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this turkey-day-week, i& #39;m grateful for the shows that made open-to-anyone characters PoC to fit their cast, *and* i& #39;m grateful for the shows that wrote characters as PoC and hired people with those identities. (both are important!!)
...okay so i wasn& #39;t gonna ramble about the more complicated thoughts i have around why it matters that your fictional worlds aren& #39;t just populated by people with & #39;white& #39; first names and & #39;ethnic& #39; surnames, but, uh. oops?
let& #39;s take @StarshipIris as an example. i play arkady, whose (chosen-for-her-current-fake) surname became patel when i was cast, reflecting my SA ethnicity. yay! and honestly? this in and of itself isn& #39;t an issue.
but here& #39;s the thing: many* asian americans have european-origin first names for reasons that are, at their core, INCREDIBLY AWFUL.
*not all, of course! sometimes there are perfectly innocuous reasons, but i& #39;m trying not to get TOO sidetracked here.
*not all, of course! sometimes there are perfectly innocuous reasons, but i& #39;m trying not to get TOO sidetracked here.
reason 1: their parents immigrated to a country where they were told, implicitly or explicitly, that the best way for their future child to "fit in" was to give up a part of their culture of origin - the literal language of identity.
reason 2: good ol& #39; colonialism. taking india as an example, with british imperialist occupation came - you guessed it - the increased presence of christianity in the cultural landscape, which led to a lot of indian converts giving their kids european-origin names.
and having a euro-origin, Western, "Americanized" first name - however you describe it - that doesn& #39;t make someone any less a PoC. in fact, this part of our history absolutely should be represented; it& #39;s why i& #39;m glad arkady has the name she does. it fits her, and her story.
but it is EQUALLY important to acknowledge that there are other stories. i love that @godsheadpod made em a part of a multi-racial family. i love that @VALENCEpod let mahira be unapologetically, unmistakably south asian. (ditto sana in @starshipiris!)
in the microcosm of my own family, there are people who get asked & #39;what are you& #39; because they don& #39;t fit in a single census checkbox. there are people who deal with surprise when someone meets them in person for the first time and realizes they& #39;re a PoC.
and there are people like me - people whose names got mangled in school every year. people who have a & #39;starbucks ID& #39; because it& #39;s easier than trying to get a barista to write Ishani. we exist, too, and it matters that you don& #39;t forget about us.
(p.s., in case it weren& #39;t obvious - i think the creators i work with are all really great people making conscious efforts on this front. i consider myself really lucky. i also want to recognize that i AM lucky, because this is definitely not always the case!)
