Identity: All at once, all the time

With Vice President Kamala Harris now running for president, an undeniable wave of excitement has surged through the South Asian community and within my own family that I have never seen before. Of course, our values and the issues at stake shape how we ultimately view any candidate, but the idea of a South Asian president sends chills down my spine.

 Yet, as thrilling as this moment is, Harris’s candidacy has also reignited a more complex conversation about race and identity. Her "Blackness" and her "Indianness" are being questioned in a way that fundamentally misunderstands race and the role it plays in our identities. This binary way of viewing her heritage feels reductive, and it speaks to a broader issue—how we, as a society, approach the intersection of race and identity.

Although I am not biracial, I can relate to the complexity of navigating multiple identities. Both my parents are from India, and being Indian, an American, a Muslim, and a Texan has given me a lens to talk about my experience in a way that might be helpful for others.

Growing up, I always felt caught between two worlds, like so many second-generation children do. At home, my parents fundamentally couldn’t understand the challenges I was going through at school because they had a completely different educational experience, and at school, my friends whose parents were from America fundamentally couldn't understand the experience of having parents from a different country and culture. That pushed me to keep my two lives separate. At home, I'd listen to the Kuch Kuch Hota Hai soundtrack on repeat with my family and at school when my friends talked about listening to Linkin Park, I would pretend I loved them and that I listened to them despite having never heard of them (fwiw, when I did finally listen to them I loved them).

I constantly felt torn between two identities, never truly fitting in at home or with my friends at school. In college, I met a group of Indian friends that fully embraced their Indian identity, growing up in places where they went to garba, danced bhangra, and celebrated all of the Indian traditions and holidays in ways I never did. Similarly to high school, I fell into the same pattern of pretending I was just like them, but I still diidn’t feel Indian enough to truly to connect. No matter who I spent time with, I felt alone and trapped between two worlds.

 Then after years of meeting and experiencing different people and cultures and lots of self-reflection, I came to a realization. It wasn't the world around me that was isolating me- it was me. I was the one who kept drawing these lines between identities, feeling like I had to choose between them.  I was the one deciding I wasn’t being American enough, Texan enough, Muslim enough, or Indian enough.

 In reality, I am what I am and that's exactly what I need to be. I don't need to shuffle between lives and identity to fit a mold that doesn't exist. We all are a sum of our experiences and the lives of our ancestors before us and each piece of our identity we experience fully, all at once, all the time. I'm not 50% Indian and 20% Texan.

 I am American

I am Indian

I am Muslim

I am Texan

I am all of those things fully, always

With that in mind, the next time someone asks you about Vice President Kamala Harris’s race, we can tell them.

 She is Black

She is Jamaican

She is Indian

She is going to be the next president of the United States

All at once, all the time

Taher Hasanali, Los Angeles