Here’s the first in a series of articles I’ll be releasing in installments in hopes to educate and begin to eradicate the (disgusting) levels of racism and xenophobia prevalent in our society today. I believe that xenophobia is rooted in nothing more than ignorance & ignorance can be diminished through education. And so we begin.

Growing up as a first generation Indian American I saw society in a slightly varied manner than most of my peers. I knew something was different about me, growing up in a white dominant area, but at 10 years old I couldn’t quite pick out what it was. As I grew up and learned more about what was going on in the world and even within my own country, I failed to understand why it was seemingly so difficult for certain people to grasp the concept that we’re all the same. That the color of our skin, the accent we may have, the God that we may or may not believe in- it doesn’t make us any less of a person. I want to start this journey by taking a few moments to share key aspects of what makes India such a rich country, full of so much culture that each state has its own language, traditions, and food. Did you know that? Look we’re already learning so much!

Now that we’ve covered the basics I actually want to divulge into the main issue that I’ve observed while speaking with fellow Americans- stereotypes! “Do you speak Indian? Do you eat curry every night? Why do you worship cows? Doesn’t everyone in India live in the slums… like Slumdog Millionaire? Lol dude honestly all you Indians look the same!”

If you’ve never asked one of these questions or never been asked one of these questions… bless your soul. However, for the majority of us, we’ve done one or the other and even if we didn’t mean to offend the person by asking them, chances are you really really did. So let me break this down once and for all:

“Do you speak Indian?”: No such thing exists, as I mentioned earlier each state actually has its own language and in addition to this most students will learn both Hindi and English. That’s at least three languages that each educated person in India can speak! And we thought taking 3 years of Spanish was hard.

“Do you eat curry every night?”: Now you’re going to see a trend here and guess what! Every region has its own type of food. Travel down to southern India and you’ll find Dosas and Sambar, go to the urban streets of Mumbai and you’ll find delicious chaat like Pani Puri and Bhel, up north in Delhi you’ll find mouth watering Paneer. And only one of those really qualifies as a curry. India’s food is as diverse as it gets. (Highly recommend heading to your local Indian restaurant and trying every one of these btw).

“Do you worship cows?”: Alright so you probably know most Indians (most, not all!) don’t eat beef, but why? It’s not that we literally worship cows, no, but rather they’re seen to be sacred. This concept is rooted in the idea that the cow gives so much and does no harm, it was even given as a gift to those people who were respected—and so killing them was frowned upon.

“Doesn’t everyone live in slums in India?”: While the media has portrayed India in a harsh light at times, I won’t say they lied. A large percentage of India lives in poverty; however, there are also very wealthy people, people with huge bungalows all over the country. It’s easy to think solely of a country based off of what your textbook or the media has shown you (Egypt just has pyramids right?), but we forget that with time all these other countries, even third world countries, have grown and industrialized just like us. India is full of everything from designer stores to Taco Bell, and malls probably nicer than any of the ones I’ve seen here in the states.

“All Indians look the same!”: Okay back to the recurring theme for just a moment- INDIA IS SO DIVERSE! There are varying skin tones, eye colors, and so on- and yet India stands as one country. India may not be the melting pot the US has the pleasure of being, (yes, pleasure! how cool is it that we are all ended up here from all over the world!) but the people within it are just Indian at the end of the day. A lesson we should learn from them.

I hope that this series brings forth an understanding that humans are just that- humans. We may look different and believe in different things on the surface, but with enough knowledge about what makes each group of individuals who they are, we slowly can come to see that we aren’t so different after all.