Brown Black White

Brown Black White

Adult nonfiction
"As a brown girl, I had a hard time knowing how to navigate my
hometown. My parents could not advise me; they were themselves
relative strangers to Memphis and its racial codes. They had
immigrated to the United States in the late sixties from India and
settled in Memphis in the early eighties. They moved into a lily-
white suburb, on a block where we were the only brown faces, and sent
me to an elite private all-girls' school, rendering my world almost
exclusively white, black only around the periphery."
Nishta J. Mehra, quoted above, author of Brown White Black,
performed quite a complex balancing act as a child. Growing up a
brown Indian girl in a well off white neighborhood, she felt that she
had to meet the standards of two quite different cultures, neither of
which she totally felt she fit into. In addition to race, and
culture, there was religion. She was Hindu in a world that rocked
Christian privilege.
"But I was accustomed to being in the minority, to the world
being inconvenient and not revolving around me. Unlike my classmates,
who only knew a world that was catered to them, I did not feel
entitled to any special treatment. I never once had the day off from
school for the religious holidays my family observed; our celebrations
were invisible to my classmates and neighbors..."
How far was it acceptable to assimilate majority practices and
values? Which of Mehra's family's traditions were essential for her
to maintain? How could she be Indian enough to add diversity to her
community and school while not being so ethnic she might cause
discomfort in the Whites who surrounded her? Those were some of the
questions she dealt with as a child.
When Mehra grew up her life became even more intersectionally
complex. She came out as gay and married a White woman. Together
they adopted a Black baby boy, an infant who, as he grows into his
teens, will be at serious risk of violence, even at the hands of those
who swear to serve and protect all people.
"...Some people think our family is adorable, the very
embodiment of twenty-first-century America, a testimony to the power
of love and an ever-expanding definition of family; some people think
our family is am abomination, everything wrong with America today,
evidence of a civilization in decline..."
In the course of her narrative Mehra offers up some lucent and
insightful musings on very important topics such as:
*raising a child who may be gender varient;
*dealing (as a nontraditional family) with the questions and
predjudices of total strangers;
*and myths surrounding adoption and the alleged superiority of
biological parenting.
If you want a good look at the worlds of complexity and
intersectionality that can revolve around the not so average family,
you'll find Brown White Black to be a must read.
On a purrrsonal note, I read one chapter, The Sin of Our Security, a
lot more attentitively than I would have if we weren't in a middle of
a pandemic. It starts out with a description of the people Mehra
decscribes as "hovercraft" parents who try to protect their children
from every possible danger although their children are privileged in
that regard. Rather than seeing them as loving their children so
much, she perceives them as craving control and guarantees that life
will work out according to script.
I think with a pandemic that clobbers the whole globe and
doesn't just stick to countries an ocean away control has become
elusive and illusory. It's a pretty damn scary situation. How do you
find the sweet spot where you're being realistic and behaving
accordingly to flatten the curve but maintaining the hope you need to
stay sane and productive? My children and their fiancées are mature
enough to be peers in discussions of what's going on. Many parents
face the challenge of how to tell their beloved children enough but
not too much. I struggle with writing emails to my sibling who lives
about a thousand miles away and has severe brain damage. Even in the
best of times (as the chapter made me realize) I place his safety way
above his agency. Mehra could totally indict me on my cat parenting.
Eugene thinks Tobago would be happier as an outside cat. But no way
am I going to expose her to all the dangers she'd face. (Jules)
I see birdies. I see birdies. Lotsa lotsa birdies. (Tobago)
A great big shout out goes out to the people who are also struggling
to cope with this new normal, but not to the people in government and
corporation running who are putting people before profit.
Tobago and Jules Hathaway



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