whitewashed ⬜

man my cultural identity is pretty messed up

Sometimes people call me whitewashed. I think they’re probably right. I’m ethnically Pakistani but I was born and raised in England. My mother is an immigrant who lived in England for 10 years before I was born, and my father was born and raised here so he mainly speaks English and my mum speaks it half the time too. We all speak English so much at home that I can’t actually speak Urdu. I can understand it but the words of my mother’s tongue feel like gum stuck in my teeth that won’t come out. I can’t string the sentences together, I physically can’t.

Sometimes I think about the British Empire and how much I hate it but how I probably wouldn’t exist without it, how much I’m conforming to it by simply existing as my whitewashed self. My mother wants me to read Urdu poetry and I want to so badly but I can’t read it well enough, though I’m trying to learn. I’m going to be studying English Literature next year, dissecting the words of long dead white men who probably would resent my existence. I will learn Urdu properly some day, so I can caress pages filled with that elegant curving script, with words that don’t come from a colonised tongue. I drink tea. English fucking breakfast tea, even though I think Pakistani chai tastes better. English tea is easier to make for just one person, but chai tastes like community, like warmth and real flavour. I drink English tea more for convenience, but it tastes bland. Didn’t they love to colonise so they could get their hands on tea? Why did they make it so much worse then?

Sometimes I wonder if my anger at racism and colonisation is even valid, when I’m so whitewashed. I go to Pakistan almost every year, though, so why am I like this? Why do I feel so disconnected from my culture, like I’m some white person posing as brown so my anger can be justified? Sometimes I wonder if I’m “oppressed” enough to feel so angry when people say racist things. No one’s ever called me a paki before, but I once overheard a white boy saying the British Empire wasn’t that bad if you ignore slavery, and I wanted to hit him or scream at him but instead I just stared at him until he noticed that I was the only brown person in the room and I was staring. He said it was a joke afterwards.

Sometimes I think I’m whitewashed because I’m queer. Queerness is not entirely a Western concept. In fact, it was the fucking colonisers who introduced all the laws against it in most places, wasn’t it? Muslims have probably never liked queer people very much though. I’m not sure if I can call myself Muslim anymore. I’m scared of calling myself queer and Muslim in the same breath, and maybe I should be because if they found out back home — can I really call it home, though? — they would probably disown me. Actually, most of my family here would probably disown me too. Maybe I’m subconsciously separating myself from my culture and religion because I can’t ever get rid of my queerness, as much as they might want me to, can’t cut it out like a tumour because really it’s an organ I can’t live without. Maybe I’m whitewashed because white people are at least a little more accepting on average about the whole queer thing, even though their ancestors are the ones who outlawed it in the first place. I’m one of the lucky ones though, one of the lucky queers, because at least I live in a country that won’t make me die because of my queerness.

I think white people like white things. White-picket fences. White pearly gates. White-winged angels. White teeth. White baby Jesus. Not to generalise or anything, but it’s like they want to paint everything white. And sometimes I’m scared they’ve succeeded in painting me white too.