Anjali

It’s icky to fit a stereotype and even worse to fail to uphold it. I’m an Indian girl who does debate, robotics, and piano and generally cares a lot about school. Stereotypes color these facts and deny me any control over them. But as much as I find fitting stereotypes unpleasant, even worse is failing to. So as much as I loathe being perceived as the stereotypical Indian girl its almost worst to be viewed as whitewashed (I am quite literally half white so you never know).

For both Indian people and mixed people, I think there are several perceived-as-trivial stereotypes that people will comment on and as long as they verbally lampshade it, they don’t treat it as a potentially powerful idea. (think almost anyone will reference model minority stereotype knowing it’s a stereotype and not thinking anything of it). Obviously it makes sense to reference that sort of thing in conversation, but it deserves a little more attention sometimes.

In English, I’ve noticed that a lot of the time while discussing race relations, the most simple, popular, vaguely progressive-ish position takes precedence and sometimes enough people who don’t have direct experience with the topic but do with the sentiment repeat it to the point it feels like a parroted stereotype more than an idea. For example, discussions around arranged marriage in Homeless Bird definitely struggled with this because students knew “arranged marriage bad, sexist, common in other countries” and I felt like the nuances of gender roles in other cultures were not only clumsy (as is normal and expected with kids) but relied too much on an oversimplified idea. Similarly, discussions around whitewashed characters who don’t have animosity towards their culture but maybe don’t speak their language, have white friends, or are distant from their culture had a similar problem. The narrative of a whitewashed, embarrassed child-of-immigrants is extremely common, and I think it has been oversimplified into meaning that unless you can access the purest version of your culture, you are malevolent. I didn’t love hearing so many people in my class (especially people who don’t identify with assimilation or lack thereof) criticize American cousins of the main characters in both Other words for home and Almost American girl. All of the opinions expressed in discussions around all three books had some degree of validity, but because they were the most mainstream, some opinions were oversimplified and (to me) quite stereotypical. I believe that the issues that disproportionally effect marginalized communities should be discussed in class, despite inevitable failures, but I think that teachers should look out for narratives like those to better avoid them by pointing out other dimensions to the issue.