This interview was originally for an article, but of course, it was too good for it to go unnoticed.

Based on your experience and perspective, what is race and ethnicity?

I have always seen race as an external label and ethnicity as a community-defined or personal label. Race is usually defined in terms of phenotype, for example Black/African-American people are identified for their skin color, in the same way that Latinx people would be identified by their skin color. Using the specific example of myself, I see Indian as my race, but I would define my ethnicity as Indo-Caribbean or Indo-Guyanese. Those two labels consider the context of my communities, taking into account language, culture, social norms, and even nationality.

What is your stance on the term, “African American” or “Black American”?

I specifically use the term “Black” to describe myself. For the most part, that is because the people I was raised around in the rural and urban South did not use the term African American. I think, especially for people descended from enslaved individuals, they were rarely called “African American.” They were called racial slurs or “Negro.” By the mid-century, “Negro” became replaced by “Black” in order to define ourselves, and to avoid associations of our identity with our enslaved pasts. My Black family never refer to themselves as “African American” or “Black American.” They sometimes use those terms when recounting how others see them. So, for example, a relative might say, “They treated me in this way because I was African American” but they would not say, “I made sure to tell them that I am African American.” As a kid, I absorbed those linguistic tendencies. I think both terms are fine, but sometimes I do feel the need to distance myself from both “African” and “American.” I think “African” is important because it acknowledges my roots, but I think it also can erase the unique culture that Black people have in the United States that is an awesome mix of circumstances of culture and politics. I think “American” can also feel strange because American does not always equal United States (People in Latin America and South America consider themselves American) and also the United States has never fully accepted the presence of Black folks, so why should I claim a nation that won’t claim me? For those reasons, I use the term Black.

What would you identify yourself (racially and ethnically) as?

I shift between different ways of framing myself. If someone asks or if I feel the need to self-identity, I say, “I’m Indian and Black.” I might say, “I’m mixed” and then specify. I sometimes clarify my Indian identity by saying, “I’m Indo-Guyanese or Indo-Caribbean,” depending on the person’s familiarity with the Indian diaspora.

How does your racial and/or ethnic identity influence the ways you represent yourself in societies? (For example, consider DuBois’s “double consciousness” concept if appropriate and relevant to your life)

Being mixed race, I am constantly aware that people are questioning who or what I am. When I was younger, it used to be more of an issue (perhaps because children are more curious) and people would always ask, “What are you?” My parents raised me to have pride in my identity, but it always made me more aware that I was being seen and that I could not be an invisible person just going about their life. Now that I’m older, I just sense that people are always waiting to decide what category of race I should be placed in. I try to be true to myself and my culture by either grouping with people like me or making sure to celebrate culturally relevant things to me (which is harder now that I live away from my family). I think being mixed is another really complicated thing, especially when you are not mixed with white. People often exoticize me and want to know weird things about my mother (who is Indian) in order to understand Indian people. I know they are doing it from a place of ignorance, but it’s frustrating to become a teaching tool for someone who probably won’t think deeply about their own identity and actions.

If you believe this were to be true, how do race and ethnicity influence our systems, cultures, and social class?

I think definitely your race and ethnicity can block your social class mobility. Certain races are just seen as being inferior or not capable of certain things. We are in a constant fight to get access to resources, whether that be education or housing, as white people consistently try to prevent our access to things. I think white control is fearful of people of color or anyone who is not white, cis, able-bodied, and seeks to prevent us from having power.

As a person of color, what are some challenges that you face on a daily basis?

I go to a college that is majority white and upper class, and I definitely am faced with a lot of ignorance. Either about issues of race and class because they’ve never had to engage with those issues before. I think, also, students at my school seem to ignore me. Especially in class spaces, sometimes it can just be like I’m invisible to students, who will talk over me or just not listen when I am speaking. I think I’ve come to be the token student who will talk about race or class or socioeconomic status in my courses. Other students just have no framework for these topics, and I often have been in classes where I have to stop the discussion and say, “Hey! We need to talk about women (or Black people, or whatever)!” because we were just completely ignoring those important topics! It feels annoying because I shouldn’t have to be the educator on these topics just because I am non-white and a woman.

Is there a particular moment when you experienced racial disparity that you constantly think back to or has made a huge impact to your life? How does this experience shape who you are today?

I would say I have been lucky to avoid a lot of discrimination. I think one part of that is my parents’ vigilance. My father grew up in the rural South and really wanted us to not experience the racism he did. So I definitely was in schools and neighborhoods where people wouldn’t question me or my family. One experience, though, that I had was in high school. A friend and I were walking through a white neighborhood and a cop stopped us and asked where we were going. I later found out that the cop was not a real officer but a “neighborhood safety patrol” who had been hired by the father of a friend of mine to patrol the neighborhood because “suspicious” students from my high school had been walking through. It wasn’t a gated community and there was NO reason we could have been lawfully stopped. Anyways, I remember being so scared because I knew I did not do anything wrong, and yet I was being questioned like I was a criminal. I haven’t had any negative experiences with cops other than this situation, but I try to multiply the fear I felt in order to understand the daily context of people who are surveilled by police all the time. I think it also reminds me that no one is exempt from discrimination. Even though I had a fairly safe youth (with respect to racial discrimination), I could still be a victim of violence merely because of my skin color or my gender or something else.

If you were to give a speech tomorrow, what kinds of social problems would you address? (If you can answer this, how would you want people to approach those problems to resolve, alleviate, or prevent them?)

I think one thing I have been heavily thinking about is how do we hold the majority (in this case, I specifically mean white people) accountable to self-reflection. Our society forces non-white people to think about their identity every day. A woman walks down the street scared she will be catcalled. A Black person has to reconsider how they talk to their peers in order to not be seen as “ghetto.” But white people rarely have to think about their whiteness and what it means to have privilege. I don’t want to have the role of begging white people to participate in social justice and activism, but I do think I would want to talk about how liberatory and important self-reflection is. I don’t think I can, single-handedly, convince white people to be better people, but I would be more holistic in my speech. I would just recommend people to be more intentional and conscious of their positions and identities. I think we would all benefit from truly questioning our beliefs and learning to listen deeply and openly to others. And I think that communities of color would also grow from this. I have heard and experienced so much of the “You’re not Black/Indian/whatever enough” as an explanation for excluding me or other individuals from certain spaces. I think we need to strive to be inclusive in our radical practices of activism.