Have people refused to serve you? Have you seen people change their flight because of you? Have people cursed you out before you’ve even opened your mouth? Are you a victim of prejudice? Have you experienced bigotry?
I’ve just finished another YouTube video of the addictive CinemaSins channel, and while watching the ending scenes, suddenly thought about a few thought-provoking, mind-boggling questions that politicians mention but never truly answer.
Then, I began to briefly answer them myself, in the form of opinions.
I have never been a victim of bigotry. I’ve debated about both whether or not I should have added the word “fortunately” to this sentence, and whether or not that word would have been used correctly. Isn’t it “unfortunate” to not have experienced bigotry, from some angle? Wouldn’t the lack of such a victimizing experience prevent me from talking about the issues that many hyphenated Americans face, especially Muslim Americans? No matter what answers these rhetorical questions may hold, I believe that there is no clear consensus. I have never faced prejudice, and I’m horribly torn between whether or not I should feel happy about this. What should I make of it? The true fact of the matter is, even as an 18-year-old brown-skinned Muslim girl of ordinary disposition, I’ve always seemed to ‘blend’ in quite nicely to the American crowd. When I first re-immigrated to the United States as a high school sophomore after more than a decade-long “hiatus,” all the native Californian kids assumed that I was one of them – that I, a Texas-born hyphenated American who had spent four years of a truly unmemorable infancy in Houston, had been basking in the liberal Californian weather (I refer both to the figurative social and physical climatic sense here) since birth. However, I am aware that this peaceful post-9/11 transition to the US forms the exception, rather than the rule. I may not have struggled with respect to bigotry because of my lack of proper Islamic attire; I did not wear a foot-length black gown that extended to my Sketchers sneakers (called a burqa), and neither did I share the magnificent honor of wearing a veil covering over my hair/head (called a hijab). And after Trump’s Muslim Ban, my mother had forever forbidden the very possibility of it in the future. Indeed, watching My Name is Khan was a harrowing experience, but it was only a movie I could imagine within the fictional frames of my imagination; I am aware that, for many, such an Islamophobic state of victimization, discrimination, and harassment, is a reality that still continues on to this day, nearly sixteen years ago. Yet, on the other hand, being a hyphenated American is a paradoxically wonderful feeling. It brings one closer to two – often diverse – cultures, thus broadening one’s perspectives and viewpoints. It gives one something to talk about at interviews, as I did when I went forward on a tangent during my Harvard, Princeton, and Yale University admission interviews. In short, the multi-faceted identity that is inherently given to one as a hyphenated American – as a hyphenated [insert nationality here] – proffers one all the elements that money will never be able to purchase: experience, adventure, cosmopolitan appreciation, and even a sense of wonder. I love dressing up in Eastern oriental attire when everyone’s donning Western clothes (as broad and as vague as both these categories may sound). I have an intense love-hate relationship with belonging to nowhere – a highly love-loathe bond that follows its own whims.