Our Small World and Race in America

 
Back in the early fall, in Harvard Magazine, I read about a new book by Sharmila Sen, Not Quite Not White: Losing and Finding Race in America. Inspired and intrigued, I picked up my phone and ordered the hardcover edition from a large national distribution firm. I then did something I often do when I’m excited about a topic. I plugged ‘Sharmila Sen’ into my search engine, and proceeded to read all I could about her and looked her up on Twitter so I could follow her account. I learned about her travels all over the world in her role as executive-editor-at-large at Harvard University Press, and I liked and commented on her tweets.

When the book arrived—a very cool-looking edition—I couldn’t wait to start reading. It didn’t take long to determine that Not Quite Not White is a book well worth reading. The book traces Sen’s life partly from her upbringing in India, and mainly to her teenage years in Cambridge, MA, through the present day. In India, her family was upper-caste Hindu Bengalis, “Anglophone-educated and downwardly mobile, their privilege precarious.” Through highly self-aware reporting, Sen chronicles her family’s journey to the US as they become accustomed to bland food, like Jell-O. As time went on, Sen writes that she got race: “I got race as one gets a pair of shoes or a cell phone. It was something new, something to be tried on for size, something to be used to communicate with others.” She also found that she was constantly being asked the question: “Why did your parents come to America?” To which she always answered: “For better jobs.” She began to see the wealth and opportunity of the US as something that “weighed [her] down.” The “inequality of nations was surely a sign that some races were morally, physically, and intellectually superior to others,” she shares.

Fast forward to this past Sunday when I was able to see my new hero in the flesh, giving a reading in Lexington. In her talk, Sen developed themes from the book that related to the question she was so frequently asked (Why did your parents come to America?) and took stock of the place she has now reached—with an undergraduate degree from Harvard and a graduate degree from Yale. She thought out loud with us about race in America and described the anger she feels about the current state of the nation in connection with immigrants and race. She highlighted the difference between “emigration” — to leave one’s home country, and “immigration” — to come to a country for permanent residence. The American immigrant story is celebrated; it is in some ways heroic. And yet, migration is not celebrated because America is not a “sending” nation. America teaches us not to leave the country; America is a receiving nation. The immigrant, however, remains a foreigner and develops protection through the wearing of a mask. Smiling and not showing anger makes the immigrant pleasing, and ultimately “Americanized.”

Sen drew me into her thinking and passion about these topics. At the end of the reading, I waited to get my book autographed. Sen’s eyes lit up when she saw my Penguin hardback. “You have the Indian edition,” she said joyfully. Suddenly the world felt very small and the connection strong. As an immigrant myself, who came here for a better job, although as a White woman, I have not experienced the kind of racism and feelings of being thought of as the “other” as Sen has. But I saw her cultural struggle and I knew at some level that she was educating everyone in that audience about reaching out to understand more—reaching out with her story to create that possibility of a better, and more integrated world. A world where seeking “a better job,” is celebrated and not seen as a universal need, but a common and understood path, and where borders of all kinds might disappear.

The Cambridge School of Weston is a progressive high school for day and boarding students in grades 9–12 and PG. CSW's mission is to provide a progressive education that emphasizes deep learning, meaningful relationships, and a dynamic program that inspires students to discover who they are and what their contribution is to their school, their community and the world.