Dena Rod

Find Your Bubble

As a child taught to fill bubbles when it came for standardized testing, one bubble over all others gave me pause. My date of birth and name were easy. Yet when it came to choosing race, I froze. I was certain that 'Iranian' was something my parents made up. After all, we had no Internet to check facts. Since I barely knew anyone at my elementary school who was Iranian, I figured my parents were lying to me about where we were really from. 

My mother matriculating at Bangalore University in India led her to encourage me to make friends with Indian immigrant children at school. Our childhood experiences were similar but our foods and languages were different. Despite our knowledge of these differences, we knew there was strength in numbers and banded together. Our wacky sense of camaraderie wasn't without hiccups. Once, I erred in admitting my loathing for the mid morning shift on Sunday's public access programming. All the Persian music videos, commercials, and programs turned to Bollywood for the rest of the day. I hated how we only got a few hours and inadvertently insulted my comrades' culture to the point where it was all they could talk about that week in recess. 

Yet the other Iranians I knew were not at school, but in my extracurricular activities; piano lessons, swim classes, and at weekly extended family gatherings called mehmoonis. The world globe in our home further exacerbated my suspicion of my parents perpetuating a long con of where we were really from. At its time of manufacturing, North and South Rhodesia and the USSR were still nations. Therefore, Iran was labeled as Persia. Due to my ignorance of this historical context, I despaired to the point of tears when I couldn't find the Iran my parents told me existed. I sobbed for reasons I didn't quite understand. This was the early '90s. All my Barbies and other dolls were white or black, including every single catalogue model, sitcom star, cartoon character I was exposed to.

There was no bubble on my standardized test to fill in encompassing all these things. The nuanced categories of today, with the US census of Asian, Pacific Islander, Native/Indigenous American, non-Hispanic White weren't available. Forced to make a decision, I marked myself down as Asian based on my very exhaustive research of our home globe. Iran was in Asia, therefore based on these limited racial categories, I was Asian. After all, I wasn't white, because the suburban whiteness I witnessed comprised of boloney sandwiches, baseball, and three story houses. With the aromatic spices stored in my Maman's cupboard, our Persian rugs in every room, and Farsi being my first language, I knew I wasn't white.

Yet, I wasn't satisfied with marking down Asian, and I worried I would get in trouble. Especially since STAR Testing was considered the end all be all of tests. I raised my hand and asked my 2nd grade teacher. Her puzzled face gently corrected me. She informed me that Asian meant someone who was Chinese or Japanese. She gave me examples, using my classmates. Despite my confusion, and her lack of linguistic nuance, I erased the bubble marking me as Asian and filled in the one for white. Looking back, I wonder what bubble my Indian American classmates had filled out. 

Filling in that bubble for white was based on the current US Census definition for white; "a person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa." Meaning, Morocco, Egypt, Turkey, Tunisian, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran; we were all effectively counted as white, despite the fact that we were considered brown in any other context in the United States. The cops pulling my father over, with his thick black mustache over full lips and his strong connected eyebrows, didn't consider him white when they heard his accent. My mother abbreviating her name to DJ so it would fit on a Target nametag wasn't considered white. None of the kids on the playground thought of me as white when I said things like eucalyptus leaves were used by our ancestors for healing. I was called ancient instead. 

When I see now how nuanced the conversation is today regarding race and ethnicity, with words like "white passing," "Afro-Latinx," and "colorism" used daily on social media, I'm astonished at how far we have come in twenty years. These terms weren't part of the layman's lexicon when I was a child. Perhaps adults in academia in the early 1990s were familiar with intersectionality but as an elementary school aged kid, there was very limited language available on how to express ourselves racially that wasn't black or white. The binary was very much intact, spilling over to the shades of characters in cartoons and toys you could have. I remember fruitlessly searching for myself amongst these representations and feeling like, if I had to pick one, then I guess I was white. 

This was further complicated as I grew up, as the attacks on the Twin Towers occurred when I was in middle school. I sharply learned that I wasn't white. There were more Afghanis, Pakistanis, and Iraqis peppering my classes as I advanced through high school. I didn't suffer at the hands of classmates who tortured those who were visibly Islamic looking, who had more foreign sounding names. My generic sounding name meant I have another form of white passing privilege; my name doesn't clock me as someone Other. White friends brought up my ethnicity as proof of their lack of racism despite exhibiting anti-blackness and anti-Semitism. 

However in the wake of Black Lives Matter and subsequent movements, I cannot say that it’s due to any inherent goodness inside of me. It has to do with light-skinned privilege. Even though I am considered white by the US census, my facial features imbue me with what Tyra Banks would call ethnic ambiguity. This allows me to move through the world in ways others easily identified as Muslim, can't. My mother attempted to preserve this white passing privilege by making sure I always wore sunscreen so I didn't tan too quickly and too often, despite my summer swimming lessons.

Yet my Baba affectionately calls himself a "brown boy." He has claim to the title based on his experiences with white suburbia's reaction to his body. A lot of Iranians don't understand why the first generation of Iranian Americans often self-refer as "people of color" due to the fair complexions prevalent. This tension is likely to always be there, due to the legacies of European beauty ideals being upheld in non-Western cultures. It wasn’t until I completed a survey on a visit to the Asian Art Museum that I found delineated categories for different parts of Asia that actually fit who I am. Iran fell under the category of "West Asian," separate from "South Asian" for the Indian subcontinent and "East Asian" for the examples my 2nd grade teacher gave me. Labels aren't the end all be all of identification. Yet finding the right name can help find our place in the world for those where we don't see ourselves reflected. ​

​

Previously printed in Civil Liberties United: Diverse Voices from the San Francisco Bay Area, Pease Press, 2019.

Reflection Questions:

What standardized bubble do you fill in, and how well does it describe your identity?

How are family, community and educational systems harmful or helpful in defining identity, equity, and inclusion?

How have your identities evolved or time?