The Clan of First Generation Americans

"Once you are an immigrant, you never forget that you are one."

~ Jorge Ramos

I belong to a clan of First Generation Americans. My mother and father both came to America from India. I recently came across a group of seven people who shared not just this fact but many other traits with me. Four are Indian-Americans. The three who remain are various mixtures of French, Chinese, Australian, Indian, and South African. 

I've had my doubts about being involved in the past. I went through elementary and middle school believing that I was the only girl like me out there. Or, there were others who had the same story, but none of them were as "unique" as I was. 

This is my history.

Most people tell us that racial integration is complete, existing, that it has only risen in this nation which we call the land of the free and the home of the brave. What they don't say is that the feeling of being different because of a color you wish you could scratch off of your hands never really goes away. And being part of an all-Indian friend group doesn't help either.

Is my clan a cultural anomaly? The truth is, I didn't think about it. All I noticed was how at home I felt around people who looked so different than me and yet, spoke the truth that had been screaming in my mind ever since I got on that  first school bus that took me to the beginning of my relationship with the American Public School System. 

Two months ago, I was approached by my public library's librarian and I was asked if I wanted to participate in a spoken word poetry competition. She spoke of the rules and general thesis of the competition and with each word she spoke my eyes lit up in anticipation. I decided to do it. 

During one of the first meetings, we discussed what our group poem would be about. I shared a memory of mine that had been singed into the flesh of my subconscious. I told the group that for years as long as I could remember, people had spoken to me a certain way. A certain way that my family members did not speak to me in and a way that my indian friends didn't. But this condescention that I felt from the white kids took a staggaring toll on me. It all started when that boy in the back of the school bus told me I was going to hell for not being a Christian. The air seemed to vibrate with tension. I was a kid, barely six years old, how was I going to reply to that? The rest of the six year olds didn't know what to make of me either after that.

"He really said that to you?" Zamashenge, the South-African American girl asked.

"Yes" I replied. "It was a common occurrance in my childhood. Several years after, my cousin faced the exact same threat from a neighbor."

At that moment I realized the veil of darkness I had been living under. Children treating me as separate and different felt terrible, but it also felt normal. So normal that going to school everyday I didn't expect to be treated equally by the white kids- I didn't demand it. I didn't realize that there were other like me, people who grew up believing they were different only to know in their brains they were the same, if not better. People who knew the struggle, my struggle- members, years later, of the Clan of First Generation Americans.