Update, September 23, 2024: J.D Vance recently mocked Kamala Harris for deploying what he called a “fake” accent. This echoes Trump’s claim that Harris is faking her identity. Liberals everywhere are, rightly, pushing back against this kind of essentialism and racism, but as my essay below points out, the “left” is hardly impervious to identity policing. In my many years in left/radical organising, I, along with several others, have experienced pushback and mockery for not being properly Other enough. I’ll have a longer piece up soon-ish, about how the left polices identity, and my book in progress is partly an examination of this problem. But for now, enjoy this, from 2021. It’s also worth noting that I have since written about some of the events mentioned here, in “What Really Happened at Current Affairs?“
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Years ago, I used to attend a lot of anti-racism and abolitionist meetings in Chicago where I encountered an inordinately large number of white people, many of whom were lovely and sincere in their politics. Unexpectedly, though, on many occasions, a white woman named Rachel Wallis, who moved in the same radical/anti-racist circles, was mysteriously and consistently and blatantly rude to me in public. I only realised years later that she was one of those white people who struggle with having to be nice or even civil to people of colour, those whom they were probably raised to despise. This means that their racism needs to find an outlet. She perhaps assumed, “Eh, no one likes this brown bitch so I can be racist towards her and it will look like I’m taking a political stance” (later, when she realised Certain People are actually fond of me, she tried a different affect but by then I was done with her).
Rachel Wallis had never even had an online spat with me before she decided that it was okay to treat me like shit whenever I walked up to her and tried to have a conversation. I was completely oblivious to the fact that, apparently, she harboured some seething resentment towards me (I gave her several opportunities to treat me badly, because I kept assuming she was just having a bad day: I can be slow).1If you’re among Wallis’s friends who thinks that the problem here is that I’ve publicly named her for her behaviour, I will suggest to you that perhaps you have your priorities mixed up. I never understood her behaviour until I realised, many years later, that I was, in effect, a vent for her racism. I think many white people in lefty circles find themselves in situations where they’re compelled to behave well to people of colour, the sort of people they had been taught to hate growing up, and they secretly hate it: it burns them up on the inside. When someone like me comes along, someone who is apparently and clearly loathed by many others including many people of colour (and other queers in my case, given my queer politics), they seize upon the opportunity to treat her like shit because, they reason, who will care? And I know this happens to many other people of colour as well—I used to feel really lonely and alone about this, until I finally started mentioning these instances in public and friends of mine echoed their own experiences.
A lot of people in Chicago and elsewhere don’t like my political stances, and I’ve often walked into public events and even private parties at the houses of friends and had people be blatantly rude to me because, the logic goes, since I’m so unpopular among so many, it’s fine to be rude to her because no one will care (I’ve received death threats and been called all kinds of names online, the very worst, and few have come to my defense which is fine: I’ve learnt to cope).2And, to be clear: I’ve also received enormous love and support from many here. It’s unfortunately the exceptions who make it hard to operate sometimes. This is one of the reasons I’ve been so reluctant, for years, even before the pandemic, to even use certain social services here in Chicago—every place is filled with the same radical, queer, abolitionists/anti-racist/queers/Asian/Name Your Identity people, and I never know who might be ready and waiting to strike out against me and in what way. As my close friends know, I rarely if ever even go to parties, only attending the ones thrown by people I really love. When white people who fervently declare themselves anti-racist and make a show of being such decide to be rude to me the way they often are, it’s not because they’re taking a political stance: it’s because being rude to me in such a public way allows them to jack off to the racist impulses they harbour.
Today, to my very great disappointment, Lyta Gold, someone whose racial politics I have long admired and trusted and thought I recognised, subtweeted that I have a fake British accent. This is something people have thrown a lot at Nathan Robinson (who is the child of very, very British parents with very, very British accents who migrated here as adults and I defy you to grow up with such and not assimilate some of that) and she was referencing not just to him but me as well (the tweet is at the end here). I’m used to casual shittery but this kind of deliberate viciousness is surprising.
I’m shocked that Lyta turns out to be that kind of white person.
My accent is actually Indian, not British—I was born barely twenty years after Independence (I just blew my cover of being a forever 26-year-old), and was schooled at places like the International School in Kathmandu, Jamnabai Narsee in Bombay, and La Martiniere for Girls in Calcutta, and taught to speak a certain way. The shade of Empire is deep and long. My beloved Indian friends in their 30s often tease me, with great affection, “Yasmin, no one our age talks like you” and it’s true: over the decades, Indians have loosened themselves from the tyranny of Received Pronunciation (as have many modern Brits), and I think that’s a lovely, lovely thing.
But I am not obliged to change how I speak because of that and my accent is, as a neighbour once put it, “weird”—showing the impress of all the places I’ve lived in (everyone points out how much my accent changes when I say “She-KHAA-go” and I’m proud of the fact that I say the name like a true Chicagoan). My Vs and Ws often cuddle each other in ways I frown upon, but there is no un-marrying them, I find. Over the years, my accent has flattened, shifting to fit its Midwestern contours and I’m fine with that, and every now and then I hoist it back upwards. If you place me in Ireland tomorrow, I will emerge with more than a touch of Dublin. Place me among the Amish for a bit and I will emerge with that Dutch accent, warning you to “be careful out there among the English.”
I have a weird accent, and it’s uniquely mine. There is no “real Indian” accent—there are a billion people in India, and entire families are composed of people with differing accents, depending on their regional emphases (many Indian families are also deeply interlingual, which is wicked cool). I’m very sorry that my accent does not conform to whatever stereotype Lyta and others think of as an “Indian accent” or that it does not pass their rigorous testing of “real British” accents. Do I emphasise my accent at times when I think it might get me places? Yes, sure, I’m sure I do—-who among us does not change the tenor of our voice, deepen or heighten the pitch depending on whom we’re speaking to, become more or less crisp in certain situations? I have very little in this world but my accent, which springs forth unbidden, has often saved me in some very, very sticky situations. That’s life. I use whatever powers I have.
I know that Lyta is responding to the recent Current Affairs announcements and is understandably angry and even filled with rage, and in her position I would probably be exactly the same.3Updated September 1, 2023: Gold’s online rage has since increased because I published this exposé on “What Really Happened at Current Affairs? She also texted me after this essay went up to insist that she was not mocking me, and to demand that I never contact her–which was odd, since she was the one who contacted me. But this, I’ve realised, is very much in keeping with Gold’s Karen energy. But mocking Nathan’s accent and now mine is silly and in my case, it’s just plain racist (in his case, it’s a lot of things, and I’ve angrily raged at people online for it outlining the reasons why). Mocking me for a supposedly inauthentic British accent demonstrates a deep ignorance about people and cultures and other matters, not the least of which is the reach of Empire (today, upper and upper middle class Indian teens are astonishingly fluent in American culture, even if they never set foot in the States, which speaks to the reach of a different kind of Empire). Horrible things were said, people were deeply hurt and lashed out, on all sides, and CA has made restitution as best as it can (you can read more here, and I’ll have a piece out soon). As I tried to convey in my short take on this episode of the CA Podcast and as I will try to expand in my forthcoming piece [now published], it actually hurts me to even think about the pain that Lyta and others went through. I was, up to this point, fine with whatever they had to say in public (though some of it was unnecessary as well). I got it. But this? This is both stupid and racist.
I’m tired of this. I’m tired of having spent decades in a city where people have felt free to be rude and cavalier to me because they think no one will care about the brown woman with the weird accent and the unacceptable politics. My consistent critique of identity politics has apparently led many to believe that I’m perfectly fine with them mocking me on parts of mine.4Added for clarity. I’m tired of white people like Lyta and many others who openly mock me for things like my accent or, in many cases, my spelling even (I resolutely, and to the dismay of my American editors, use British spelling, even spelling that Brits don’t use anymore, and my editors have given to sighing and using the spell-check function). I’m waiting for one or more of them to make fun of my hair and clothes because, why not? Once you get the nasty brown woman for her accent, anything else is fair game.
But here’s the thing: mocking an Indian woman you don’t like and who you think many others don’t like does not make your mockery any less racist. You don’t get to hide your racism under the rock of “Ha, ha, look at this elitist asshole.” Does my accent evoke a certain amount of privilege, the kind that is untethered to monetary resources, the sort that recalls the kind of schooling and early education that gives one a certain ability to move around in the world? Sure.
Am I using all of that to evil ends?
Do you not have real enemies to destroy?
If people have anything to snark and complain about with regard to my politics, they should address my politics. Pick apart my arguments.
The fact that you wouldn’t be caught mocking someone for their more seemingly “Indian” accent (whatever you think “Indian” means, in your limited world-view) for fear of seeming racist, but that you happily and publicly bash me for my supposedly fake British accent only proves your racism. You don’t get to hide your very real racism behind your supposedly authentic anti-elitist politics.
This has to stop. If you have a problem with my politics or that of any other person of colour who dares to not hew to your precious ideas of what you think people of colour should look and sound like: tangle with us on our work. If you think my work is shit, write a piece or two or ten excoriating what you think are my shitty politics, detail the many ways in which you think I’m just wrong (and Nathan can speak for himself, but the same rule applies to him: stop exposing your repressed homophobia towards him). Have the guts to dismiss my arguments, to my face or not (I don’t care either way). But don’t for a minute assume that you can be blatantly rude to me in public 5“in public” added Sept. 1, 2023 or mock some or many of my personal characteristics and that I’ll let you continue to do so. And if you’re one of the people who encourages this bullshit, on or offline, you’re just as much racist garbage as the racist right-wingers you claim to despise.
None of your anti-racist, woo-woo bullshit, your endless quoting of Audre Lorde, your carefully arranged bookshelves featuring the very latest prison abolition literature, your “radical quilting” practice, your outreach to Black women in prisons, your retweeting of union organising efforts, blah blah blah, will save you from being recognised as a racist piece of shit.
Asterisked notes above were added some hours after the post went up.
For more on this subject, please see my “On Malayalam and Melancholia.”
Many thanks to Liz Baudler for her brilliant editing and tech support (which I begged for at literally the last minute) in the middle of the night. All remaining problems are mine entirely.
Don’t plagiarise any of this, in any way. I have used legal resources to punish and prevent plagiarism, and I am ruthless and persistent. I make a point of citing people and publications all the time: it’s not that hard to mention me in your work, and to refuse to do so and simply assimilate my work is plagiarism. You don’t have to agree with me to cite me properly; be an ethical grownup, and don’t make excuses for your plagiarism. Read and memorise “On Plagiarism.” There’s more forthcoming, as I point out in “The Plagiarism Papers.” If you’d like to support me, please donate and/or subscribe, or get me something from my wish list. Thank you.
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