this turkey-day-week, i'm grateful for the shows that made open-to-anyone characters PoC to fit their cast, *and* i'm grateful for the shows that wrote characters as PoC and hired people with those identities. (both are important!!)

...okay so i wasn't gonna ramble about the more complicated thoughts i have around why it matters that your fictional worlds aren't just populated by people with 'white' first names and 'ethnic' surnames, but, uh. oops?

let'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't an issue.

but here'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'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' 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't make someone any less a PoC. in fact, this part of our history absolutely should be represented; it's why i'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 'what are you' because they don'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're a PoC.

and there are people like me - people whose names got mangled in school every year. people who have a 'starbucks ID' because it's easier than trying to get a barista to write Ishani. we exist, too, and it matters that you don't forget about us.

(p.s., in case it weren'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!)