The Unclenched Fist
By Tanya Khan
It’s not that I didn’t know I was different from everyone around me; after all, I didn’t have pin-straight blonde hair, porcelain skin, or gemstone-like colored eyes.
Growing up in white suburbia was all I had ever known. I never questioned why everyone around me was Caucasian or why there was not a single person within a 20-mile radius of me that spoke my mother tongue. I never questioned why people would give me odd stares inside the local grocery store. I never questioned why my father started breathing heavier, assuming a pale-yellow complexion, and his heartbeat started to thump louder and louder when the red and blue flashing lights and sirens became closer and closer in proximity. I never questioned any of this because I was never taught to question. Submission to power was what I was taught.
My first day of school living in an ignorant upper-middle-class bubble had me feeling upset. At home I was Taah-niya, but at school, people had reinvented my name to fit their mold and it was the simple difference between Taah-niya and Tan-yuh that left an unsettled feeling in the pit of my stomach. At home, I would wedge myself in between my two sisters and my parents in our humble and warm abode on one queen-sized bed, but at school, I felt isolated-- alien-like among the people I was growing up with. At home I would throw court-room-like trials to figure out who ate the last bit of meethai (traditional Pakistani dessert) with extreme prowess and vindication, becoming my most confident self, but at school I had a meek presence, feeling unworthy of the company of my peers.
Throughout my school-going life, I would do everything in my power to try to conform to society’s Eurocentric beauty standards. I would do my best not to go out in the sun for too long, as to prevent myself from drifting further away from the ideal skin color. Being fed by society the rhetoric that “light skin is pure and dark skin is evil.” I would do my best to tame my naturally curly and frizzy hair, damaging it with heat relentlessly every single morning. I would wear the clothes that everyone else was wearing-- never granting myself a chance to discover my own style, in desperate hopes to just fit in-- to just belong for once. I think what people choose to overlook when it comes to racial bias in white suburbia is that it’s the small things that build up on top of each other that gets to us at the end of the day. The microaggressive behavior of giving someone a dirty glare for bringing a Paratha to lunch instead of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Unfortunately, I haven’t faced adversity for just looking different, but for also following a religion that has little to no representation in my town.
From a young age, my parents taught me to do everything in my power to NOT perpetuate the violent and inherently evil stereotypes of Muslims. In other words, “Never fight fire with fire.”
I never questioned this. I should have.
I should have questioned everything about my surroundings at a young age. I have the answers now and I want to share them with my younger self.
Tanya, the reason why your town, that is approximately 33.7 miles away from the ethnically diverse city of Boston, has little to no black, brown, east Asian, native, or non-white people is because of the “white flight.” The white man fears the black man, the brown man, the east Asian man, the native man, and any non-white man because he is perceived as a threat to their supremacy in the twisted world we live in. To distance themselves from these “threats,'' they all moved to suburban life, further, and further, and further from these allegedly threatening peoples until they were out of sight for miles.
Tanya, the reason why you were told to never face adversity with a clenched fist is that the fist of the oppressor is always at your face, waiting for you to make a mistake, lose your temper, slip up, so they can punch you with that ever-ready fist.
Tanya, your existence is not a threat, you are not an alien, you are not some exotic being sent from an impoverished country to be treated as if you are a charity project. You don’t need their love or support, you just need to try to be seen as their equal.
Tanya, your father fears those red and blue lights behind him because your people have faced unlawful punishments for crimes they didn’t commit, and he fears his case won’t be any different.
It wasn’t long before this bubble of ignorance popped for me while growing up as an alien in my own world. It happened in fifth grade. I was maybe 10 or 11 years old. He called me an “ISIS woman.” My fight or flight response was triggered and I clenched, then immediately unclenched my fist to disprove the stereotype of the believers of Islam. I didn’t run away either. I felt powerless at that moment. The only thing that could comfort me was being sandwiched between the people that loved me most watching Shah Rukh Khan’s greatest hits on the TV in my parents’ bedroom on that ever-so-sympathizing queen-sized mattress.
I am not a threat.
We are not threats.
We are not aliens.
We are not the oppressors,
In fact, we are the oppressed.
It’s not that I don’t love myself because I am different. Contrarily, I love myself for everything that makes me different. My thick, black, shiny-wavy hair, my golden-brown skin, and my dark eyes, which, when the sun is shone upon them resemble the most immaculate and sweet pools of honey known to man.
Tanya Khan is a rising senior at a suburban school in Boston, Massachusetts. Tanya has received multiple awards and recognition for her writing and her advocacy for marginalized groups within her community through the club she founded.