The "Immigrant Struggle"

"The report card, printed on flimsy dot-matrix toilet paper, is handed out in morning homeroom, our eyes instantly skirting past the individual grades to the bottom number, the average. I am crying before I see the four digits. 82.33. Essentially, a B. Harvard, Yale, Princeton? Lehigh, Lafayette, maybe Bucknell. What does it mean for an immigrant child of the top rank to go to Bucknell University? It means I have failed my parents. I have failed myself. I have failed my future. We may as well have never come here." (Shteyngart 219) It was after reading this quote when I felt a genuine connection to Gary Shteyngart as a person; I knew exactly where he was coming from. Shteyngart being the child of immigrant parents and being an immigrant himself, has faced the constant pressure of making his parents proud as it would be absolutely unimaginable to end up a failure. I know this struggle all too well. We as children of immigrants are faced with a constant battle of attempting to prove our worth in the eyes of our parents, but never seeming to be good enough. It is the pressure of first generation children of immigrant parents to prove that you are indeed worthy of your parent's sacrifices. As Shteyngart says "we may as well have never came here," this sounds like an exaggeration, questioning his family's move to America all because he received an 82 average? The children of immigrant parents can vouch that his reaction is completely justified. That 82 average symbolizes all his failures, representing not only his own shortcomings, but the disgracing of his parents, and the waste of a trip to "the land of opportunities." His parents came to America to provide a better life for him, and all that they have sacrificed for him should have been given back in hard work and success. In the eyes of immigrant parents excelling in your studies and achieving high 90's in every class should come as second nature; it would say something about how they raised you. Anything below a 95 would condemn you as a failure and a disgrace. As soon as I read the quote concerning Shteyngart's average it was as if a light went off in my head; I felt an immediate connection. I completely understand the struggle of being afraid to bring home a test or a report card because I knew that it would be considered failing in my mother's eyes; no matter how high of a grade I would get it would never be good enough. In the public school system a 65 is considered failing, in an immigrant household, that grade gets boosted to a 95. My mother always told me "99? What happened to the other 1 point? Why not 100?" You had to be perfect. Immigrant parent's expectations of perfection can be extremely daunting on a young soul and being seen as a failure in the eyes of your parents and disgracing their struggles can be psychologically impairing. This is most likely the reason for Shteyngart's substance abuse problems in his adolescence and adult life; that daunting voice in the back of your head telling you you are nothing more than a disappointment and you have failed in making your parents proud is enough to make you go crazy. I related to Shteyngart's struggles as I have always carried the weight on my shoulders of not disgracing my mother's sacrifices.

"Light-skinned" v.s "Dark-skinned"?

 A remarkable trend is present in today's media known as the battle between "light-skinned" and "dark-skinned." This astonishing fad that presents itself as a sort of joke on social media sites such as vine, instagram, twitter etc, is actually a root of a much deeper problem; internalized racism. Now, although this "trend," so to speak is extremely present in today's media, the initial derivation of this problem can be seen as early as the 1600's when colonization brought with it the emergence of "colorism", and in turn, what seems to be the start of internalized racism. Colorism is a type of prejudice that consists of the belief that with certain features (i.e skin color) comes certain privileges and a higher status in general. This prejudice brought with it not only a distinction between white v.s black, or white settlers v.s indigenous people: superior vs inferior in general, but now the conflict that came with the emergence of a completely new racial class- mixed-race individuals. A gender imbalance within the European race led to the violent rape of women of African and Native Indian descent, and this not only created the objectifying of women and the treating of people of color as if they are sub-human, but the even deeper concern of the beginning of internalized racism. This new class of racism, discrimination within one's own race, was evident in the preference of a child mixed with European producing a lighter skin complexion. As shown in Kathy Russel's The Color Complex, "Sadly we do know that over the successive generations, attitudes of color prejudice spread among Native Americans. By the mid-nineteenth century, the Cherokee nation, for example, displayed a clear preference for those among them with a mixture of Cherokee and European blood-- and lighter skin color." (Russel, 10) Reading this particular quote raised many questions in my mind, the first being why? It isn't comprehensible to me that within a race of people that have been oppressed, humiliated, and treated as though they were savages, beasts, and animals; stripped away of their dignity, respect, culture, and land by white settlers who came onto land that wasn't theirs to begin with, with a mind-set that because someone didn't look the same as they did, they were to be treated like animals, would have a preference for lighter skin complexion. In my mind, the mixing of European and native blood symbolized the oppression, and destruction of a whole race of people; people who were considered bestial, sub-human, and inferior to those who had a lighter complexion. So I ask why was a lighter skin tone preferred? It is inconceivable that in a society where people of color were considered savages by the whites, a drop of European blood would make someone favorable. Whatever the reason that lighter complexions were preferred was, as there is no clear cut conclusion in the text, something that we can conclude is that this problem has grown and escalated throughout generations to the dilemma we have in modern society. The preference of a lighter skin color is very much present in the world as seen with skin bleaching, the "light-skinned" v.s "dark-skinned" trend, and in certain industries, the Bollywood film industry in particular. The quote that was mentioned earlier taken from Kathy Russel's The Color Complex immediately made me think of the Bollywood film industry and the preference that it has for lighter skinned actresses and models, and the superiority that South Asian countries place on being lighter in complexion. It is very much preferred for someone to be lighter as they are found more attractive, successful, and just overall more admirable than people of a darker complexion. This is especially evident in women who portray lighter skin tones in South Asian societies; they mimic the ideal woman, and wife, and feel entitled and superior towards women of darker complexions. This phenomena is also broadcasted in the "light-skinned" fad going on within our own social media where people of African American descent are dividing themselves into two subcategories of the same race; light-skinned and dark-skinned. Many stereotypes are placed upon "light-skins" and "dark-skins," and it is more favored amongst people to be a "light-skin." This phenomena of feeling superior if you are of a lighter complexion than someone else is far from new, as a matter of fact it is one of the foundations this nation was built upon, but when it becomes a class of racism within one's own race is when one should stop and ask themselves, what exactly is the difference?