Free Me From Your Double Standards. Please and Thank You.

Words by Anoushka Divekar (she/her): 

I am not an immigrant but I do have immigrant parents, so I’ve grown up seeing first-hand what that experience looks like. As a child, I was too busy talking to my imaginary friends to understand the complex struggles that come with being an immigrant. As any parent would, mine sheltered me quite a bit; it is only after growing up that I have been able to understand some of the struggles they experienced, like having to start a whole new life with no support and two young children. I was instead exposed to my own unique set of challenges that came with being the child of an immigrant. Number one on the list is… identity! 

As a child, I felt isolated in school. For whatever reason, I didn’t pick up the kiwi accent and had an Indian accent (still do) which made me quite self-conscious. I would put up my hand in class and my teachers would claim to not understand what I was saying. That was hella sketchy on their part because somehow they could understand little Connor through his lisp and incorrect grammar.

I would eat home-cooked meals at lunchtime that my mum made fresh every morning, and the kids around me (who were eating basic-ass jam sandwiches, mind you), told me that my food looked and smelled like poo. Ironically enough, nowadays everyone around me wants the food that I eat because it tastes so good. 

I am exposed to microaggressions more than I want to be. Too many people can’t pronounce Anoushka but can pronounce Niamh and Braedyn. Too many people ask me if I am studying STEM when, in fact, I can’t do maths to save my life. Too many people make direct eye contact with me when the caste system comes up in class. Bitch, I was born here, I only know as much as you do. 

So here is my sincere request: Free me from your double standards. Being shamed for being who I was when I was young broke down my confidence. I was pushed away from my language and my culture, and my ethnicity became a part of me that I locked away inside of me. At that age, children should be encouraged to embrace what makes them different, but instead, uniqueness is suppressed by outsiders. 

When I got to a university, all of a sudden I was told to celebrate who I was. Workplaces want diversity, diversity, diversity, but how am I supposed to showcase what makes me different when I’ve kept just that suppressed for so long? So what was squashed inside of me now has to be retrieved so I can put it on a CV and go, “hey, I speak three languages and understand what it means to not come from privilege.” 

Diversity and inclusion needs to be embraced from the get-go. You can’t expect people to suddenly embrace their culture if you’ve spent their whole childhood crushing it. There is nothing I can do now about the experiences I had, but my advice for you going forward would be to do what you can to not make immigrants feel like shit. Try to have diverse social circles. Teach the young people you interact with that it’s okay to be different. Most importantly, be aware of your biases and double standards.