INTRODUCTION
Throughout high school, I have been somewhat of an Indian Kat Stratford––an “angry feminist” and outspoken advocate for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. In doing so, I have found some amazing people who share my perspectives, some incredible teachers that have endorsed my writing on difficult topics, and…some “angry” men. This anger isn’t always as obvious as a direct statement, but the eye rolls, the whispers to their friends as I’m speaking, the mocking voices, and the dirty looks have all made me increasingly frustrated with men and people in general. Now I’m not saying that my frustration is solely targeted towards men, nor only white men; in fact it has been POC men, white girls, and even fellow brown girls that have contributed to my negative experiences throughout middle and high school. In many ways, internalized racism, misogyny, and sexism have all played a role in these microaggressions. It’s not even just me, though. I’ve heard my friends’ experiences and seen how my parents have been treated in their own workplaces. In trying to sift through all the independent moments, I’ve come to realize that there are various patterns I’ve observed and generalizations I’ve made––so I wrote them down.
My senior project is greatly inspired by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s We Should All Be Feminists, where she lays out her own observations and experiences, as well as those of her friends from all over the world. My goal was to take various topics and expand on them—some well known, and others I made up. I opened with the idea of “He-Peating:” when a man appropriates what a woman says and is praised for his idea, yet the woman is ignored when she says the same thing just seconds prior. I have had countless experiences of my ideas being stolen, spoken louder by someone next to me, and more often than not it is by men. I shouldn’t even call them men––they’re boys. It all goes to show that these traits that are deemed inherently male are ingrained from a young age. When discussing this project with my teachers, I had one person tell me that he experiences the same thing because he is a foreigner. Being a white man doesn’t play to his advantage because he has an accent. I found it fascinating that he could relate to my desi-feminist piece of writing. I was honestly touched by this, and while it is awful if you, the reader, can relate to anything I say, it is also amazing that we can all share experiences and stand in solidarity with one another––regardless of race or gender. I hope that this piece starts a discussion—that is all I can ask for.
Some other topics I explored were the POC man and white girl trope that seems to dominate my surroundings (boys of color seemingly being exclusively attracted to white girls), and white supremacy’s lasting effects in microaggressive packaging. While I didn’t have the time to delve even further into the following subjects, I figured I’d mention them––perhaps I’ll expand on this piece later on.
“Like Totally, Whatever,” is a poem by Melissa Lozada Oliva that emphasizes the speech patterns that are highlighted in young women–– “likes,” “buts,” and “uhms” are all facets of speech, spoken equally between men and women, yet these filler words are seemingly only criticized when a young women says them. Her poem highlights all the ways in which women are not taken seriously or blatantly ignored, and I wanted to speak on that as I’ve seen and experienced it, tying it into the idea of “He-Peating” that I opened with.
As a self-proclaimed humanities kid, I’ve always wondered why it feels like STEM is for the boys and the Humanities are for the girls. I know more young women who want to go into STEM fields than young men, and yet for some reason, this categorization still persists in my head.
Why is it that girls seem to have better handwriting than guys––we all learned how to write in the same class, and we were all taught cursive with the same workbooks by the same third grade teachers, so why is it that I see girls with neat and aesthetic handwriting and guys with illegible chicken scratch?
I’ve also wondered why the word “teacher” is immediately associated with women, but academia as a whole is a male dominated industry––Title IX being invoked more often than it should be. There are so many observations and so little time to explore them (not to mention I lost a week of writing to COVID), but I hope that the writing I do have resonates with you, the reader(s) in some way. If one person starts to notice these subtle traits in their surroundings or starts thinking differently about how they are perceived or perceive others, then I have accomplished my goal. Now sit back, and get ready to get angry.
HEPEATING
“God, give me the confidence of a mediocre white dude.” Sarah Hagi, you are an inspiration. The greatest advice a young woman of color could ever receive, I learned early on in high school that being the loud outspoken girl in class will make sure you get your point across…though many a young man will dislike you for it. I never used to label myself as a “feminist” per se, the way I’d say I’m politically centered, but Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie makes a great arguement for doing so. I think back to the first novel of hers I ever read, Purple Hibiscus, and the feeling of excitement to read a school-sanctioned novel that I could relate to for the first time. I am not of African descent, nor am I a first generation immigrant, yet the story Adichie portrays with cultural nuances and nods to subtle microaggressive experiences made me feel represented in a way I had never been before. It is with that in mind that I think back to the ninth grade Harkness discussions and the times I’ve made some excellent points. You may wonder how I can say with such authority that my points were excellent––am I really so prideful? Not quite. I know that the points I made in this class were excellent because I had a soft-spoken voice and rarely made statements with authority. I’d get smiles and nods, acknowledging but moving on from whatever I had just said. The white guys sitting next to me, however, were loud and confident enough to repeat these exact points, my English teacher noting the depth, validity, and nuance of their words. With those words of affirmation aimed in my direction but not quite at me, I determined that I had real, excellent, points to make.
The idea of “he-peating,” coined by a friend of astronomer Nicole Gugliucci, describes when a man will appropriate a woman’s comments and receive praise as if it were his own. I’m sure every woman has experienced this at least once in her life, but I’ve always found it interesting how men will say things they’re not even sure of with such authority––where does the audacity come from? My guess is that our society has conditioned men to believe that their words have value, regardless of substance. Women on the other hand seem to have a fear of being wrong. That isn’t to say that men do not experience this feeling, I’m sure many if not all do, but there is a certain pattern I’ve noticed of my peers being unwilling to speak up for fear of sounding “dumber” than they are––after all, women often have to prove their intelligence. It is as if we must be truly sure of our words in order to say them, rather than these words having intrinsic value. I took a summer course at the Kelley School of Business between my Junior and Senior year of high school, the place I am now proud to call home for the next four years, that was designed for young women who wish to go into business. Professor Kirsten Prange opened her lecture with the concept that men will look at a job or internship opportunity with the mindset that if they can do about half of the requirements, they will apply, whereas women will believe that they should not apply if they do not meet 100% of the requirements. It would always boggle my mind that people could be audacious enough to go into a result-oriented environment without every skill necessary to succeed, and yet learning that it is predominantly men that do so wasn’t nearly as surprising as it should’ve been. To this day, I do not see myself having the confidence to apply for something that I am not fully qualified to do, but I hope that will change in years to come. All I can do for now is pray––that God will give me the confidence of a mediocre white dude.
THE POC MAN + WHITE WOMAN TROPE
Every woman of color knows the feeling of growing up insecure, internalizing a sense of unattractiveness. Most of us go through middle and high school with our crushes never liking us back, whether a white person or a member of our own race; in fact, it almost feels like guys who share my cultural identity adamantly prefer white girls with eurocentric features over beautiful girls of color. No matter how bold we may be in other regards, our confidence in our appearance will never fully be whole––the years of seeing white girls held above us have an impact.
Take the infamous Avaneesh on Tik Tok. Just his most recent post says “Naw cuz if god don’t bless me with a blonde or brunette white female that is obsessed with Indian boys, then I won’t get married…I ain’t settlin for nothing else.” And while his entire platform, suspected to be satire but likely is not, is well known throughout the Indian American Gen-Z community, it is difficult to say whether his followers genuinely agree or not. His remarks that focus on white girls being attractive and publicly wishing to have a white girlfriend is a representation of what many young men of color perpetuate within their own schools and communities, though in a much subtler way. Mocking us, gossiping about us with their friends, or admitting to never being attracted to brown girls, their responses are common and hurtful. Avaneesh will publicly express his exclusive attraction to “white females,” and then post things like “When I am viewed as ******* ‘good looking for an Indian’ but I can’t get with y’all cute white & latina females cuz I’m Indian & not white,” expressing how saddened he is that his white counterparts get chosen instead of him. This is the experience of every brown girl I know––they will be labeled as “good looking for an Indian” (and this applies to any POC girl) when they are some of the most beautiful people I have ever seen, yet be turned down for a—dare I say—average looking white girl. Now I hate to be someone that labels others’ looks with arbitrary descriptions like “good” and “average,” but the fact remains that being white inherently indicates being attractive to many young men of color. This obsession with white girls is something that is extremely common, and I’ve witnessed it first hand on multiple occasions, especially being at a predominantly white school.
In fact, it seems like associating with their culture in any way makes brown guys insecure. My observations, of course, but it has almost become a feminine trait to be in touch with your culture. It’s not necessarily seeing brown guys getting “white washed,” but more so the need they seem to have to assimilate more often than the girls. My own cousin, born and raised in India, came to the US for his undergraduate education. Many of my other cousins had already moved to the US to pursue grad school or even a PhD, but somehow he was the outlier. The last time I saw him was several years ago, but I remember how he lacked any semblance of an Indian accent. He goes by Sam rather than Santosh, and our family members would always joke that when it came time for him to get married, he’d bring home a white girl with a name like Jennifer––he had assimilated seamlessly. This isn’t just a trait in those who were born here, but it is a conscious decision that is made. Brown guys like white girls, and brown girls will suffer with insecurities for it. While I am exaggerating (there are enough brown guys that break the stereotype and enough brown girls that perpetuate it with white guys—myself included), it is a sad fact and I’ve never understood it. Perhaps it is our culture’s post-colonial obsession with eurocentric features–– “fair and lovely” lotion for light skin, the caramel highlights that every other brown girl seems to have, and dressing in western clothing, even to the temple. My friends who attend schools in West Windsor, however, don’t necessarily feel the “Avaneesh effect;” being surrounded by people who look like you in a district where being white is a minority nullifies the constant feeling of being second to white girls. It is truly crazy what internalized racism and being a minority can do.
I’ll admit that I have been saved from a lot of this as my appearance was validated in high school, my way of saying that I did get male attention. My lighter skin, large eyes, and straight nose were the factors that likely helped me in this regard. But my middle school self still felt extremely insecure. I was once told by my brown male friend that a white girl in our grade was extremely attractive, but that I’d be a good second option if he’d struck out. At that point, I had become numb to those types of comments coming from all boys, so my pride wasn’t hurt nearly as much as it was when it came from a fellow brown girl. It was an extracurricular activity, one that had zero stakes. We had worked together on a project and decided, as seventh graders, that we should start a company. I’ll add that at this point in my life I considered her to be one of my best friends. When deciding who should be in charge as this pre-teen power struggle slowly escalated, this girl told me I should hand her the CEO title. She went on, explaining that she needed to be in charge because she had to practice being the smartest person in the room; after all, I was “pretty, and [I’d] be fine.” You don’t call anyone––and especially not an insecure seventh grader–– the equivalent of a “dumb blonde;” this became a core memory. In addition to having to prove my intelligence, I had to work on my self-perception and insecurities––my appearance was yet to be validated. It’s always “girls need to stick together” until insecurity and jealousy, stemming from the societal hurdles put before women of color, get in the way.
STUPID STEVE & OTHER MICROAGGRESIONS
The truth is, white supremacy still exists. Whether it’s valuing eurocentric features over ethnic ones or creating a separate set of rules for certain groups, it is simply incorrect to say that people of color and those without are equal. In my freshman biology class, being a white girl was the greatest advantage you could have–– not the confidence to participate and certainly not prior knowledge. I was put in a lab group with two white girls, both of whom were very humble, kind, and hardworking people. We worked well together; in fact, for the first time, it felt like I wasn’t the only one putting effort into a group project. We got a 97 on our lab––and I thought it was because of the quality of the work we produced. For the next lab, I was in a group that consisted solely of people of color, guys and girls. Arguably, the quality of our work was significantly better than my previous lab group––nothing against them, that’s just how it worked out. And yet, we got a B+ on the assignment. And before you start to think that “a B+ isn’t that bad” and that I’m “overreacting because I didn’t get an A,” I’d like to point out that there is almost a full letter grade discrepancy. Anyone who tells you “grades don’t matter” is wrong––and our Brown-educated bio teacher was one of those people. I figured it wasn’t worth picking a fight over it, so I let it go. We had another assignment, and this time, it was individual. I put my heart and soul into it, researching to a point where my teacher said I probably know more about the topic than he did. And yet, I got a B on the assignment. At the same time, the white girls in my class who chose much simpler topics and didn’t do nearly as much research as I did were getting As and A+s. This time I was mad. If you know the feeling of seeing people who work half as hard as you doing twice as well, you’d understand the rage that was coursing through my veins. I met with my teacher, and the first words out of his mouth were: “are you trying to grade grab?” Shocked and confused, I asked him what he meant––I had never heard that term in my life. “You know, when you try to get back points to raise your grade on an assignment once it’s already been graded?” Why would someone assume that when all I asked was why I lost points in certain places? Let’s keep in mind that I am an Indian girl. Indian girls are stereotypically drawn toward STEM––especially biology; Penn Law professor Amy Wax can tell you all about it. So after this man makes that offensive suggestion, I simply lay down the facts: I chose a harder, more complicated topic, and even he had admitted that I had researched to the point that I was more knowledgeable than he was. His response: “I just hold you to a higher standard.” To those who are reading this, let it be known that that is NOT a compliment. That is a phrase that you tell someone when you want to purposefully scrutinize and judge a person’s work because you have made an assumption that they are somehow inherently more qualified at something, and you want to suppress them to make them “equal” to the rest. I had no prior knowledge in this class, I was not a STEM oriented person (In fact, I dropped science my senior year), and I was not someone who cared about minor discrepancies in grades; if I thought my work was not reflected in the little green percentage on Schoology, I’d raise an issue––something anyone at my school would have done.
This is just one example––I’ve seen this in my other classes, and I’ve heard so many similar stories at our APIDA meetings. It feels like some teachers engage with students like its Affirmative Action: trying to uplift minorities because that is the goal of a very liberal school, yet ending up helping white women the most. And once again, I’ll make myself clear: these white girls did nothing wrong. It is not their fault that they were born the way they are, and it’s not their fault that their very existence is used to undermine the rest of us. It’s a sad truth of our reality, and all I hope is that they recognize their privilege. This is why I hate it when people say they are “colorblind” or that they don’t think racism is a problem anymore. Our schools may be integrated, but if certain groups of people are being held to different standards, then we are still separate and unequal.
I’ve seen this in my parent’s workplaces as well. My dad, an executive coach whose job is to educate people in corporate roles on how to be better leaders, presenters, and vendors in a white male dominated industry, always has some of the highest ratings by clients for his programs. And yet, a mediocre white man with 6/10 ratings is constantly chosen over him, someone who earns nines and tens. But the racism he experiences is not always with white administrators; rather, it is fellow Indian administrators whose internalized white supremacy makes them choose white men for the job over my brown father. And while you may think I just have an inflated sense of how great my dad is at his job, there are enough company surveys from various institutions that prove his competency. The truth is, these Indian administrators don’t want to be held accountable for someone who looks like them performing poorly. If a white man does an average job, it’s fine, they’ll just find a new white man to replace him. If a brown man does an average job, it looks like they chose “one of their own ” and his performance is suddenly a representation of all brown people. It isn’t necessarily their fault that they have this perception, but it goes to show that four years from now when I work in a corporate setting, I will be a representative for every brown woman out there.
My mom, who was the only woman, person of color, and person under fifty in her office in South Africa, less than a decade after the Apartheid ended, was praised for her work ethic and treated extremely well. When she came to the US and got a job in New York as a stock trader, she was surrounded by young white guys with finance degrees. She was respected once again. Why? They told her that if she was where they were, she must be really freaking good at her job. And she was. Even they knew that a person like her rarely if ever got to where they were. But when she chose another company instead, one with many more women and people of color, one that she stayed at for fifteen years, her work was never commended the way it was in other offices. This is somewhat jarring to me––how can an office with more diversity be more discriminatory? As it turns out, while there were many women and people of color at the office itself, there were few if any in managerial positions and positions of power. As a result, there were few promotions for these women, leaving managers in high ranking positions as white as they always were. If there is enough diversity, apparently the quota gets filled––it doesn’t matter that these people can’t get promoted or be recognized for their work.
She had a boss that I’d hear about daily. She used to call him an…alliterative name along the lines of “Stupid Steve,” (which I will use for the sake of anonymity). Stupid Steve was her boss, who didn’t know a thing about the product his own team was working on. Instead, it was up to my mother and her teammates to prepare him for his meetings with higher ups because he couldn’t comprehend the material on his own. And here it is again: mediocre white men held in higher regard than the qualified women. My mother never complained until she was ready to leave, and the white women in the office would speak up more often, “shedding their white women’s tears,” as my mom put it, to have their voices heard. Their own voice, after all, would never be acknowledged on its own. Everyone else just got their work done and didn’t complain. My mom works at a new company now, where she is valued and respected, but I can’t believe that with all the fists and rainbows on company diversity, equity, and inclusion pages, problems like this still exist––problems stemming from white supremacy. Whether teachers that have the ability to control your futures, or corporations that control your livelihood, it is often the case that people of color, and women of color in particular, are victims of discrimination and unable to do anything about it. In my own school, too, there are DEI pages, supposed faculty workshops, and scrutinized hiring processes, yet the people in power––those that run the institution, are all white.
At my school’s very own Student Ambassador meetings, we’ve had our Head of School and leaders of the development team sit down with us to answer questions––either our own or things potential students and parents have asked us on our tours. One of my friends raised her hand and said, “how do we tell potential students and parents that we value diversity when you all look the way you do?” I’ll admit, I was a little shocked, but it had to be asked. As an affinity group leader, I’ve met with these people, I’ve met with our Board of Trustees, and in every setting I have witnessed the same thing: white people in a position of power. In fact, I have never met a Board member that was just an alum––not a parent of a student that attends my school, and not a parent and an alum––just an alum who is a person of color. It may be hard to ask of an institution that really only started taking diversity seriously in the mid to late 2000s, but it says a lot about leadership and how institutions are run. It may feel extreme for me to use a phrase that is often associated with deep south KKK manifestos, but there is simply no other way to put it: white supremacy still exists. It may not be as obvious as murder and pitchforks and heinous crimes, but microaggressive forms of it still persist. In fact, they persist to a point that every discretion adds up into a macroaggression––a violation that will hurt everyone.