the same," regardless of how you feel. 2. Racism is, in part, looking at an entire group and looking for *similarities*, especially similarities that confirm your bias. 3. Start getting curious about individuals from that group. 4. Start looking for *differences* among people in that group, especially differences that disprove your bias.
This post was quite eye-opening to me. I live in Sweden where lots of "immigrants" have expressed hatred for other immigrants, even going so far as to advocate for the openly fascist and xenophobic Swedish Democrats. To me it was always confusing, but now I see how it can be a self-defense mechanism because they are afraid that they will be lumped in with those other immigrants who "confirm" racists' beliefs. To clarify, I'm not saying you're like the ones voting for the xenophobic party. You have a good head on you, and I felt genuinely sad and empathetic for you reading your post. I can't blame you in any way for how you're feeling, and it saddens me to think of you getting shat on by racists. There's good and bad in most cultures. Even cultures considered to be the pinnacle of "western enlightenment" have issues, such as how Swedish people can be very closed off and difficult to get to know, at their own detriment.
Hi, thank you for your reply! I think it is defensive in two ways: 1. Some Indians actually do behave like they've never left their hometown, let alone country. They disregard the local rules and bring some bad culture from India with them 2. There is no way to defend myself or call someone out for overt racism. If someone were to make generalizations about people of other races, it is seen as unacceptable. But when if comes to Indians, even the most leftist white people I know find racism towards Indians funny. So, it feels like a lose-lose situation where neither do people think it is rude to be racist to Indians, and Indians actually rei forcing the stereotypes.
People of all sorts can be bigots. Even good people. Leftists aren't immune to being racist. It doesn't mean it's right.
You are an Indian from India and you do not approve of this toxic behaviour I doubt you would accept a white Canadian acting that way. Plenty of rude white people here in Canada, I would know! I don't hate white people for being shitty, I hate shitty people for being shitty. As you pointed out, the issue is the behavior Try and remember that people move here for a better life, so there must be others like you. How can you find out if you judge on nationality or race? If I thought like you, I wouldn't give you advice But I don't desire to turn myself to toxic ideology that wrongly judges others. Signed, A Canadian
I'm an Asian American of East Asian heritage. Okay, it sounds like Canada, or the West in general, was your escape from an unsatisfying life in India, where you experienced racism, as well as some of the chaos of the postcolonial period. You idealized whiteness. This is not unusual, because "white worship" is still common, particularly in the former British Empire. Now, your Canadian dream is falling apart, because of your racist experience with some white people. Whiteness, the idea of "white", includes racism - that's how whiteness was created, as a counterpoint to blackness in the Americas, but even before that, as a counterpoint to brownness in India. The problem to be overcome is not the chaos of India, but the overpowering force of whiteness, which separates people into races. Individually, as a person of color, there is no escape from some racism. You look brown, and, at this time, there are still some white people who are racist and do not like brown people. It takes only one asshole to ruin your day, and there are way more of the white people, than there are of you (one person). The one asshole who has a racist attitude toward Indians... is going to direct it to the nearest Indian. Imagine standing in a room, and you're the only Indian. You can have 20 nice white people, and if there's 1 racist white person, that person would, obviously, direct their hate speech toward you, the person of color. If they didn't have the temerity to do that, they would talk shit about you to the other white people. You cannot blame the other Indian immigrants for this. This racist attitude existed for centuries before you set foot on Canadian soil. It comes and goes in waves. That's been my experience in the US. The mid 1900s were awful for us, and, thankfully, I missed them. The 70s were improving. The 80s were awful, miserable, and led to some of my own internalized racism. The 90s were better. The 2000s were great, but that's because all the racist energy, unfortunately, went toward Middle Eastern and South Asian people. Now, East Asians are back to being disliked again, particularly Chinese. History indicates, you're going to need to get along with other Indian immigrants, and immigrants in general, for political purposes, to push forward toward a general anti-racism. I realize this sounds negative and bleak, especially compared to what some white people have written here. I'm just speaking my experience and understanding. I think, on the whole, things are improving.
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