I’m just brown. July 30, 2008

This is an incredibly difficult post to write in an organized manner because I have so many thoughts coming out at once. I’m in a contemplative mood.

I’m of South Asian descent. My ancestors are from India. I was born in Trinidad, in the Caribbean or West Indies. I immigrated to Canada at a very young age. For the most part, I have no strong connections to Trinidad, and even less so to India. Most of my memories and experiences have taken place in Canada. I’ve grown up in this country, rather than Trinidad.

I don’t feel like I truly belong to any of these cultures and identities.

In Canada, I assimilated properly. I did what was required of me in order to be a model immigrant. I adopted the accent and style of language, learned the history, earned my citizenship, and immersed myself in the Canadian Dream (yes, we do have a subtle one) of pulling myself up like everyone else and being nicer than the United States.

But “Canadian” is not an acceptable answer for who you are or where you are from. Apparently, it is not an acceptable ethnicity for anyone, regardless of race. To be Canadian is to be multicultural. Speaking as someone who is called a ‘visible minority’, you must be something else, with attachment to “somewhere” else.* You can’t slip by undetected. It’s not a choice. It’s mandatory.

Trinidadian racial politics are not comparable to Canada’s, but it’s interesting how I can go from being dark in Canada to being relatively light-skinned in Trinidad. In spite of this, I’m still not the acceptable Indo-Trinidadian. I am too disconnected. My parents are still very connected, as are my older siblings, to culture in Trinidad. They understand cultural references, know the geography, know the food, history, and so on. I don’t.

In part, this is due to me devaluing anything and everything that had to do with Trinidad for a large chunk of my life. I did not want to be associated with the country at all. I was very hyped up on Canada. I wanted to fit into Canadian life and my logic told me that my being Trini was at odds with this. I had to adapt to my surroundings in order to be welcome in the country. I needed to speak “proper” English, I needed to like the food, I needed to be a hockey fan, and so many other unspoken behaviours. I needed to be as close as I could get to being white, heterosexual, and middle-class. Where I was born, my family, and my family’s history were of no use to me. How they spoke, learned, and understood the world was not even irrelevant. It was plain unimportant.

Naturally, I feel guilty about this now. Now that I recognize I was trying to morph into a dominant identity, I feel terrible for consciously trying to exorcise the knowledge, memories, and emotions I had about Trinidad in me. Now, I am trying to learn more about the history and culture and get back to where I should be: a healthy balance between being Trinidadian and Canadian. (When I’m not being laughed at for failing miserably, code switching is one basic way.) As I’m working towards this, it still feels forced and not genuine. I visit Trinidad from time to time, to see relatives with my family, but I experience a discomfort in Trinidad similar to what I experience in Canada. My family members have told me that I’m not Trini anymore, but Canadian, because I don’t look Trinidadian (whatever that looks like), never mind sound it. It’s very disheartening, and it does make me feel like my rejecting as a child and adolescent has led me to rejection as an adult.

Regardless, I still have to try. I was born in Trinidad and my immediate family are all still deeply connected. I have family living in Trinidad. It is still very much a part of my life. Technically, I would be first-generation immigrant, though I identify more with the second-generation. I have to try to know more about how I got to where I am now.

A part of this is understanding the history of Trinidad and the Caribbean from a unique vantage point as an Indo-Caribbean. As I mentioned before, I get asked “where are you from?” a lot. I am also asked, “What are you?”, as though that is any less invasive. One of the answers I’ve given is, “Indian.” I’m of Indian descent. My ancestors in Trinidad were indentured workers from India. I don’t have an understanding of what I mean when I say “Indian.” This is what I have learned to identify myself as from my parents because it is how they identified themselves in Trinidad.

Many times, I find myself, my family, and other Indo-Trinidadians differentiating between Indo-Caribbeans and East Indians with the qualifier, “Indian Indian.” Somehow, to be born and raised in Trinidad and be of Indian descent is not really Indian. Neither my grandparents, parents, nor my siblings and I have ever stepped foot in India. None of us speak any of the Indian languages, other than the words brought to the Caribbean by indentured workers. I have felt the sentiment that I’m not 100% Indian from others as well. In high school, I recall being told by a group of South Asian girls trying to form an after-school group that I was not really South Asian because I’m from Trinidad, but I was welcome to sit in on meetings anyway (since they’re not trying to be exclusive).

In short: people have ridiculous markers for cultural identity. Accents, clothing, language, race, ethnicity, hair length, hair type, attitude, personality – the list is endless!

I am really tired of trying to fit the standards of other people. “This is how a Trini girl behaves”, “this is what makes a Canadian”, “this is what being Indian is supposed to be”, and so on. I will never fit the standards of anyone else. I can’t. I don’t want to wholly fit as “A” Trini, Canadian, or Indian. I can’t choose. I’m all of those and more. Of course, I will continuously feel the rejection from other people, which will constantly be under my screwy scrutiny. They’ll want to check up on how I fit in as a particular identity. At the end of the day, I am only really accountable to myself. All I can do is learn as much as I can about who I am and what has brought me to this day.

I am not “acceptably” Canadian, Trinidadian, or Indian. I’m just brown.

* I recognize that Canada is a very young nation built on the bloodshed of Aboriginals in the project of ongoing colonialism. Relatively, I am from somewhere else, living on stolen land.