{"id":3877,"date":"2006-10-17T15:22:05","date_gmt":"2006-10-17T20:22:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com?p=3877"},"modified":"2006-10-17T13:41:37","modified_gmt":"2006-10-17T18:41:37","slug":"gregor_samsa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/2006\/10\/17\/gregor_samsa\/","title":{"rendered":"Gregor Samsa Singh"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>This morning, while I was tying my turban, I was thinking about All Mixed Up’s postcard<\/a> from a few weeks back. In particular, I was trying to figure out why I didn’t understand the basic conundrum that people were wrestling with… that is, why I couldn’t imagine that being white would make me like everybody else. <\/p>\n\n

Let me explain with a Gedankenexperiment<\/a>. Imagine that I, as a teenager, had awoken one morning to find that myself a person of pallor. I was now pink rather than brown. Who would I be? <\/p>\n\n

I would like to think that I would be the guy on the left. To be honest, I was never as cool as he was. I never dressed like a Nihang<\/a>, nor did I travel around India at that age. Still, I’d like to think that’s who my white doppleganger in an alternate universe would have been, even if I had been dorkier.<\/p>\n\n

<\/a><\/p>\n\n

Now imagine that a decade later, the machine that had transformed me reversed polarity, flooding me with extra melanin. Perhaps this is my melanin plus a decade of interest. Or perhaps it is sucked from somewhere else – from some other poor soul who wakes up paler than when they slept. It doesn’t matter. <\/p>\n\n

Now, all of a sudden, I’m not white but black. In this case, I’d like to think that I would be like Sri Chand Singh on the right. Sri Chand is not a convert – he (and his twin brother) have been Sikhs their whole lives. Again, I doubt I’d ever be as cool as either of them [Look at the photo of Laxmi Chand beating the Nagara drum below the fold for a photo of a supercool Sikh], but I hope I would try.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The point is, I’m at a double remove from white society, separated not just by race\/ethnicity, but also by religion as well. If I had to choose to abandon one or the other, I think I would probably lose the race before I lost the religion, although both would be wrenching.<\/p>\n\n

The reason is that I’m multicultural but monoreligious. I have little affinity for white mainstream society – I just don’t grok it. I can’t imagine having my parents be Ozzie and Harriet (nor Ozzie and Sharon for that matter). And I really don’t have a desire to “fit in.” <\/p>\n\n

I didn’t grow up in middle America, and even living here now I find it all fairly alien. The closest I could come would be to imagine being Jewish (I grew up in a Jewish neighborhood), but you see how, even in my wildest thoughts of being a white American, I still imagine being an immigrant, an ethnic and an outsider. <\/p>\n\n

p.s. If you read this far, you deserve to know the truth. This was all just an excuse to use these three photos in a post, together. They’re just great images.<\/p>\n\n

<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This morning, while I was tying my turban, I was thinking about All Mixed Up’s postcard from a few weeks back. In particular, I was trying to figure out why I didn’t understand the basic conundrum that people were wrestling … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[30,15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3877"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3877\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sepiamutiny.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}