Other.
You claim to be for me and for people like me.
What a hollow facade.
Broken through by the simplest of cracks.
You are for me... yet, you can't say the "simplified" version of my name right.
You are for me... yet, you construct systems and circumstances that keep people like me from rising to the very top.
You are for me... yet, you parade around in your glass houses, pretending to be something greater than a whisper in the wind of the ethos that will soon fade away into oblivion.
You are comfortable othering me... and people like me.
And it may shock you but this isn't directed to who you think it is directed to.
You people... that allow people like me to be held to a lower standard.
To claim to support people like me by providing pathways for people like me with the knowledge that they will never have the ability to go to a real college or apply for a job that would put them anywhere near you.
You support the outliers and let the rest of us be statistics and lost dreamers.
You claim freedom and opportunity.
But, in reality, you desire nothing more than to perpetuate systems and circumstances that create racial injustice and lack of opportunities for people like me and then you step out to protest these self-same injustices.
I am not innocent in this, either.
When I first came to this country... it was in pursuit of something more than my homeland could offer.
Centered out a lack of patriotism to the land that gave me the opportunity to be the man I wanted to be.
I failed... I can acknowledge that and work towards a better me.
One that is centered in his own identity, culture, and freedom.
I am an Indian and I am an American.
These two parts of my identity have found peace in each other's existence.
Yet, I won't pretend systems of injustice and othering don't exist.
They exist and are perpetuated by the least likely suspects.
Check yourself... and your motivations.
You may be an ignorant vessel for the very evil you seek to put to an end.
Yours faithfully,
A First-Generation American Immigrant and a Proud Indian Man.
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