‘“You see,” he said, his eyes glistening. “We are just like the whites.”
I was amused. The man proceeded to tell me that his house, compared to the elegant home we were presently outside of, was larger in size. Then he told me he owned a successful medical practice, and he did very well.
I didn’t know then what I know now, that his success, like many other Indians’, came at a cost. That while Indians were minting money from practices all over the nation, Black kids, capable and smart, were being discouraged from even applying to medical school. That in one generation, South Asians have amassed generational wealth—businesses, investments, homes, the kind of wealth that grows—while many Black families who have been here for centuries have nothing to pass on.
I hadn’t seen the videos on systemic racism that now circulate the web, explaining the unjust ways in which neighborhoods have been zoned, home loans denied, résumés with Black-sounding names driven to the bottom of the pile, all while South Asians rub elbows with presidents and CEOs. I didn’t think about how fortunate I was to be a guest at that wedding in the first place, crossing paths with well-connected people who could take me far in life. What I did know, in spite of my ignorance, was that I felt sorry for that brown man. At some point in his life he had been told a story of whiteness—a story of power—and he thought he could write himself into it.’-TheParisReview
