I am half Pakistani—split right down the middle, 50%. My dad was born and raised there. This means, while few recognize it, I am a person of color. But I’m what you call a “white passing” POC.
When I was younger, I looked just like my dad: tanned skin, black hair, brown eyes. If you were to see me with my dad, you could easily recognize me as a POC. Now that I’m older, my skin has grown paler—like my mother’s—and I’m constantly dying my hair. For all you know, I could be your average Anglo-Saxon girl. But I’m not.
All the time, people approach me with racist speech. They want to talk to me—another assumed white person—about the “towel-headed terrorists destroying America” without stopping to consider they might be offending half of my culture. Pakistan was hardly involved with 9/11 and still, every year, it’s a hard day for me. The racism is overwhelming. They assume all Middle Eastern people are the same.
After years of living in a white world that perceived me a member, I’ve whitewashed myself to a point where I feel lost. I’m missing a part of my culture. All of my peers think it’s “cool” and “trendy” to eat Middle Eastern food, but, to be honest, I can’t stomach it. Ever since I was a little girl, I’d visit my Pakistani grandmother for lunch every Sunday. And every Sunday I’d turn down what she had made besides plain rice or naan. I wanted so badly to be white and safe and fit in with my friends and my mother’s side of the family. I felt I had to choose—and I chose the safest route.
And now I’m at a point in my life where I wish I could speak Urdu or eat biryani. It makes me angry when people my age think it’s cool to appropriate bindis and henna without knowing anything about what they represent. I’ve whitewashed myself into an absolute stranger who doesn’t feel like they fit in on either side of their family. When I’m with my white family, I’m half Pakistani. When I’m with my Pakistani family, I’m half white. I constantly feel torn and in between to worlds.
And I’m not the only one. What inspired me to write this article was a recent YouTube video by YouTuber Marina Watanabe. It struck a chord with how I’ve been feeling these past few years and I think it’s high time that there’s more discussion about this. Too many people are feeling like outsiders in their own families and cultures. People need to know that there are other people out there feeling the same way they do. We need to talk to each other, sympathize and support each other. We need to know that we’re not alone and that what we are feeling is valid.
