“The Urge to sound White”

The phenomenon of second-generation immigrants, changing their names in order to make them easier for white people to pronounce is not unlikely. Indeed I see it as an ingrained defense mechanism to bigotry. Racists in Germany often depict migrants as „lazy” and as „people who live from our taxes” but at the same time they’ll say „Migrants are taking away our jobs!”. Both these accusations and many more implode on to each other, however, second-generation immigrants do not want to be linked with any of them. In order to never be noticed as migrant, or not to be „othered”, we tend to change our names, lifestyles, accents and realities into more whitely perceivable ones. Lets elaborate on a more prominent example below.
It hasn’t been a long time since Michelle Obama finally dared to show off her natural hair, a step that she would have never taken while she was First Lady of the United States. Her hair was always been kept straight, to undermine her ethnicity. I also observed her styling sense become more colorful, more daring and more familiar to African-American culture, certainly after her Time as FLOTUS. The contrast to her past was the most drastic when she wore the Balenciaga Glitter Canvas Boots to a yellow dress on her book tour. A styling decision, that she would have never made as the wife of the first black president with a majority of white supporters. In order to not stir any racial conflicts, Michelle Obama was made to look more proper and polished or in other words more „white-pleasing”. Beyoncé is also a very prominent example.
In my adolescence, I have always made sure that I never smelled like Tamil food, rarely ever had non-white acquaintances and made sure that neither my German, English, French or Norwegian would ever have a Tamil accent. It doesn’t just stop with the appearance, to take part in white groups, I have laughed off racist jokes and slurs or I have often been an accomplice when other racial minorities were bullied. In various parts of my life, the only quality I could offer to white people in order to accept me as one of their peers was, me allowing them to make fun of my kind. At the same time though, out of fear that I could ever turn into a Joke, I made sure there were no stereotypes I reproduced. Today, when white colleagues or friends tell some racist joke, I say: „What about me then?”, their answer will be: „Well but you are not like the others!”. This might be because I performed my whiteness to a level, where my ethnicity might have been forgotten. Surely I would be reminded again that I am Tamil, and that I look different, when I enter the Subway and people start holding on to their bags. Our dreams of a color-blind world, where we would be perceived as a human, a Diva or a Goddess, would end the minute we and our already handpicked audience leave the farce of racial equality to enter the real, unfair world of bigotry. Read more about this in my upcoming blog “Mangojuice”.

— Ram Paramanathan

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