The Perils of Ethnic Ambiguity
When “What are you?” is a hot catchphrase instead of a deep, introspective question
By Udita Goel
A man old enough to know better swims up to me at the beach and asks: “What kind of brown are you?”
I circle through a range of responses that might altogether answer the question and not warrant any further ones while trying not to just settle on “vague.” A question such as this, simultaneously off-putting and intriguing, should be paid some attention to: What am I?
Light-skinned enough to fool anyone asking if I’m white, but lacking the pink undertones to really sell it? On the spectrum of celebrity lookalikes that range from Jennifer Aniston to Zendaya to Princess Jasmine, somehow? Any beige shade of foundation?
“Caramel macchiato, apparently,” I tell him, echoing the weird words of a message that’s been slid into my DMs by another man who should’ve known better.
When “Wait, really?” (and the occasional “Are you sure?”) is the general response to where you’re from, it’s interesting to wrestle with whether to run through your family’s genetic history, starting with the gray-green eyes of your grandfather, to prove that you are, indeed, from India, or to simply go, “Yeah, I get that a lot,” and call it a day.
Sticking with the former can be an annoyance, but the resolution is to tell yourself that you’re an ambassador of the diverse reality of the South Asian subcontinent. There are a few odd interactions, however, that leave you feeling like you’ve just presented them with a more palatable version of India: an accentless, caramel-haired antithesis to Apu.
It’s hard, however, to solely attribute the confusion that comes with an unconventional appearance to Western ignorance when a similar denial prevails in your home country. Outfitting myself in traditional wear usually garners the same amused praise that a tourist trying to assimilate might receive—an inside joke in my family is that I’m the token white person at every Indian wedding we’ve been to—and conversations with strangers will often start in broken English that eventually transitions out once it’s established that I am, in fact, a local. Uber drivers, too, will change the station to English music when I get in.
The politics of identity has created unique vacuums in society that are filled by those with mixed ancestries and generally off-kilter looking people like myself: anyone who has resonated with Rashida Jones saying “Well, I’m ethnic” in response to “You look so tan!” or been examined akin to a zoological specimen. Personally, it’s induced quite the internal crisis throughout my life: Can I really call myself brown when people in my own country don’t think I am?
But it doesn’t have to be a constant source of struggle. A coping mechanism I’ve discovered is imagining these interactions as a running gag in the sitcom that is my life. Having people guess the answers to their own questions gives me glimpses of the lives I might be leading in parallel universes as a Turkish, Brazilian, Persian, Egyptian, Greek, or Native American person. Besides, racial indeterminism is the new generation’s fleeting aesthetic, so it’ll do nothing but help in landing the next big role in a Netflix original series.
Like anything in life, being ethnically ambiguous has its pros and cons. Regardless, it can be a fun social experiment for those of us lucky enough to be first author, and it’s worth considering the novelty of the experiences that come with it: sometimes it’s the guy at the beach, and other times it’s a Trinidadian stranger at the Apple store telling you she “felt like you were a sister” because you’re “tan, but not California tan” and then adding you on Facebook.