the association of brown skin with the word indian

so yeah. I've been out and about in this town for a few years. and every once in awhile ill be asked where im from. i tell them wales. and then they ask further questions. where are the parents from? why does it matter? they want to confirm that my parents are from india so that somehow undercuts where i was born. i was born in wales, i spent ten years in england, and ive spent time in chicago and dayton while currently livig in columbus. i would say the current term that describes me is british asian american. ive heard teh term south asian before but that doesnt work for me. when you try to come up with a term for who i am i feel like it should represent my culture and not my genetic origin. i was birthed in wales. i feel that has more significance than where my mother and father were brithed at least in terms of trying to understand who I am. People are very interested in where the parents are from. but my point is it doesn't have any bearing on who I am and what business is it of yours to know where they were born in the first place. its one of those things. kindof crazy. i would love to be recognized for the person i see myself as and not the way other people want to classify me.

im also tired of my willingness perhaps conditioned to go along with people on these tangents, trying to explain away my british heritage and confirm my indian one. its a process that strips me bare and has me catering to the critics rather than standing up for who i believe i am. and really thats all that matters. other people who presume to know you better than you know yourself are wasting their time and effort to try and gain insights into you that they would be better off spending that effort upon themselves. its hardly something with any gain for them and whats more they know it. its just a game that they play to waste time and perhaps even try and mses with you a bit. people see a vulnerable person who perhaps isnt resolute in their beliefs and they feel like its their duty to go to that person and just start espousing things to them to try and help them understand themselves. but whats worst is that they really do honestly feel like teyre helping. at the end of the day its better to let people figure things out for themselves than to tell them what they want to hear. because for many of us its more in line with what we "want" at least gut-instinctively to have someone outright tell us what to think rather than to explore and decide what we think on our own.

essentially the world is full of spoilers and people are always trying to come up to us and try to get us to go and deal with things in their way. but the fact is thats a joyless pursuit to reduce everything down to what you already know. there's a certain fun to life that you experience whilst trying to figure things out for yourself through trial and error that people are depriving themselves of and are being deprived of the oppertunity to experience it. its a rediculous impulse but many of us have it and i just dont understand why thats the case. perhaps in this age of technology we've become so lost behind computers that the real world is now foreign to us and we're more comfortable in digital domains coded to be simple and straightforward. the world is a swirling mess of existence but you give it meaning by seeing it with a rigid view. without that you're just without purpose. there are many purposes in existence and if you never try your hand at living then you can't really say you've put in the time to try and make shit happen. so its just one of those sorts of things. but yeah. again, people tend to try and make this association of brown to indian and it infuriates me and surprises them as well when i show that anger. they feel as if its a benevolent or neutral question.

to me it just exposes my identity crisis perhaps. im not sure i really have one though. im quite sure that im british and i am american but only because of naturalization and i am someone who has been exposed to indian culture but only because my parents represented it and never because i actively sought to learn about it. basically only second hand have i learned anything about indian culture and its largely a mystery to me which is also something im not really interested in. im a welsh born british guy who happened to be immigrated over to america as a child at a time when choice wasn't afforded to me. and now as an adult i find myself in a place and position where i have access to a university where i can study and gain credentials and be able to work in a field of study that could be quite exciting. so im definately working my way through the coursework and getting these credentials earned. at the same time im also getting better at being myself and considering those things which are often placed in front of me such as basically the way that people are consistantly tying my brown skin to being indian. to me its quite possible to have brown skin and yet not be indian. and for me, thats the point i want other people to be aware of and to respect.