dearcoquette:

I’m indian-American but when I wear bindis and shit people treat me differently (negatively, like terrorist or poor deli owner or generally ugly to look at—I’m hot as shit, btw, in western clothes more people like it, w/e). When my white girlfriends borrow my clothes they look “sooo beautiful”, which is true kinda. I mean, they’re beautiful but not all indian clothes compliment their skin tone and it shows so sometimes the “you’re beautiful” is really “you’re so cultured” and I dunno. I guess I am mostly complaining because I’m cultured too, and pretty and it just bothers me, how can I change this?

The only way to change this is to build a time machine, travel back to about 1600 and become a pirate queen in the Bay of Bengal, capturing all the various Dutch, Portuguese, and English trade vessels and establishing your own private armada so that the Mughal Emperor has no choice but to allow you to invade Elizabethan England, preferably in November of 1605 so as to take advantage of the tumult and treason of the failed Gunpowder Plot.
Your invasion force would need to jail or execute everyone in the House of Lords, depose King James, and install nine year old Elizabeth Stuart as the puppet queen while forming the foundation of what would eventually become an Indian protectorate, directly controlling all trade with the rest of the world from your seat of naval power in the new Indian province of Britain.

You would need to rule with an iron fist, actively spreading art, fashion, and Hinduism throughout Europe through a massive campaign of Indian enculturation, thus altering the nature of colonial imperialism to such a degree that four hundred years later, a complete inversion of our current cultural hegemony has taken place.

I know it seems a bit extreme, but that’s really the only way you can change the way things are now. As an alternative, I suggest you wear bindis and traditional Indian fashion whenever you damn well please, because you are hot as shit, and fuck what anyone else thinks.

Believe me, I understand how frustrating it is to suffer racial microaggressions. It bothers you, and it damn well should, so if someone treats you like a terrorist or a poor deli owner for wearing traditional dress, just remember that not only are you beautiful, but you’re also a motherfucking pirate queen, and you should feel free to take that asshole’s head.

lx:

Nicole Soojung Callahan:

For those who truly believe themselves to be “colorblind,” there may be no person of color more approachable, more accessible, than a transracial adoptee. I’m not one of you, but I was raised among you. Who else could be more inclined to sympathize with, give the benefit of the doubt to, well-intentioned white people just trying to make sense of this perplexing “race” business? I can’t possibly have a chip on my shoulder if nice white people adopted me. I can’t be one of those angry hyphenated Americans if my assimilation began just weeks after my birth.

Over the years I met white people who said things such as “you’re not like other Asians” or applauded me for “not caring about political correctness.” Sometimes they called me “refreshing.” Many would look at my transracial adoptive family and see none of its challenges or complexities, only a beautiful postracial vision of what family could be when race was barely acknowledged and never discussed.

“At the still point, there the dance is.” —T. S. Eliot