Post #4

The identity that I find myself most aware of on a daily basis is my race. Although my parents were both born in India, I was born here. This has often left me feeling in some sort of in-between state: not Indian enough for Indian people but not white enough for white people. This element of my identity has probably been most crucial to my development. I went to a high school with an overwhelming white majority, which caused me to hide the more “Indian” parts of myself. Some people referred to me as “the whitest Indian they knew”, which wasn’t an unfair descriptor at the time. It was only after I came to college that I was able to embrace my entire identity, both Indian and American. The identity that I feel provides me with the most privilege is being male. Hearing stories from female friends or my sisters about being harassed or not taken seriously has made me realize how much more valued masculinity is in American culture than femininity. On the other hand, being non-white in a white culture has denied me of some privilege. I believe that privilege plays some role in daily interactions with others, but not as big of a role as it does in the working world. In college, quite a few people are from approximately the same type of background. This is even truer if you begin to hang out with people in the same major, or working at the same co-op, or who have the same interests. However, after college I feel that privilege will definitely play a larger role in the everyday conversations that I have with other people. People tend to jump to snap judgments about others, and from that dynamic it is easy to see that privilege will play a role in everyday interactions, especially with strangers.