The Minority of Minorities

Every so often, my work has a potluck lunch where employees are encouraged to bring a dish to share with others in the office. Since the company I work for is a non-profit agency that strives to elevate cultural understanding within our community, we are often privileged with the opportunity to try ethnic dishes from all over the world in our little office in Madison, Wisconsin. Our staff is quite colorful with all sorts of ethnicities represented, but Indian food has never made it to our potlucks because as most of my faithful readers know, I am not exactly the most kitchen-savvy woman in the world.

I have made many empty promises to my co-workers to bring an Indian dish over the last year, and I am very excited to announce that I finally made some Chana Masala for the pot luck earlier this week. The pot luck was very diverse, and since we did not have fresh puri or roti to eat the Chana with, my co-workers ate their Chana with pita bread or French fries.

To enhance the cultural flavor of my dish, I brought a Shah-Rukh Khan movie to play during our lunch. It was such a positive experience for me to share a piece of my culture. I remember as a child how embarrassed I used to get when my friends would come over to my house and my parents would be watching a Bollywood movie and the next day in school, my so-called friends would make fun of Indian language or Indian music or all the dope Indian dance moves or even the scent of Indian spices (like when they would tell me I smell like curry).

It got so bad that when I got older, and I would see white people embrace our culture, or in some instances, over-embrace our culture, and I would get mad. I remember being at a community fest once in a Chicago suburb, and there was this band with all these white guys singing songs of praise to Krishna. There were these white girls with blond hair dressed up like bharatanatyam dancers giving out CDs and one of my white friends jokingly said to me, "hey, aren't those your people?" I was so disgusted and offended, I wanted to go up to that white girl and ask her "Yea, but can you move like this?" and break out in some bharatanatyam and scoff in my prissy Indian girl way "yea, I didn't think so." The problem was I am not a trained bharatanatyam dancer, so I left it alone. But I was still mad. It's like when I was a kid, those same white girls with blond hair made me feel bad for being Indian, and now those white girls are strutting around in Indian clothes and Indian jewelry and most likely think they know all about being Indian because they bought a copy of some convoluted version of Kama Sutra from Barnes and Noble. I am still mad and it's very difficult for me to get past those hurt and angry feelings when I am talking to white women with blond hair, regardless of who they are today.

But when I went to work with my Chana Masala and my Bollywood movie and my supervisor broke into a rendition of Bollywood dance moves (which surprised me a little bit because it is a little uncharacteristic of my boss to break into any kind of dance moves at work, let alone Bollywood moves), and a few of my co-workers seemed to actually appreciate the food and the movie, it made me feel good. It also made me realize that my ownership of Indian culture and my animosity towards white girls with blond hair that try to embrace Indian culture is not too much different than white people telling me that I can't ever do what white people do. And in this day and age, saying something like that can have a lot of dangerous connotations.

So I would encourage all Indians who may relate to some of my animosity to let it go and think about sharing your culture, instead of trying to own it. Explore why your resentment exists and take some actions and some risks that could potentially reverse some of that hatred. If the experience is anything like mine, it will definitely make you feel good and you will be glad you did it. Plus now I know that if ever in my life I produce a Bollywood film, I know not to cast my co-workers as dancers!