u/rancor_maxxing

In November of 1963, in Detroit, Malcolm X gave a speech called "Message to the Grassroots." In it he described two kinds of slaves:

"During slavery you had two Negroes. You had the house Negro and the field Negro... whenever that house Negro identified himself, he always identified himself in the same sense that his master identified himself. When his master said, 'We have good food,' the house Negro would say, 'Yes, we have plenty of good food.' 'We' have plenty of good food. When the master said that 'we have a fine home here,' the house Negro said, 'Yes, we have a fine home here.' When the master would be sick, the house Negro identified himself so much with his master he'd say, 'What's the matter boss, we sick?' His master's pain was his pain. And it hurt him more for his master to be sick than for him to be sick himself. When the house started burning down, that type of Negro would fight harder to put the master's house out than the master himself would."

The 'Sepoy' is the reflection of this repulsive phenomena within the Desi community. In response to oppression and persecution, The Sepoy sees it fit to identify with the White Man, maltreating their own kind. The Sepoy identifies with the White Man so much, that they practically have no identity of their own. The Sepoy's sense of self is dependant on the existence of the White Man, their master. Just like Malcom X said, "If someone came to [The Sepoy] and said, 'Let's go, let's separate,' naturally [The Sepoy] would say, 'Go where? What could I do without boss? Where would I live? How would I dress? Who would look out for me?'"

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When the White Man says "we don't want them coming here," The Sepoy says "yes, we don't want them coming here," as if their own parents were not one of them the day they landed.

When the White Man says "those people are backwards," The Sepoy says "yes, those people are backwards." And they say it louder, because they need the White Man to know they mean the ones they came from.

When the White Man says "those people don't integrate," The Sepoy says "yes, those people don't integrate," and raises their children to be strangers to their own grandmother.

When the White Man complains about the ones who just got here, The Sepoy complains louder. They want it understood that they are not that kind. They are the "good kind." There is no "good kind."

The Sepoy tells you the racism is not that serious. The Sepoy tells you the slurs were just jokes and you should have laughed. The Sepoy tells you to work harder, The Sepoy tells you to keep your head down, The Sepoy tells you to stop complaining.

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Assimilation is another manner in which this "we" phenomena manifests in Sepoys.

The Sepoy clips their own name down so the White Man's tongue is not troubled by it. They do this because they hate his own culture. They look at their name (the one thing on the paper that says what they are and where they came from) and they see it tying them to the rest of us, and they cannot stand it. So they cut it. Four syllables become one. And what they get back for that cut is the "we." A shorter name is the toll The Sepoy pays to sit at the table and say "we" with the White Man, and they pay it gladly, because "we" is the only word that makes them feel like they are not what they are.

The Sepoy does the same thing to their faith. They drop the god their people carried for a thousand years and pick up the one the White Man happens to hold, and they call it "finding the truth." However, this is not The Sepoy "finding the truth," it is simply The Sepoy surrendering their understanding and perspective on truth and reality to the White Man. If the White Man tells The Sepoy that a carpenter is God, then to The Sepoy, the carpenter is God, not only in belief, but also practically, as in function.

The Sepoy does the same thing to their food. They call Indian food unhealthy. They call it heavy, they call it oily, they call it too much. They look at vegetarianism, a thing their people held for thousands of years, and they see a backwards tradition. The Sepoy, thinking of themselves as superior, makes fun of Desis that are vegetarian. They eat what the White Man tells them to eat. When the White Man says "we eat clean," The Sepoy sees it fit to say "yes, we eat clean."

The Sepoy empties themselves of everything that would make the White Man look twice, and when there is nothing left in them that the White Man would flinch at, they finally get to say "we." That is all they wanted. They gutted themselves for a pronoun.

For context I'm 16M and Desi

The ultimate plight of a dark-skinned man raised within the context of American civilization, is the struggle to prove that he is American. In 2005, Thierry Devos (San Diego State University) and Mahzarin R. Banaji (Harvard University) published an article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology titled "American = White?" The study ran six experiments testing how strongly different American ethnic groups are associated with the category "American," and found evidence that being American is implicitly synonymous with being White. Across the studies, both African Americans and Asian Americans as groups were consistently seen as less "American" than White Americans, even though participants explicitly said they believed in equal treatment. In the words of the researchers themselves, "to be American is implicitly synonymous with being White.” More recently in 2026, Gabriel Camacho and Mark A. Reinka published a paper in Social Cognition titled "The Effect of Skin Tone on the Implicit Categorization and Stereotyping of Latine Americans.” In this study, the researchers wanted to find out how skin tone alone (separate from someone's actual race or where they're from) shapes whether people see them as "American" or as a foreigner. They showed participants photos of Latine individuals with light, medium, and dark skin tones, and they measured two things. First, they measured how quickly people's brains automatically linked each face to the category "Latine." Second, they measured whether people rated that person as an American citizen or as a foreigner. Across three studies with 782 people total, they found that Latine individuals with medium skin tones were more quickly and strongly associated with being "Latine" and were more likely to be seen as foreigners compared to those with lighter skin tones. In other words, the darker someone's skin, the more automatically people judged them as an outsider rather than an American. The main point of both of these studies is that If you have darker skin or facial features that are less Eurocentric, other people in society are more likely to see you as less American. Even if you were born here. Even if you are a citizen. Even if you have lived here your entire life.

Earlier this summer, I was calling one of my friends. One topic we were conversing during our discussion was “what does it mean to be an American” or “what is the definition of an American”. Part way through this section of our discussion, my friend admitted to me that he is incapable of viewing me as an American. I asked him to elaborate on this. My friend stated that he, sub-consciously, views Indians as completely separate and irreconcilable with American identity. I asked him why he thinks this. He had two things to say. He said that he automatically accepts Whites as American, because white European immigrants were the founding and majority population. Therefore "American" is culturally defined around them by default, and everyone else must be measured against that baseline as a variant or addition to it instead of as a starting point. When it comes to African-Americans and East-Asian-Americans, he speculated that "American-ness" in his head is partly a familiarity heuristic. Therefore, the longer a group has been visibly present (generations of citizens, population size, media representation), the more they just feel native rather than foreign. Because Indians are a newer ethnic group, they don’t have that same familiarity heuristic bonus which benefits East Asians and African Americans, so to him, Indians feel more foreign. I asked him whether there were any Indians who he didn’t feel the way about. He answered with Indian people we both mutually know, who are deeply white-passing when it comes to their physiological nature. Because "American" is culturally defined around Whites, and everyone else's “American-ness” is measured against them as a baseline, Indians who measure more closely to the base line of a White (aka white-passing Indians) will be considered more American.

This conversation got me thinking about how the people around me perceive my national identity. I spent the next week or so reflecting, trying to understand how the people around me understand the relationship between myself, “American-ness”, and “Indian-ness”. What I got out of this thorough reflection was the sudden realization that nobody has ever once described me as an American so far as I can remember. Not a single person. Whenever I remember someone referring to my national identity, they were always referring to me as “Indian” rather than “American.” In order to test my hypothesis, I randomly messaged 20 acquaintances (not necessarily friends), and asked them “Am I Indian or American to you?” The majority answer was Indian. For context, I moved here when I was 11 months old. I have lived my entire life in the U.S. Yet, despite all that, I am still not an American to those around me. I hate this. I hate this so much. Why is it that I must perpetually be treated as a foreigner in my own homeland? Actually, that’s a stupid question, of course I know why. It’s because I don't look White enough. If I looked more White, then I would be treated as more American.

My Mom is VERY white-passing. I know Indians who get mistaken for Latine, Arab, North-African, or sometimes even Turkish. My Mom, on the other hand, is occasionally mistaken for Southern European, Eastern European, but most commonly “American”. Every single time I have a friend come over, they all make such a big deal about how my mom looks "absolutely nothing like an Indian” and about how “she’s so American and pretty.” You can tell from the tone of their voice, and the way in which they are articulating themselves, that they are clearly comparing her to me, y’know, the “lesser indian” of the two. It pisses me off so fucking much. She spent most of her life in some foreign country, meanwhile I was fucking raised here. Yet, at the end of the day, she will always be more American than me, simply because she was blessed with pale-white skin and moderately euro-centric features. She gets to escape all the social backlash that comes with being Indian. Literally all of them. Imagine being that lucky. This goes for all white-passing Indians btw. You are in a very privileged position and I deeply resent you for that. Maybe not my mom because she’s my mom. I’d say I'm more jealous of her rather than resentful. It is a lot of jealousy however.

I can’t get over the idea of being able to freely practice Indian culture and the Hindu religion, without being the subject of social ostrication, isolation, and belittlement. Only white-passing Indians will ever get that experience. People like me, brown-skinned men with ugly, non-eurocentric features will never be able to afford that luxury. In case I didn’t explain that well, my main point in this paragraph is that the more adjacent to white you are, the more society tolerates you practicing Indian or Hindu traditions. Something I’ve noticed is that whenever an Indian Man practices Yoga or Meditation, he is labeled as some eccentric, cultish, backwards pagan who is alien to western society. On the other hand, if a woman who is white-passing practices yoga, she is treated as the embodiment of modern fitness and self care. Society labels them as “pioneers” of a commercial exercise industry. To this, all I can say is “fuck you”. These white-passing women didn’t “pioneer” shit. It was the Hindu Indian who conceived, actualized, developed, and popularized Yoga as a tradition. Importantly, Yoga was conceived, actualized, developed, and popularized as an integral component of the Hindu religion, a means by which a Jivatman could achieve Jivanmukti, ultimately leading to that very Jivatman attaining Moksha after death. Yet these white-passing women bellitle and dilute this sacred tradition, treating it as nothing more than as an ultimately indistinctive, nondescript, characterless form of physical expression which can be abused to achieve their “body tea” or whatever the fuck they gush about in the comments of those mind-numbing balenciaga try on hauls. Then these white-passing women will belittle the Hindu Indian philosophers, theologians, and great thinkers who were responsible for their bastardized form of physical expression, preaching the name of their carpenter god and his horde of misguided Israelites, calling the Hindu Indians malicious, demonic, misguided pagans who revere cows and statutes. You know, as much as I hate them, I truly wish I was one of them. Straight, cisgender, white-pasisng women are among the most privileged people in society, and I wish I could experience the euphoria of being among America’s highest class. Once again, if you are a white-passing individual reading this post, remember how fucking lucky you are. I wish I was a skinwalker so I could pull some analog horror shit on you, steal your identity, and live my perfect life.

Also, Whites will just treat you better if you look White like them. However, I feel like that is to be expected. Humans are naturally and fundamentally tribalistic creatures, and we will prioritize the safety, well-being, and success of people who share the same physiological traits as us. Still though, it doesn't make it hurt less to see my Mom be treated like an abetter than me amongst strangers, while I'm relegated to the sidelines, treated more like her dog rather than a person deserving of equal respect, attention, and admiration. Well, actually, I guess I don’t deserve admiration, at least not in the eyes of these Whites, since I don’t have the beautiful porcelain skin and the eurocentric features which they just love soooo much.

Also, I’m resentful of passoids because they have an easier time dating compared to me. Literally everybody around me either: 1) In a long-term relationship or 2) Have recently lost a long-term relationship. Do you want to know what my greatest romantic achievement is? A 1 month long talking stage with some racist girl a year younger than me, who only wanted me around in the first place because she didn’t want to feel embarrassed by not having a date for Homecoming. And I wasn't even good enough for that one simple purpose. I kind of got left behind. Add on to this that she had multiple bodies prior to me (despite only entering highschool), and I still couldn’t secure it. I notice that all the dark skin indians I’ve met are similarly extremely fucking single and lonely like me, while all the white-passing Indians I’ve met have flushing romantic/sexual lives. I talk about my struggles to these passoids, and they look so fucking lost. It’s like their completly fucking incapable of comprehending, fathoming, or processing the concepts I am explaining to then. That’s just further evidence of how fucking privilaged they are, and how easy their lives are in comparison to mine. Oh, how I fucking loath them. It makes sense. Porcelain white skin and eurocentric features are viewed better in western society (as we have already established), so obviously, people with white skin and eurocentric features are going to have a better romantic/sexual life, especially in high school where everything is looks based. It also doesn't help that white women are literally the MOST racist demographic out there. Everybody on this sub likes to say “white men are just so evil, bigoted, thweating and scawy” (even though all the Indian woman on this sub depsretly want to fuck these oh so scawy white men). However, I assure you, white women are thousands, no, millions times more racist. You will definetly see white men dating outside tehir race, but it’s just so fucking rare to see a white woman date outside her race. They view any individual with a pigmant darker then theirs as fucking sub-humans and slaves. At least racist white men will say “oh, you're different”, “oh, you're one of the good ones”, “oh, we don't mind you specifically”, if I call them out on their racism. If I call a white woman out on their racism, they give me that condescending side-eye, then they do that atrocious ditzy giggle, and act as if they never said anything at all.

It’s so over, man. What do I even do at this point?