mobile08/15/05 12:10 - 71ºF - ID#21165
independence day
so, India, my country, celebrates 58 years of independence today. happy happy to everyone. somethings been bugging me and it seems a lot of other brown people are feeling it too. i took the subway in new york a couple of days ago. i had a big red bag and two smaller bags. i was only trying to get home to my sisters place after 8 hours in a car travelling from buffalo. sweaty and hot, i probably never looked more "brown." i finally get on the subway. it is packed. i find myself a seat and wait for it to get going. i feel like i am being watched, intensely. i look up and see that no one cares. i begin to wonder why i care so much. i take pains to appear as normal as i possibly can. i open my bags, rest my legs on them and smile a lot at everyone. i figure a "terrorist' will not smile like an idiot at those she is going to blow up (unless it is my fave hindi film villain Amrish Puri before he whips out a diamond studded gun and blows up his enemy).
my station arrives and i get off, still with that huge smile on my face. As i sat on another train i wondered why i had to take on the onus of appearing 'normal.' what is 'normal' anyways? the world has changed after the 9/11 attacks and it has never been more clearly reinforced as by what ensued after the London train bombings. The words 'subway' and 'indian'-looking (a blanket misleading term meant to mean all brown-skinned people of South Asian origin) are now intrinsically meshed to invoke images of terror and destruction. as i write this, i still do not know how to explain this deep seated desire to fit in, to look 'normal' to look non-threatening. my younger sister, who takes the train to work in Atlanta was shocked to see that people moved away when she got into the train with a backpack. A policemen kept staring at her as if waiting for her to make a wrong move. as she told me what happened i assured her that it was just a few hyper-paranoid people. oh boy, was i wrong! accounts of similar experiences began to surface on the internet, on peoples blogs and other websites. it was subtle but the fear was palpable. it existed in the slight move away from you when you sat next to the nice lady in thr train. it exists when the policeman/woman keeps staring at you, hoping and waiting for you to make a wrong move so he/she can arrest you. it exists in the 'innocent' question a friend tells you that these 'security' measures are necessary to protect "us." it exists when you cannot carry a backpack without something inside you screaming caution. it exists, oh yes it does.
here
is a humorous take on the current paranoia (via the fantastic sepiamutiny.com)
my station arrives and i get off, still with that huge smile on my face. As i sat on another train i wondered why i had to take on the onus of appearing 'normal.' what is 'normal' anyways? the world has changed after the 9/11 attacks and it has never been more clearly reinforced as by what ensued after the London train bombings. The words 'subway' and 'indian'-looking (a blanket misleading term meant to mean all brown-skinned people of South Asian origin) are now intrinsically meshed to invoke images of terror and destruction. as i write this, i still do not know how to explain this deep seated desire to fit in, to look 'normal' to look non-threatening. my younger sister, who takes the train to work in Atlanta was shocked to see that people moved away when she got into the train with a backpack. A policemen kept staring at her as if waiting for her to make a wrong move. as she told me what happened i assured her that it was just a few hyper-paranoid people. oh boy, was i wrong! accounts of similar experiences began to surface on the internet, on peoples blogs and other websites. it was subtle but the fear was palpable. it existed in the slight move away from you when you sat next to the nice lady in thr train. it exists when the policeman/woman keeps staring at you, hoping and waiting for you to make a wrong move so he/she can arrest you. it exists in the 'innocent' question a friend tells you that these 'security' measures are necessary to protect "us." it exists when you cannot carry a backpack without something inside you screaming caution. it exists, oh yes it does.
here
is a humorous take on the current paranoia (via the fantastic sepiamutiny.com)
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It is my beleif that most people are prejudiced towards some group of people. I also think a good majority of those people would say they arn't. When I was growing up I only saw my family at special ocasions. People where allways drinking, so I thought everyone where drunks or alcoholics, we are irish after all. I know people who eat chinese food and call it chinc food. I know that sounds crazzy but it is true. I'm sure that if I was in an all black neighboorhood I would get some stares, I have before.
On other problem is that terrorism is new to us in this country. I don't know much about the IRA, or the Cechnean Rebels other then they are thought of as terosits. (/11 has been shoved down our throat as the first terrorist attack from an outside country. That is not true they tried to blow it up once before but failed. I think that Bush and Other presidents also feed us fear. If we are affraid will be turn on each other and hate eachother. That helps keep the rich and the poor poor. Why is that on the news you hear so much negative stuff. Most of the killings are blacks, that you hear about. Or maybe some white guy goes nuts and there is a stand off. But most normal killings by whites you don't hear about they are trying to get us to fear each other. Maybe it isn't a conspiracy and that is just how we americans are as a young country. If I someone white blew up something in India, or south korea and said he did it for america and good and you didn't see any good examples of good white americans you might think they where all crazzy.
I think the important thing is to not project staring that isn't there. The second thing is to try and not let the staring bother you, that really occurs. But still look around and try not to be parinoid (it can be a good thing if someone is really after you) and make sure you are safe. I think in the story doing stuff like messing around with the bag to try to mess with people is just as bad if not worse, that just causes more racism.
I just read your journal to my mom, or I tried to. She turned on the vacuum cleaner halfway through so I started yelling. My mom says, "so what do you expect, they blow up whole buildings" and I'm all "Swati ain't blowing up any buildings." Then I ask my mom, "well what about the white people who came over here in the first place and killed and ran off the natives, oh, wait, that was us, our people could we be the worst terrorist"? all the while my mom vacuums and I scream this at her and even as I'm writing this she's yelling at me for being lazy and thinking that I deserve to be left alone at everyone else's expense and I haven't done a thing since I've been here and bah balh blah.
Then I feel guilty fuck that I'm going to stop., my moms an old woman who lives to babysit her grand babies. Shouldn't I talk about this to someone who may actually be able or willing to make a difference?
I was thinking about the smiling thing Swati. that's strange. Usually when I ride the subway alone I sit there looking tired and serious, secretly checking out my reflection in the windows, avoiding eye contact if I don't feel friendly.
Your sister's MARTA story disturbs me because I've been on that subway allot. This is what happened the last time I rode it. It was a few weeks ago in late June. I was in Atlanta for my friend, Joy's wedding. I flew in Friday night. I met the wedding party. Joy ditched me in a suburban hotel with some clueless preppie white girl friends of hers so I called up an rich bitch ex and made him come get me. I went to Atlanta with him and we drank all night. I had to get him as drunk as I could because I didn't want to fuck him. He passed out and at 8 in the morning he dropped me off at a friend's house who wasn't home. I did manage to hook up with the friend(alMILL) eventually but then I had to find a way to get to the wedding out in the suburbs.
I ended up on MARTA going from the midtown Art Center stop down to some stop past MLK. I had to meet up with the groom of the wedding where he and Joy lived, in cabbagetown. i didn't know much about cabbagetown except my parents always said not to go there and that there's a documentary about the area, which I've never seen.
I just went to ask my mom why she told me not to go there. She was evasive but I figured out that it's because in the 60's, when my mom lived in Atlanta, cabbagetown was a poor black neighborhood with lots of crime. It used to be a white working class mill town at the turn of the century. In the 1990's gentrification started happening, something like that.
So I'm on the subway on my way to cabbagetown. I have directions written on an old receipt. I have to walk a mile or two once I get off the subway. Once i switch to the train that goes past the MLK stop (this is where I used to go to the eyedrum gallery at for community service) I notice that I'm pretty much the only white person. I notice but I don't care ....yelling at my mom again.... back to the story, so I'm the white girl on the train. People are getting off and on, some of then in work uniforms some of them in baggy clothes and what not, some cute, some old, all black.
that's cool, I'm sitting there with my carpet bag wondering where the fuck I'm going. I'm in a baggy orange tank dress from amvets. The night of binge drinking and the 2 hours of sleep haven't caught up with me because I'm to nervous about about getting to Joy's wedding. Some man starts to talk to me. I'm friendly and tell him I'm from buffalo and so on. He gives me an advertisement for dental work. I'm thinking, Jesus i know my teeth are bad but are they that bad. He talks on and on about his dental thing. I talk about my night out with my poor little rich boy ex. It turns out me and the man are getting off at the same stop. He makes me give him my phone number. I know I'm never going to talk to him again but I'm to tired to lie. I ask if I'm going the right way to cabbagetown and he says yeah. Then his baby's mama calls and we part ways. I end up getting terribly lost and stressing the french groom out. I finally made it to my first interracial and international wedding that day. I can only hope to go to more. I had to avoid calls from the subway cheap dental plan entrepreneur for a few months. After all everyone knows white people have money and can help you out, right? oh wait, except poor in debt motherfuckers like myself.