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Uncomfortable Words About Race
Why is everyone fighting for representation?
I recently read an article where the author advised people to stop using the word Asian to refer to 4.6 billion people.
This took me back to a question I have asked myself for so long….
Can we exist without definitions?
If you met me, there is no doubt I am human… Very dark, 6'2", lean, huge nose, very short curled hair…I’m unmistakably African… Based on my values, you could place me somewhere in the East of Africa and then based on my mother tongue and name, you would place me in Uganda.
After all that analysis of me, you would still not have an accurate description of who I am because we didn’t talk about lineage, or my clan, totem, my beliefs, and so on.
These things are important to me but if I’m being honest, beyond being black, it just starts to get complicated in describing who I am. The data points beyond race present loopholes for you to create several biases about me and people that belong to the same places I do.
When I lived in India, I was in Vellore which is a city in Tamil Nadu. People there mostly speak a language called Tamil and they call themselves Tamilians. Most Tamilians take their culture seriously. Castes are so much…
