Colonize This!: Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism (24 page)

Questions of authenticity still haunt me, though. These days I wonder: Did I really like Warrant back then or was I just trying to act white? Did
anyone
actually like Warrant back then? Sometimes I still feel like I have to constantly prove my indie cred to white kids, who automatically think that because I’m black, I can’t possibly understand rock and roll. And when I hear people talk about “the scene,” I feel out of place. As much as I love the music, keep up with the newest bands, live by the do-it-yourself ethic and wear all the “right” spiked bracelets, I still don’t feel that I’m part of any larger community. Let’s be honest. No matter how progressive it claims to be, the scene is still ruled by white boys with guitars. Of course, there are those who would argue that there is nothing stopping black kids like me from going to rock shows. The same well-intentioned types who scratch their heads and wonder, “Why aren’t there more people of color at punk/riot grrrl/indie shows? We’d like more to come, but they never do.” But we don’t need an invitation. We just want to feel welcome.

I’m used to the laughs by now, the weird looks, being the only black face at a show. I think things are changing, though. Last year I managed to even get my girl Tomika to come with me to a hardcore show. She started laughing once some kids up front started a pit. But then a few minutes later, she turned to me and said, “Yo, this drummer is tight.” I’m also happy that today there are black women out there like Allison Martlew from the Butchies, MeShell Ndegèocello and Macy Gray, who are keeping it real and keeping it rockin’.

But I’m still waiting for another thick-lipped, kinky-haired rock and roll heroine to call my own. One of these days, I’d like to see a sista who’s Kathleen Hanna, Shirley Manson and Lita Ford all rolled into one. A black girl who rocks. Maybe I’ll just have to pick up a guitar and do it myself.

 

 

Bhavana Mody

 

 

 

 

 

I had zoned out at some point during the conversation, eyeing the variety of cat food products on his sister’s bookshelf. The rest of us were seated on the couch while he was grounded on the floor, waving his arms around, making driving gestures, vomiting gestures, turning, yelling and dancing.... It was more like a game of charades than a conversation, except there was zero-audience participation. In fact, I don’t think I had been given the opportunity to respond once. The two other women on the couch were
oohing, aaahing
and giggling now and then. But he couldn’t evoke a smile from me at this point. His question had left me feeling sick and unimpressionable.

He was an acquaintance from college who was sharing some tales with us about his recent travels to India, where he was studying Buddhism in the hills of the Northeast region of the subcontinent. He threw around gestures and statements and for the most part, I had no idea what he was talking about. I wanted to butt in, but there was no room to disagree with him. After all, he had just recently returned and I hadn’t been to India in years. So whenever he looked at me, I smiled and nodded, as if in agreement. I
should
have known what he was talking about, right? I eyed the two other women. Is that what they were thinking?

My pride was on the line here. How come they weren’t looking at
me
and asking
me
questions? I wanted to be given the floor.
Yes, I really am Indian. Sure, I know all the Hindu goddesses. Of course I meditate. Well, yeah, I’ve been to Bodhgaya.
When the truth is, I know about three Hindu goddesses, have tried meditating about twice (and failed) and have never been to Bodhgaya. Yet I didn’t want them to think I was void of the Indian experience. So here I was already feeling insecure about my Indian-ness, and then he popped the question.

He smiled at me, his dreadlocks swayed forward and his crooked teeth poked through his brown wild boar of a beard. I saw his mouth move the first time, but for some reason the words didn’t seem real. I almost choked.

“What did you say?” I asked, eyebrows raised. He didn’t think he was implying anything when he asked it. He just wanted to be generous with his wisdom, you see.

“Do you know what your name
means?”
He grinned excitedly, eager to share the knowledge. I blinked a couple of times. The other women were eager too. They turned their heads toward me for the first time, but not their bodies. He was much more entertaining than I was and they wanted to continue the charades-style conversation. I shifted uncomfortably and muttered softly. I suddenly felt shy about talking about myself.

“Yeah, it means like dream or something, I think—” I wasn’t finished. I was just starting to recognize the power I held for those few seconds when he snatched it back. They nodded and turned their eyes back on him.

“Your name means ‘MED-I-TA-TION.’” He articulated each syllable as if none of us had ever heard the word before. This is when I turned toward the cat food, my eyes welled up with tears, my pride sunk, my Indian-ness disproved. And the white man in front of me carried on.

 

I can’t tell you how many male friends and acquaintances I know, all white, all college educated, that have traveled, meditated and studied in India. And each time another white male person tells me about their time in India, I wrestle with a range of emotions, dealing primarily with race and power. I immediately begin to think of my skin color and how I was always different in the United States but how I’m also different in India.

During my small-town upbringing in Kentucky, I experienced plenty of racism, sometimes in the form of stares and at other times in more blatant forms. So in some way I do take it as a compliment when white men obsess over India. They are actually
interested
in my culture rather than appalled by it. This “interest” is a
huge
step up from my old Kentucky home, where if I “acted Indian,” I’d be made fun of. That’s probably how Indians in India feel about white tourists, relieved by the curious smiles, the cameras and the sari-shopping. The exotification is a step up from the blatant racism and terrorism that Indians have experienced both in India and in America. It is nice knowing that white men aren’t out to get us, right? They’re just
interested.
I know their admiration of Indian culture is well-intentioned. I even brag to my parents and relatives about the white men I know.

They are often taken aback but also proud that Americans are so interested in their way of life. “These American boys like wearing robes?”

“These American boys drink chai?”

“These American boys enjoy sitar music?”

“These American boys must be crazy.”

Well, no, Indian relatives, Americans are good and they aren’t all materialistic, fashionable football players that eat hamburgers and listen to Backstreet Boys and live on Melrose Place. So here I am on the one hand questioning white men for exploiting my culture. And on the other hand I want them to go to India so that they can develop a sense of respect for Indian people.

“It is good your American friends are trying to
understand about you.”

Yeah, that’s it. Right there. Uh-huh. This is where the problem lies. My relatives are wrong in assuming my American friends are trying to understand me. Sure, the India-obsessed dudes (to reduce redundancy, I’ll refer to these white men as “Indophiles”) that go to India understand more about the “third world,” Hinduism, yoga and what not, but do they really understand actual Indians (including me)? How do they treat actual Indians in this country? Like I mentioned before, I wasn’t always treated so kindly.

As an Indian-American woman, my identity was and still is challenged repeatedly. Raised in rural Kentucky, I wanted so badly to fit in. But it was difficult for my blond, blue-eyed neighbors to get past the fact that I was dark, my parents had accents and dressed “funny” and that our house was painted a bright blue, the shade of an eighties-style satin prom dress. I was
odd
and that identity stuck. Somehow, I made it through my years in that town, through preteen battles with my parents about wanting to try cheerleading instead of math team, and through being made fun of because my grandfather had a braid and wore “sheets.”

I spent most of my time at home, sometimes feeling socially inept and other times simply enjoying the Indian-ness. I loved my mom’s soft rotis she made regularly and my dad’s old Hindi movie music he played on Sunday mornings. I loved playing games using seashells with my grandmother and singing
bhajans
with her at night. Sometimes I would parade around my room, wearing a
salwar
dress and lots of bangles.

The funny thing is, aside from the folks in my Indian home in Kentucky, I wasn’t really comfortable among other Indians. I detested going to India, where I felt invaded with my relatives’ comments on how I spoke, ate, dressed and studied. When I was in India, I longed to be back in Kentucky, where I could listen to my Indigo Girls tapes on long country drives or sit in my own room and read or write without interruptions, dreaming of being an actress or part of the Peace Corps.

You’d think I’d have had a sense of peace among other Indian Americans, but this was not the case either. I reluctantly attended Indian gatherings in the bigger cities with my parents, awkwardly wearing
chanya-cholis
and tripping on the
gerba
dance floor. I was intimidated by the other Indian-American girls my age who dressed and danced beautifully. I would stand there holding my choli skirt up because I didn’t tie it right, while they glided and gossiped in their friend circles, discussing their bright futures in medicine and engineering.

Eventually, I landed myself in a small liberal arts college in Ohio, where I learned to feel a sense of power in my oddness. It was a school that was predominantly white, so there was no such thing as ethnic studies or Asian studies. I was lucky enough to have a Black studies class. But during my first year of college, nothing upside-downed my world as much as Women’s Studies 101. I learned that maybe I wasn’t so odd after all, because maybe, just maybe, patriarchal social constructions had caused the various forms of discrimination I’d experienced all my life, both as a woman and as a person of color. The other women in the class connected with me; we had a shared understanding. I was overjoyed. I embraced my new friend
feminism.

But as I delved deeper and deeper into feminism, something was still missing. Although I was understanding more and more about gender and oppression regarding women’s issues, I still hadn’t come to terms with the racism I experienced and my Indian-American identity. And because there was no one to have a shared experience with, I threw it on a back burner and poked at it from time to time. For example, I drew parallels in my anthropology classes, learning about other cultures, particularly women in other cultures. Independently, I read about women in India and decided to write my thesis on that topic. When I interviewed Indian women, and they nodded their heads at me in ways that only
I
, being Indian, would understand, I felt reconnected to the culture and tradition I had always felt so distanced from. I couldn’t wait to go back to India and be with my family there. In my thesis I explored ethnicity and gender repeatedly and, thanks to feminism, I could question and critique various social constructions.

 

And so I know something is very wrong with white men telling me this and that about India. But I don’t have an official theory from which to critique them. Although I understand exotification and discrimination and where it comes from, sometimes I feel too shocked and tongue-tied to say anything. I get pissed because I don’t think my experience as an Indian-American woman is understood, just as the experience of Indians in India is grossly misinterpreted. When I do say something, everyone thinks I am overreacting because nothing comes out logically.

One time I was seated with a couple of Indophile friends, and the two were exchanging stories about train riding in India. I was very attentive while they were talking because I really like trains in India. I can see how train riding in India can be enjoyable, but I’m not sure how much of a
crazy
adventure riding on a train is. The two friends kept gabbing about this and that—imitating the vendors and discussing all the CRAZY times on the trains. And then discussing all the CRAZY times in some city. All the CRAZY craziness and CRAZY adventure of travel in India. Usually, when I go to India, I see my family. Nothing terribly CRAZY. When I was seated with the two Indophiles, I felt like I had to justify why I’d never done anything as CRAZY as they had while in India. What was my hang-up? Then I realized that “CRAZY” was a judgment: what they saw as so CRAZY was just the same-old same-old for most Indians, including my family, living their everyday lives.

I can’t say I’ve ever had a wild adventure in India. It’s very difficult for me to travel in India, as I am rarely allowed to leave the house alone. In most cases girls and women cannot travel long distances unaccompanied because it is important to be associated with a man, as a wife, a daughter, a cousin or a niece. What these Indophiles didn’t seem to understand was what a privilege they had to be able to roam all over India. Women cannot travel as independently as men. And Indian women can travel even less independently. We do not limit ourselves but are limited due to the societal constraints that white men do not have to deal with. The few times when I was alone, I encountered a great deal of harassment. Most of my family in India (men and women, but especially the women) have not seen anything in India outside of their home state of Gujarat.

During this same conversation both men mentioned how they only ride third-class trains, where the “real” Indians are. As if “real” Indians are poor and cannot be middle class or rich. I admire that they acknowledge the poverty that exists in India rather than turn a blind eye to it. But I do not like how they glorify it. As if they’re way too tough and way too poor to sit among the weenies in the air-conditioned first-class train. Well, I guarantee that if those third-class passengers had the choices my Indophile friends did, they’d be happy to be weenies. I didn’t say anything, but I thought to myself how I’d be much less irked if my friends had swapped a first-class ticket with a third-class passenger—that way, both could have had a unique, once-in-a-lifetime experience. After all, we all know Indophiles can afford four extra dollars.

There was also a lot of talk from these guys about how great village life is.
Milking cows, eating mangoes, laughing all day, la, la, Ia.
I, too, believe in simple living, but there is a difference between
simplicity by choice
and poverty. Most Indian villagers are of the latter group. Admittedly, I had a similar perception of village life once too. Then I hung out with my family in the village for an extended period of time. They are dealing with alcoholism, domestic violence, illness, lack of education, and so on. The truth is, most people that live in Indian villages are suffering miserably. On the surface, though, when language barriers are thick, it may seem that village people are always smiling. Also, what Indophiles don’t always see when they hang out with the cheerful, “hard-core” fellas in the villages is that those who suffer the most are the women, those that work the hardest are the women. But they don’t talk it up with the women.