“Indian.”

I stare at the little boy in front of me, trying my hardest to keep a straight face despite a sharp sting of embarrassment. I start blinking fast — as if the faster I blink, the faster this tightening in my chest will subside. No one else around us seemed to notice what he’d said, but that moment replayed in my head for the longest time. 

That wasn’t the first time someone had practically spat in my face. Racism wasn’t a stranger to me — I had grown up together in a small one-bedroom apartment just a little off Capitol Expressway in a community where I saw the four walls of my home more than another person.

As the years passed, the comments got worse. What was once just words thrown at me became sand in my lunchbox, or degrading post-it notes on my back. It became despising the way my mother would oil and braid my hair for me when everyone else came to school with their hair loose and down. It became wishing my hair was the color of the playground’s tambark or my eyes the color of the sky. 

Following the COVID-19 pandemic and a few blissful weeks of online school, I stood at the doorstep of a brand-new house in a brand-new town, set to attend a brand-new school. 

Cupertino was my chance to start again — to be more than the weird Indian girl. I was more than just Indian, after all: I loved reading, I loved the color pink, I loved singing and dancing along to movies, I loved mermaids and I hated peas. I was more than just the color of my skin. But would other people be able to see that?

Up until that point, my whole life had revolved around two facts: I was Indian, and that it was a problem. It had never occurred to me that maybe me being Indian wasn’t the problem, but rather the problem was the people around me. Racism isn’t something that has to be integrated into communities, but people actively make a choice to spread hate. 

There was nothing wrong with being different; it wasn’t some chronic illness, it was simply how I had been perceived. And that was OK. If there was anything I learned from my experience with racism, it’s that the only thing you can ever truly control in any situation is yourself. I didn’t have to shrink myself to fit into someone else’s box. If they couldn’t respect who I already was, maybe they didn’t need to know me at all. And that was OK too.

Today, I can proudly say that I’ve done my hardest to live by that. It isn’t always easy, especially because there is always going to be this voice in the back of my head that tells me that I’ll never be truly accepted, but I also know I am so much more than the idea anyone has of who I should be. Because I’m not. I’m Srinikaa Naveenraj, and I think it’s about time I put some respect on my name.