Growing up, I did not realize how important representation was to me. When I first moved to the U.S. now sixteen years ago, I assumed that there would be people like me and that people would accept me and my family.
Boy was I wrong.
I used to have a really strong Indian accent and I always thought it was normal. My young brain failed to comprehend that other types of people exist and that I was bound to get weird looks. For the longest time I struggled to make friends and thought that I had to change myself for others.
That was the worst idea ever. If there is something I’ve learned in my time here, it’s to embrace your culture. The more I learned about Indian culture, the more I fell in love with it and wanted to partake in it.
During my pre-college years, I was always met with the same questions. “You’re Hindu? I thought that was a language.” No, that’s Hindi. “Aren’t you vegetarian?” No, but some of my family is. “Would you be offended if I ate pork or beef in front of you?” No, I couldn’t care less about what you eat when I’m around. “Can you speak in your Indian accent?” No, I feel uncomfortable. “Do you speak Indian?” There’s over 100 languages spoken in India — which one are you talking about? Hearing questions like these all the time made me wonder whether or not representation is important and how stereotypes play into it.
In my experience with handling stereotypes, I realized that there is a bit of a correlation between representation in the media and what people assume of each other. A really good example of this is seen in many older Disney Channel shows. If there was an Indian character, they were always shown as the nerdy kid who did well in school. This character would always have a thick Indian accent as well. Back in elementary school, these kinds of shows were watched by myself and many of my peers, so I would often be hit with the “You’re Indian, you should be good at math.” I can say with confidence that I am not, in fact, good at math.
These kinds of stereotypes always made people assume things about me, and if there’s one thing I absolutely despise it’s when people assume things about me. Stereotype based assumptions are very harmful and we can see that today through the Black Lives Matter movement, the Stop Asian Hate movement and many, many more. This stemmed from underrepresentation and stereotypes from what little representation exists.
You may be wondering, “So what can I do?” What a great question! While one person can only do so much, the best advice is to learn about other people close to you through their own experiences with stereotypes and culture. Appreciate culture, don’t appropriate it, and be open to learning. These simple steps can help towards a bigger goal of increasing representation and decreasing harmful stereotypes.