Not Quite Not White by Sharmila Sen

NOT QUITE NOT WHITE by Sharmila Sen contains the reflections of an immigrant who grew up in Calcutta, India and came to America when she was twelve. In commenting about that experience, Sen references her subtitle, “losing and finding race in America,” saying “I will write about race as something once alien to my universe and later naturalized.” Her last chapter seems especially insightful. It is there, for example, that she comments, “we do not need to call the first forty-three presidents of the United States our white presidents or our male presidents or our Christian presidents because that is exactly what all presidents are supposed to be – white, male, Christian.  Only divergences need to be pointed out. A Catholic president. A Jewish President. A black president. A female president. They are a break from the norm. They require the armature of adjectives.”

From her perspective, Sen further forces readers to consider the language we use, saying, “Asian was a geographic term when I lived in Asia.  In the United States, I learned that Asian is a racial category.” Or citing “the quintessential American phrase my children have been taught by well-meaning teachers – stranger danger.”  She continues to comment about school textbooks’ description of the immigrant experience, asking: “should we also teach them [our children] that one day they too might be strangers in a strange land – pushed around the globe by forces of economics, politics, or nature?”

On a related note, our department is in the midst of reading Julie Lythcott-Haims’ memoir titled Real American and it would be so informative to hear these authors and others who write about race in a panel together. I wonder to what extent they would see parallels or whether they would agree with a colleague of ours who asserts that your personal paradigm makes you blind to the experience of others. If it is the latter, how do we find common understanding as a country? Do reading and discussing books like this help or hinder the process? Some of us felt that Lythcott-Haims had led such a privileged life and yet seemed so very angry.  Sen, at least, was better able to acknowledge and explain the anger she felt: “I have spent many decades carefully arranging my words, my gestures, my clothes, and my surroundings so that I do not appear threatening, unnatural, or ungrateful. … [Still] I am angry at myself for hushing my native-born son when he complains that a teacher systematically confuses the names of all the brown boys in class.” Much for all of us to reflect upon.

And, if you believe that you, too, may live in a bubble, try this “Bubble Quiz” that was published a few years ago by PBS.