After we told our side of the story, the Ashleys and their friends gave theirs. Not only did they lie, but they painted Karishma as the villain, claiming that she threw the light saber at them.
They denied saying she was a terrorist, and as for making fun of her food, they said they had simply asked her to cover her food if she wasn’t eating it, because the smell was “disturbing them.”
Then the girls started crying. Their parents grabbed and hugged them and yelled at the principal for “letting them be hurt.”
This was the first time I had seen the power of white women’s tears, but it certainly wouldn’t be the last.
While the families yelled at the principal, one of the teachers who often butchered Karishma’s name chimed in. “I don’t know Karishma to be a liar, but she certainly has been a troublemaker at times. Every morning she has a nasty attitude with me while I do my attendance. I haven’t commented on it, but all of this makes sense to me now.”
The principal ended up dismissing everything we said to him and told Karishma’s family that they were lucky she wasn’t being suspended for throwing things.
After the meeting, the teacher butchered Karishma’s name every morning while she sat there and couldn’t speak up for herself. The Ashleys and others made fun of her so badly that she started eating her lunch in the bathroom.
She ended up transferring to another school before the following year.
Karishma, if you’re somewhere out there, reading this: I’m working on a time machine to go back and place a tack on a racist substitute teacher’s seat. If you like, I can also throw your food in the face of each Ashley. Let me know.
Karishma’s story always breaks my heart, because there are so many like it. Not just in terms of bullying but in terms of bullying specifically about culture and race.
Those kids didn’t just think up those jokes out of nowhere; I’m sure their parents said plenty of racist things at home, and our teacher fully aligned with them because of her own cultural ignorance, not realizing she was also part of the problem.
While not every instance of problematic behavior is as intense or traumatic as what happened in the cafeteria that day—though some, sadly, are much worse—many people of color live their lives dealing with the same kinds of things in smaller doses. From being told that our names aren’t normal to being told that our food is weird—it’s all rooted in the idea that white cultural norms are the standard, which is not only problematic but often racist.
One of my friends spends a great deal of his time discussing topics like this one, so I thought his perspective would be good to have.
One of the first things Xorje and I talked about was him growing up as a Mexican living in America on the border.
XORJE: I love the fact that I come from the border, and I know in depth what it’s like to sit between these two cultures of American culture and Mexican culture and have so many things that are so outright Mexican about me.
But Xorje wasn’t always knowledgeable about his own cultural history.
XORJE: There was so much I learned about my own history in college. Literally, here I am, a guy who grew up on the border who should know enough about Mexican identity but didn’t even know about stuff like the Chicano movement, certain things that are about my history. The educational system, specifically here in the United States, told me that it wasn’t worthy of my learning. That neither I nor anybody else in this country really needed to know about my life and my heritage. That’s been the case when we’ve seen these different bills that are trying to be passed to limit either Chicano studies or African-American studies or Asian-American studies. There’s a lot that’s being done to restrict the amount of education that’s being done about cultures and ethnicities that are not Eurocentric or are not specifically Anglo-American or white.
[In school] you’re going to learn about white people. You’re going to learn about the white history makers. You’re going to learn about the white politicians. You’re going to learn about everybody of note that we think needs to be told to you who happens to be white. If they’re Black, if they’re brown, if they’re Asian, if they’re Native American, [then, according to the schools] it’s not as much of worth to you. I think I had a pretty American life. I think I had a pretty normal life. My parents both worked. My sister and I went to college. It seemed quite normal to me. This idea that somehow I will not achieve my full potential that this country has for me because this country is looking for something else, meaning something more white or something more straight or something more cisgender—because I don’t have that, somehow I am just never going to reach it. I’m never going to get there.
What Xorje is talking about here is white standards. And not just white standards, but white heterosexual cisgender standards. If you deviate from any of these “norms,” you’re considered “other.”
XORJE: When you think about the Fourth of July, you think of cheeseburgers. You think of hot dogs. You think of going down to the lake and having this sort of life and experience. It’s, like, well, I didn’t grow up eating burgers on the Fourth of July. We would have a, like, a carne asada with tortillas and tacos and guacamole and frijoles. That was what was normal for me. Let’s say I were to bring anybody from outside of my hometown to see our celebration, they would think that’s totally weird. I think that’s the problem. This entire time, our society has made us think that we are aspiring to one certain thing.
Unlike Xorje, my Fourth of Julys were filled with grilled corn on the cob, baked macaroni and cheese, block parties, and illegal fireworks. Some of that’s pretty “mainstream”—that is, white people do it, too—and some of it’s specific to my culture and my upbringing. But all of it—including Xorje’s carne asada and tortillas—is normal. Because “normal” is subjective. It’s not the same thing for everyone, despite what white culture tries to tell us.
Many like to say America was founded on multiculturalism—you know, the whole melting pot thing—but it was truly founded on whiteness and the oppression of people of color. When we begin to understand that that is actually our normal, it will help us raise a generation of people that won’t run around a cafeteria disrespecting someone’s culture because it’s not their own.
I’m an American, as is Karishma, as is Xorje. Each one of us comes from a different place and a different culture and is no more or less American than the other.
Around the world, the foundation of what’s “normal” typically stretches only as far as the people and cultures in front of someone, and in most places, the people and cultures in front of someone are their mirror images.
We aren’t the only place that is composed of people from varied backgrounds and races. Parts of the UK are very similar in that way.
So I wanted to ask my friend Toni Adenle (Toni Tone) some of her thoughts on what’s seen as normal as a person who lives in England.
TONI: Well, one thing I can tell you is that people of color in the UK, especially young people of color, are working very hard to make sure that intellect and intelligence aren’t seen as normal for just white people. With that said, though, growing up being smart wasn’t something I was praised for as a Black person. One term that I actually heard commonly used as a tool or weapon against me by even other people of color was the term “coconut”—I think in America you say “Oreo”?