On Having Greater Expectations
I remember when I was a teenager one of my best friends telling me that one of her friends called her a “banana”. What they meant by this was my friend, who is British Malaysian Chinese, was “yellow” on the outside and white on the inside.
I am British Caribbean of Indian origin. I love having a Caribbean culture and background, but I have been called a “coconut” before by someone of South Asian origin. When I was a teenager I was walking with some friends, who happened to be white and someone said why is that “Indian girl with all of those white people?” I have felt judgement by some in the Asian community for not behaving how an Asian girl supposedly does.
It was quite a revelation to me when I was an older teenager and started going out clubbing and into the world of work that, I didn’t act how some people thought I should as an ethnically Asian person. It was a rude awakening as I had only really been around my school friends before that and we just accepted each other as we were.
My friend who I mentioned in the first paragraph is actually quite traditional but obviously this is mixed with being British, having been born here. Perhaps there is an idea that you should entirely maintain your roots and not incorporate new traditions and habits into your life to become too “westernised”.
I recently watched an episode of Queer Eye, a programme where a team of guys rehaul someone’s life for the better. The episode was called Black Girl Magic. It was about a black girl who questioned her blackness because of her lack of knowledge about black issues in her town, her clothes, her taste in music and her friends. At school she was called out for not being black enough and for being a so called “oreo”. She said that she wanted to be a “strong, black woman” and she didn’t feel she was. It was the idea that she didn’t have a strong sense of identity because she didn’t adhere to what a black woman should be like. She did not have a lot of knowledge about black groups and issues in her town but she had a strong identity all along, it just wasn’t easily recognisable to herself and some of the black community where she lived.
I can see racially driven expectations in each ethnic minority community. I believe it would be a better society if we were less judgemental towards each other for not living up to supposed dispositions and expectations - I will continue to enjoy my own Caribbean and British ways of life.
Article by Andrea Lewis