To Be Enough

Rohan Lokanadham ’23

My heritage. Something so simple. By dictionary definition, heritage is someone’s unique family identity, their culture, values, traditions, and sometimes religion. Throughout my life, I have struggled a lot with being confident of my heritage. Living in an American society, it can sometimes be difficult to be confident about your culture with people who know nothing about it. I have finally learned the importance of heritage though, and I now share it with friends who might want to learn about my culture. 

I live in a town, populated mostly by white people, which made expressing my culture a little difficult. If I’m being completely honest, I was embarrassed of my heritage, and this came from people making jokes about being Indian, and similar experiences in which I was made fun of for my culture. In my opinion, some of these jokes can be considered as normalized racism and overgeneralization. There have been many occasions where I have been told that I “smell like curry”, just because they saw that I was Indian. Some people might say that I shouldn’t take these comments to heart and that they are “just jokes”, but that is normalizing it even more. This is blatant racism at a smaller scale, and these little things can offend and affect people. It affected me personally, more than I even realized. I became embarrassed of my culture, and where I come from. 

I have also been told that I am “not Indian enough”, or “basically white.” I have never understood these labels, as they are just a play on stereotypes. What makes me “not Indian” and what makes me “white”? I am connected with my culture and heritage, and I am also a product of the American society that I have grown up in. These labels come from the Indian community itself, and I think it is why we normalize the racism against us. We tend to make fun of our own culture, which teaches others that it is okay to do as well. We stereotype Indians ourselves, and I think it needs to stop. More and more generations of Indians are now growing up in the American society, but we should not forget where we come from. Stereotyping ourselves gives being Indian a negative connotation, one which is not even true. I am proud to be Indian and the fact that I have learned from American culture as well.