Beds are different in India. The average one found in a middle-class home is huge, and can easily sleep three. As a result, it’s not uncommon for the bedroom and the bed at its centre to be the place where families gather.

So whenever I’ve visited India, that’s just what my family has done. At my Masi’s house, a bunch of us would collect on and around this gigantic wooden bed and sit late into the winter night, chatting while huddled under blankets and shawls, mugs of coffee in hand.

I love the times I’ve spent with my extended family, and have rarely felt as at home or as happy. Yet, sometimes I find myself wondering if, in certain ways, I remained at the edges of those moments. Inevitably, those overnight gab sessions would be bi- or tri-lingual–and I am nothing of the sort.

Trying to keep me in mind, my relations spoke English when they could–and I feel compelled by some unknown force to highlight that this collection of university educated cousins and aunts could do so perfectly. Yet, naturally, my relations also switched to Hindi and Punjabi too, darting back and forth between languages mid-sentence as if it were the most natural thing in the world–which to them of course it was. It was lovely thing to witness and it felt like a kind of futuristic, multilingual utopia.

Still. There’s something odd about being around people you love who are sharing and connecting in a medium you have no real access to. If not alienating exactly, then it’s at least a little sad. I mean, I don’t want to get melodramatic about it; it’s not as if it’s some insurmountable barrier or a horrible source of trauma. But still.

The thing about language is that it’s like a key to a whole world of culture. And really, I wouldn’t do what I do with my life were I not fascinated by the intricacy of language: its sound, its cadence, the innumerable ways it can be inflected or re-purposed to new ends. That fastidious attention to words and their quirks is how I connect with people, through jokes, irony, sarcasm and whatnot. So there’s always something a little melancholy about the fact that, when it comes to aunts or cousins–or, I should add, my own parents too–I can’t play with words in “their” language.

Making this all extra weird is that my family “get me” in English anyway and, for God knows what reason, they love me all the same. But though I know it’s silly, I just wish I could “be me” in both languages, whatever that means. I want to be able to quote Urdu poetry at just the right moment. I wish I could  spit out Punjabi jokes and send my family into stitches. I want to know what they know, and be a part of things that make them feel at home.

It’s futile, I know. It’s about more than language; it’s about a cultural context, too. And I cannot exist in the space of fantasy I have built up in my mind and become the perfect bi-lingual interlocutor who understands and masters all. The people I love most in the world can communicate in languages and idioms I cannot. Sometimes this seems terribly sad, at other times it’s not really that big a deal.

To be bi-cultural and an immigrant is to often live in contradiction. On the one hand, you always are attempting to recuperate and return to a mythical past. On the other, you’re always trying to produce a brand-new hybrid future. In not knowing the language that would let me sit more comfortably in both worlds, I feel excluded from both that history and its fusion reinvention in the years to come.

There are, to be sure, innumerable brilliant upsides to all this bi-cultural messiness, and I’m mostly pleased with who I am today. Still. Sometimes it’s hard not to feel that life would be just that much better if, sitting under a blanket, surrounded by the people I love,  I too could jump back and forth between languages, moving in and out of worlds–all of which I could call home.

It’s funny now that I think about it, but the first girl who I remember as, like, “a girl” was named Karen White (spoiler: she was lily white). In part, she sticks out in my mind because when we were 9 or 10 at Goodmayes Primary School, she would always dance with me at school discos, which mostly now makes 34 year old me jealous of my own childhood. But beyond the pity dances, I also remember her because I often wonder with a bit of guilt: why was it Karen White, and not some Gurpreet or Jaswinder who sits in my memory?

Still, when I think about the various images of female beauty I remember from my childhood – mostly Samantha Fox and that busty cop from Police Academy – they were obviously blonde and white. It’s as if before I ever had a chance to ‘think about race critically’ or ‘become conscious’, the circulation of a particular ideal of beauty had already worked its way into my mind. So maybe because of that, it was Karen White who first caught my eye. Maybe.

But suppose my desire were somehow only ‘switched on’ after I had become aware of race and racism? Would I then have forced myself to only be attracted to South Asian women, or whatever ‘group’ I felt was right? Of course not. Not only is it ludicrous – desire doesn’t fit in a box like that – it also flies in the face of our belief in treating people like individuals.

Yet, it’s here we land on a sticky point. On the one hand, we believe that dismissing someone as a potential partner based on race is strange because it limits our choices by relying on some traits that are a terrible indicator of compatibility. Certainly, there are issues of having a mutual culture, but millions of interracial and intercultural marriages across the world prove that they are by no means insurmountable. Moreover, you simply can’t help who you’re attracted to. And yet, and yet… getting back to Karen White: If our desire is in part constructed by our relation to the public sphere, mostly in ways we’re not really conscious of, then it’s almost as if it’s something beyond our control. And given that attraction and desire are such personal things, what do you do when you find yourself mostly attracted to people of one or two ‘groups’? To wit, if we don’t control our desire, is it racist to not be attracted to someone because of race?

I feel like there are two equally important answers to that question and, erm, they are “No” and “Yes”.

No because attraction is subjective and personal and no-one – not even you yourself – can dictate what and who you desire.

But yes because desire isn’t entirely personal: it’s quite possible that not being attracted to someone of a certain race is not because of personal taste, but because those tastes are a product of evaluating a certain type of beauty over another. If sexual desire is partly unconscious and influenced by many external factors, then there’s always a chance that the racism present in society at large has worked its way into individual ways of thinking. When we say “it’s just my taste”, it’s possible that the statement is entirely true and at the same time, unwittingly propagating racism itself by reproducing prevalent ideas about what is and is not attractive.

What this all really highlights, however, is that if attraction on a personal level is just that – personal – on a social level it’s a much bigger, more complicated issue. In a society in which simple non-white  representations of beauty – let alone ‘non-normal’ ones – are still relatively rare, it’s hard to simply dismiss individual tastes as only ‘individual’. Just watch this devastating trailer for Dark Girls,  a movie about the prejudice and self-esteem issues women with dark skin, for a heartbreaking glimpse into the issue.

There is so much to be said about race and desire – part of which involves Raj in Big Bang Theory – but all I’m really trying to say here is this: if the question is “Is it racist to not be attracted to someone because of race?”, the answer is mostly “yeah, probably”, but also an unhelpful “it’s complicated, and you may not be totally to blame”. The central issue, however, is how race, skin colour or culture get judged as a marker of beauty or desirability in the first place. After all, though it’s possible Karen White was just nice and cool – maybe there was something else going on, too.

This post is part of the Ethnic Aisle, a group blog about issues of race and culture in Toronto and the GTA.

Maybe it’s just my complete and utter ‘you could fit what I know in a tweet’ ignorance of fashion, but it’s a world that has always seemed very weird to me. For example, the way the cut and shape of most clothing seems designed to highlight and flatter the bodies of women who are a size 2 or 4, when most women are a size 12 or 14, is very odd to me – as if the whole world of fashion isn’t so much about aesthetics as it is a distorted version of aspiration. Clothes don’t complement one’s body as much as use visual trickery to make it appear it is more like someone else’s.

Yet fashion’s implied, subtle assertion of norms obviously plays itself out in relation to race too. You know, ‘neutral make-up’, ‘flesh tones’ etc. There’s always a suggestion of a ‘normal’ wearer – and occasionally, like in this awful Nivea ad, the troubling assumptions in the discourse of ‘looking your best’ trickle out.

Except for the ubiquitous, every-woman’s-gotta’-have-one little black dress, right? The LBD – that’s totally universal… Isn’t it?

The little black dress is universal because of its blankness, its instant formality, its invocation of black-tie black-white contrasts. That’s what’s formal about it, right? Black cloth against white cloth… black cloth against white skin?

Here’s what I’m asserting, though I know I could be totally wrong: the LBD is so ‘universal’ because of the contrast of light and dark it evokes – and that contrast is in part about skin tone. But – and this is where I’ll get myself into trouble – that juxtaposition is different for dark-skinned women. That’s not to say, of course, that dark-skinned women don’t look as good in an LBD as light-skinned women. It’s that ‘what looks good’ and ‘what is appropriate’  is culturally specific, and that the ‘universality’ of the LBD actually is based on a set of aesthetic assumptions that assume white skin.

Let’s think of things this way. Fashion is generally based on two basic aspects: ~universal things like colour, shape, pattern, texture; and specifics like the implementation of colour, contrast, texture etc. If fashion is a language, then all of it has words, grammar, syntax, but each expression is dependent on and specific to a cultural context.

Sure, you, dark-skinned woman, look fantastic in an LBD. But if we generally accept that contrast is something universal – but the colours that constitute contrast are not – then why is the ‘universal’ dress of dark-skinned women not white? Or yellow? Who’s to say that, depending on your skin tone, one might not look better in a light, rather than black dress?

There’s a lot you could say to argue against this: that a ‘uniform’ for formal events is precisely what makes them formal; or that it isn’t contrast at all that makes the LBD, but is instead, its blankness, its colourlessness; or that the contrast I’m talking about is still present and still works, regardless of skin tone, since no-one’s skin is actually black. You could, uh, also argue straight cis men should never ever even gesture toward aesthetic evaluations of women’s clothing or bodies. Hey, that’s what comment sections are for.

But even if I’m off in this little rumination on the LBD, the question is this, and it extends to hairstyles, makeup, fabric and cut: if we’re all different, and we all relate to culture and tradition in different ways, should any one aesthetic choice be considered universal – when it seems like almost nothing is?

This post is part of the Ethnic Aisle, an blog that aggregates thoughts on race and ethnicity in Toronto and the GTA.

The following post is part of a new project called The Ethnic Aisle, which is an attempt to collect the musings, rantings and reflections of minority voices in Toronto and the GTA. You can read about what we’re aiming for on the site’s introductory post.

Though I know ‘minority issues’ probably aren’t why you read Scrawled in Wax, it’ll only happen about once a month and, as ever, I’ll try and make it pleasant to read.

The first topic was meant to be a bit in your face, and… well, in our minds, it’s called “When I Was Racist”.

* * *

At the outset, I think it behooves me to say this: some of my best friends are white. Yeah, it’s a cliche joke now. But I just want to point out that what I set down here is not done in pride, defiance or in the hopes of offending. Instead, it’s with some reluctance and shame that I post this, in the hope that it is read with some mild sympathy for the odd contradictions, conflict and general weirdness entailed by being ‘not white’ and privileged while living in downtown Toronto.

1. Washing Dishes the Wrong Way

For some reason, there was a quiet that pervaded the house that day. Maybe my mum and brother were away, or perhaps there were no basement tenants. Whatever it was, something was different. For one, I was trying to be extra helpful.

I was still feeling guilty for having moved out. I had, at the ripe old age of 25, recently gotten a shared apartment in the Annex, and was much happier for it. But as (ugh) ‘progressive’ as my parents were, moving out in the same city before marriage struck them as… odd. They got it; they weren’t oblivious sitcom stereotypes. It was just strange and a little sad for them. So I was back on one of my perhaps too-often visits, and after dinner I told my Dad I’d wash the dishes. You know, to help out.

I had always washed dishes the way I had seen my folks do it: one at at time, with the tap trickling slightly. I knew there was another way of doing it. At camp and at friends’ houses, I too had filled the sink with soapy water, and fumbled through like I did it all the time. At home though, we just never did it that way. That’s just the way it is when you’re a minority. Out there, in regular public lives, there was a way of doing things that everyone else knew, but to you seemed strange.

‘Course, I had been out in the world! I lived on my own, and was recently back from traveling through Europe, too. I had seen things. So I filled the sink with foam and water – just like Canadians do! – and got through the big pile in no time flat.

When I was done, my dad and I just hung out for a bit. I think we started talking about English literature, which had always been a shared interest of ours. I was doing my MA in English at the time, and my dad had done his some 30 or 40 years prior. We chatted about these things often. Then there was lull.

“I’ve never washed the dishes like that,” my Dad said after a bit, pulling out a tea towel. It was still really quiet in the house.

“Yeah,” I responded. “Quick though, wasn’t it? I think that way works better for a big pile of them.”

“Yes. It does,” said my father.

“I guess,” I said a bit hesitantly “I’ve just never done it like that because it seemed like the white way of doing things.”

My father paused – a bit portentously if you ask me. It’s  like in that moment we were secretly bonding over something, even if we couldn’t articulate quite what.

“Hm,” my father said. “Yes, I’ve never done it that way because of that too.”

We finished drying the dishes and put them away in silence.

A few years later, when I lived with my white then-girlfriend, I made sure to wash dishes the way my father always had.

2. Breathing a Sigh of Relief.

I had brought lemon sorbet for dessert. My friends were disappointed. After barbequed shortrib steak topped with chimichuri, eaten on a patio table on a cool spring evening, what my friends were hoping for was vanilla ice cream. Or, God, at least strawberry. But I could never seem to get these sorts of things right. Who knew what these downtown hipsters did or didn’t want?

After reluctantly consuming the tart sorbet, we headed upstairs. But soon, it was clear one of our group felt sick, and she promptly went home. That left four of us: our Mexican-Canadian host, two Caribbean-Canadians, and me.

We shot pool for a bit, then sat around chatting, before finally deciding to to head off around 11. By that time it had gotten cool, and on the walk home, we pulled our jackets around us, commenting on how unseasonably warm it had been lately. Then the inevitable happened.

“And what is with white people in shorts and t-shirts the minute it creeps above zero?!”

Here’s what you may not know. Though you can almost never generalize about ‘minorities’, this phrase is occasionally like a secret code in this city for “it is now time for us non-whites to complain about all the weird, inexplicable things white people do’. You begin with the shorts in spring comment and it goes from there.

So it started. The litany of silly complaints. Drinking milk with dinner. Of how ‘they’ don’t respect their parents or, conversely, are like friends with their folks. Stupid shit. But then, depending on the crowd, it gets more serious. So we moved on to this thing a white lady at work said about ‘that crazy hair’. Of getting yelled at in the street. Of how oblivious some of ‘them’ are about their white privilege.

Yeah, white people. What do they know? Fuck them, right? That’s what it sorta’ amounted to. But unpleasant as that is, what is difficult to convey is the flood of relief that comes with saying these things among a crowd of minorities, the sudden feeling of camaraderie that erupts into something disturbingly close to joy. Phew!, you say to yourself. I’m safe to let out my neuroses here.

Now a bit older, I tend to stay away from this. I’ve started to believe that antagonism is a last resort, and even this kind of joke-y, release-valve humour is potentially dangerous. To my ‘white friends’ reading this, I don’t secretly badmouth you every time I get together with my more melanin-rich pals. Mostly.

Still. Chris Rock, who is obviously very rich and very famous, says that he can still get nosebleeds and panic attacks in rooms full of white people he doesn’t know. And sometimes now, when life demands I show up at an event or party mostly full of white people, I can relate. There’s no good reason for it. Just shyness and awkwardness coming out the wrong way. But it’s hard not to give a racial tinge to those shortcomings – and stand in a corner nursing a beer, comforting oneself by thinking: “White people. Fuck them, right?”