Short Monologue #2

SAMIRA

I know I said I wanted a campus-wide dialogue, but I don't actually want to go to it. Let someone else fight that battle, living it every day is tiring enough. Especially on this campus. To have to sit there and listen to people debate about whether life is more difficult for interracial couples, or mixed-kids. And how, since it's so hard, maybe people just shouldn't do it. It's not really that hard. I mean sometimes it is. But not because of who we are, but because of other people. Hell is other people. 

I'm not going to say I come from a racial utopia. I don't think you could call anywhere a racial utopia. But I guess interracial couples were pretty normal back home. I mean, not rare. No one ever questioned it. None of my friends at least. There were time when we would travel, that I was acutely aware of being part of a mixed family. But then we would come home and I'd forget again. That was before college. Here it's like everyone has questions. I mean, not everyone, but more than at home. It's as if some of my classmates have never seen a mixed-race person before. Maybe they haven't. Or more likely they had but they didn't notice, right? God, the incessant questions: 

- Do you feel more white or more Indian?

- Did your grandparents disown your parents?

- Isn't it hard to come from conflicting cultures?

- Don't you feel like you have to choose?

And on and on. It's like they think about it more than I do. 

So no, I don't actually want to go to the interracial dialogue. I don't want to listen to the same questions that I've been asked a hundred times since I got here. Someone else can do that. But, of course, I'll go. If only in solidarity. Because we have to stick together right?