I'm so f*cking done with my race, bro.

I never want to be associated with an ethnic group of any kind, ever again.

Jun 17, 2024

A Clean Record

I recently moved to Asheville, North Carolina. Most of my income comes from remote freelance editing, but I still needed a side job to cover the rest of my expenses. So after some searching, I got an interview with the owners of Green Home Cleaning, dressed up all nice, and went. (And yes, I’m naming names, because fuck it.)

The interview was way too casual. We chatted more about unrelated stuff than about the job I was interviewing for, which should have registered in my brain as a huge red flag.

But like a dumb fish, I took the bait, relaxed maybe a bit too much, and somehow didn’t think twice about it when the older of the two pale-skinned ladies asked me what my ethnicity is.

It just rolled off my tongue automatically, like it always has: “Indo-Trinidadian and Puerto Rican.”

“Do you speak Hindi or Spanish?”

“No.”

“Shame on you!” She began to laugh. And laugh. And laugh some more. Then she riffed, saying even more shit about how I’m not a ~real~ this-or-that if I “don’t even speak the language.”

I froze, completely uncertain of how to respond. I could feel the blood draining from my face. It was one of those things where I only realized what I should have done, after the moment had passed.

I should have told her she was being wildly unprofessional, got up, and walked out with my dignity intact.

I should have told her it was actually fucking illegal for her to ask me that, and then reported her ass to some employment authority.

I should have stood up for myself — somehow, some way.

…But I did none of those things.

Instead, I took the job when it was offered to me; I worked one shift before they decided not to move forward with me due to scheduling conflicts; and I have been mulling over this incident ever since.

This is the second time in my life that an older “white” employer has asked my ethnicity during a job interview. The first time was in Chattanooga, TN, when I was interviewing to be an Editor for CityScope magazine. (I didn’t get that job, by the way.)

In both instances, the question was posed as a casual conversation piece. ~Just asking out of curiosity!~
But what both employers seemed oblivious to, was how threatening that question can feel when your employment status is in their hands.

If somebody asks my ethnicity during a job interview, even if they’re genuinely just curious, how can I be assured that they’re not using my answer to decide whether to hire me or not?

And, fuck it, lets go All The Way: Why does ANYBODY, EVER ask me what my ethnicity is?!

Curiosity Killed the Cat…

People have been ~jUsT CuRiOuS~ about my ethnicity all my life, and the majority of the time, they ask because they want to “scratch the itch” of not being able to mentally categorize my facial features.

We’re humans. We like to categorize things. I get that.

And I, being something like The Grey Area incarnate, am difficult to categorize. I get that too.

So I’ve tried a million different responses over the years, testing how each answer lands.

Sometimes, I take off my glasses and say “Guess!” and then let the person stare at my facial features. It’s a great ice-breaker, to establish this level of intimate eye contact right away. And it’s harmless fun.

Other times, though, I confess: I’ve answered in ways that distort the Truth —sometimes for mere convenience, but sometimes to make myself look better.

Depending on how the question is asked, and what the situation calls for, I might say “I’m Indian” and leave it at that. By far, this has incited the most pleasant responses from strangers — they seem impressed to find out I’m “Indian,” because they love ~the culture~ (whatever that means).

But it’s a lie, because I’m not Indian-from-India. I’m a diasporic Indian, sort-of, distantly. My great-grandfather was Indian. My 23andMe report says I’m 50% Indian. And sure, Indo-Trinidadian culture has obvious South Indian influences due to its history.
But I only spent summers in Trinidad — it’s not like I grew up there. And I have only been to India once, for a study abroad program.

So everything I’ve ever postured as knowing (my knowledge of Vedic astrology, my love of Indian cuisine, and my occasional stints with doing a bindi sadhana) — were all learned later in life, secondhand… like I’ve been “appropriating” my own ancestral heritage.

Wanna know the fucked-up part? There’s been no shortage of opportunities to mildly exploit my Indian appearance. Some people assume I’m an authority on all things Indian or Hindu just because I look Indian enough. In this, they expose their commitment to ignorance: asking my ethnicity was not about learning the Truth, after all. It was about something else. (But what?, is the question.)

Other times, I’ll tell people I’m Indian/Trinidadian and Puerto Rican, which sometimes illicits a “That’s a cool mix!” from whoever asked.
And, yeah, I suppose it is a “cool mix.” But if my mix is a cool one, does that imply that there are other “mixes” that aren’t cool?

I know, I know. They sincerely mean well. I don’t mean to sound condemnatory.

But I can’t get over what these knee-jerk responses reveal about our collective, subconscious beliefs about race.

Even if someone is consciously just curious, the fact that they feel compelled to ask at all reveals a subconscious motivation of some kind, whether that’s to subconsciously establish superiority over me, or subconsciously affirm some pre-existing bias about “people like me,” or subconsciously make quick, convenient assumptions about me that have nothing to do with The Truth of Who I Actually Am.

By asking the question, they are insinuating that it matters somehow.

And what I’m attempting to argue here, is that it doesn’t.

Not in the way that they think it does, anyway.

… but Satisfaction Brought it Back

When I step back — and I mean really step back — to look at the bigger picture, I see that none of my answers to The Ethnicity Question has ever been True. Not one of them.

I actually can’t be a descendant of Indians — because “India” doesn’t exist!

I can’t be a descendant of Puerto Ricans either — because “Puerto Rico” also doesn’t exist!

And to me, it’s not enough to simply revert back to calling “India” Bhārata, or “Puerto Rico” Boríken — because those don’t exist either!

Sure, there are land masses that we refer to by certain names, for the sake of rhetorical convenience. But ultimately, the borders we superimpose on these land masses are human conventions. They are not naturally-occurring. They don’t exist.

Unlike biological sex which is universally definable, there’s not some essential is-ness that people from the-land-mass-known-as-“Puerto Rico” have, that other people don’t or can’t have.

Like money, the value that a “nation” has is entirely contingent upon collective agreements.

So if I continue to identify myself with these imaginary national boundaries, am I not essentially participating in, and consenting-to, a web of deceptions? — by insinuating

that the imaginary lines that define nations are, indeed, legitimate?
and that people can belong to, or owe their loyalty to, the land masses that exist within these imaginary lines?
and that worldly governments have the right to define, and thereby exert dominion over, entire populations of people who exist within those imaginary lines?

Nationality/ethnicity aside, even the Race question falsely implies that Race exists — but it doesn’t.

So many people have genuinely fallen for the narrative that some people are WHITE — literally, white — and some people are BLACK — literally, black.

And being that these two shades are extreme opposites of each other, even accepting the descriptor of “black” or “white” for oneself programs one to believe that one has become opposed to the other!

It’s no wonder people believe there’s a Race War going on!

The Truth is, even the palest person in the world is not literally white, nor is the darkest person in the world literally black.

We are all varying degrees of melanated.

Race is not a Black-and-White issue.

It’s nuanced. It’s Grey.

Getting Closer to the Truth

Here, I want to reassure my readers that I’m not judging their curiosity. It’s not wrong to ask such questions. No question is a bad question, in my opinion.

But, as I teach in my QUESTIONS course, sometimes we prevent ourselves from finding the Truth that we seek, because we’re asking loaded questions — or, questions that pre-suppose a certain answer.

If someone asks what my ethnicity is, the question itself implies that ethnicity is A Thing, or that there’s a straightforward answer.

But if what they actually want to know is “What kind of person are you, Alicen?” then that’s the question they should be asking.

Similarly: “What kind of environment did you grow up in?”

Or: “What was the culture of your upbringing like?”

Those questions would bring them closer to the Truth they actually seek.

And perhaps the best option of all, for ascertaining the Truth in this matter, would be taking the time to get to know me as a person,

instead of erroneously assuming that I must be my past, or my ancestry, or my genetics, or my nation of origin, or my parents’ nations of origin.

Privilege

I was born and raised in the so-called “United States” (arguably a powerful country, insofar as a country that doesn’t exist can be powerful). So there’s a certain amount of “privilege” I’m assumed to have on the world scale — meaning that if I disavow any identification with race, I’m assumed to be blind to my own “privilege.” Other people, in other countries-that-don’t-exist, don’t have the “privilege” of disavowing their race/ethnicity/nationality… or so I’m told.

But I can hardly see how mine is a privileged stance. It’s actually just a factual statement about reality: Race doesn’t objectively exist.

And before you point me to statistics proving race is objectively real, save your time: I have the visceral, embodied, lived experience of feeling just how inconsistent “race” is, depending on the circumstances I find myself in.

My ethnic ambiguity, or “in-between-ness,” has both benefited and harmed me throughout my life. There are times when I’ve been able to pawn my race like social capital. There have been other times, where I felt like I was the pawn.

Growing up in a predominantly dark-skinned (or “black”) school system, I was clearly the favorite of many pale-skinned (or “white) teachers. It was devastatingly obvious that I could get away with a lot of shit, like not doing my homework and skipping classes, for no discernible reason other than that I was lighter-skinned than my peers.

Despite having this advantage of being “light-skinned” relative to my public school peers, that was simply not the case when I found myself in predominantly pale-skinned neighborhoods, like Bronxville, where I was now “dark-skinned” relative to the people around me. I won’t even go over every instance of racism I experienced from the pale-skinned rich kids there, because it’s painful and humiliating. But it was real. And all I had to do — to go from having the best assumptions made about me, to having the worst assumptions made about me — was walk from Mount Vernon to Bronxville… which took maybe 15 minutes.

That’s what race is to me. That’s what it’s always been.

What a flimsy, stupid thing to identify with.

And don’t even get me started on how I could — if I was a cunt — fucking dominate Woke conversations by playing my “woman of color” status like a trump card. It’s frustrating, how some people tiptoe around race conversations with me, afraid to “say the wrong thing” lest they “offend me.” How about telling the Truth about what you think, and radically accepting the consequences thereof?

On the flip side, it’s also frustrating how people use my opinions to validate their own biases, e.g. “My brown friend said it’s okay to say XYZ, therefore it’s not racist.”

No, how about you take personal responsibility for your opinions? and stop seeking permission from some outer authority to think your own thoughts? I never asked to be a pawn in anyone’s ideological chess game.

It’s like all I have to do is sit here, minding my own business, and my mere presence — my existence — exposes all these underlying social programs and biases.

I am situated quite interestingly between being This and being That, but also being Both, but also being Neither.

Like I said: it’s like being The Grey Area incarnate.

From the center, you can see all sides.

Like any other manifestation of ambiguity in our world, The Grey Area poses a direct challenge to anyone committed to a Black-and-White perception.

It’s like people are scared to find out how much more we have in common than not.

Why?

One of my favorite things to contemplate is anonymity. When superficial markers of identity are removed, what essential, pure qualities remain? What remains is the Truth about the person, is it not?

The Truth, The Whole Truth, and Nothing But The Truth

As I continue to find ways to exalt Truth in my life, I can no longer, in good conscience, answer “the ethnicity question” in any way that feels honest. This isn’t about privilege. This is about telling the Truth.

The Truth is that I have brown skin, and this says more about my relationship to the Sun than it does about my intelligence, capabilities, and interests.

But beyond that, I don’t know what to say about it.

So next time someone asks me what my ethnicity is, I guess I’ll say, “I don’t know how to answer that question.”

Because the Truth is, I really don’t!

Or maybe I could flip the question back on them: “Why are you asking?”

Have you ever wondered why you wonder what someone’s race/ethnicity/nationality is?

What does it matter?
Does it matter?

And what could you be asking instead, that would bring you closer to The Truth you actually seek?

“I am a wind-swayed bridge, a crossroads inhabited by whirlwinds: Gloria, the facilitator, Gloria, the mediator, straddling the walls between abysses. "Your allegiance is to La Raza, the Chicano movement,” say the members of my race. “Your allegiance is to the Third World,” say my Black and Asian friends. “Your allegiance is to your gender,” say the feminists. Then there’s my allegiance to the Gay movement, to the socialist revolution, to the New Age, to magic and the occult. And there’s my affinity to literature, to the world of the artist. What am I? A third world lesbian feminist with Marxist and mystic leanings. They would chop me up into little fragments and rag each piece with a label.

You say my name is ambivalence? Think of me as Shiva, a many-armed and -legged body with one foot on brown soil, one on white, one in straight society, one in the gay world, the man’s world, the women’s, one limb in the literary world, another in the working class, the socialist, an the occult worlds. A sort of spider woman hanging by one thin strand of web.

Who, me, confused? Ambivalent? Not so. Only your labels confuse me.”

― Gloria Anzaldua, “La Prieta,” 1981

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