From Afar
Krishna is an Indian American who recognizes that despite the diversity of Asian Americans, we all play a part in the fight against racism. His story is about coming to terms with an international family and doing what you can.
Krishna's Story
I was at home in Illinois with little to do. Like a lot of other college students, I got sent home when the pandemic started and finished up my spring semester in my parents’ basement.
During the initial months of the pandemic, I was on social media all the time and heavily involved in the political landscape that had been unfurling since before the pandemic started. The Black Lives Matter movement started to pick up steam, and from afar, I did what I could from my computer.
I did productive things and some not so productive things. I worked on an open-source project that scrubbed your location data from photos to make it harder for people to track you. I signed petitions. I read books about racism. I wasted time laughing at people online and made fun of people with backwards views. At some point though, I just felt shitty. My mental health was not great, so I took a long break from social media activism.
That’s when the anti-Asian racism around the country started getting worse. I didn’t really see any of it where I was living. I wasn’t around it. I wasn’t on social media either. To be honest, I didn’t have the stamina to do a lot anyway. Being a 20-year-old kid in his parents’ basement, there wasn’t a lot I could really do. As a young Indian guy, I had escaped most of the wrath. I knew people who experienced racist stuff and friends from college who were stressed about it all, but I just watched from afar.
I recognize that my struggles were not the same as East and Southeast Asian people who were stereotyped and wrongly blamed for the pandemic. I had sympathy and solidarity with them. “Asian American” is a community that includes everyone, and racism affects us all.
About Krishna
Krishna, a fourth-year computer science student, was raised in a suburban apartment complex on the far outskirts of Chicago. Like his family, the vast majority of the families who lived in the complex were immigrants.
When his parents moved to Illinois from India, they did not have much and hoped for better opportunities in America. They immigrated with another Indian family, the Raavis, with whom they shared almost everything. Krishna’s family and the Raavi family lived together in the apartment complex, carpooled to work, ate together, and celebrated holidays together. They spoke freely in their mother tongue and updated each other on happenings back home. In the evenings, they joked about the American sayings they didn’t understand and the oddities of the U.S. workplace. They critiqued the politics of the neighborhood and discussed the changing demographics of their town. Between his parents and the Raavis, Krishna always had someone to talk to.
As Krishna grew older, the neighbors in his apartment complex began to change. The building had been predominantly Jewish families, but over time, the Jews left, and more Indian American families moved in. The nearby townhomes also got browner and became home to new families getting settled in the U.S. By the time Krishna was in middle school, the neighborhood park was packed with Indian Asian kids. A brown face on every slide, every swing set. In the broader community, elected offices slowly shifted from their white and Christian majority to a more diverse crowd. School boards, HOAs, and local representation began to reflect the new community, though it would never be fully proportionate.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many of Krishna’s family in India got sick or died of the virus. Small parts of him died along with them. Pieces of his culture were leaving this world while he and his family were across the globe. He was so disconnected from his extended family, and guilt crept into Krishna’s consciousness. What was the point of moving out here when their entire family was back home? Why would his parents leave their family and sacrifice precious time to give his brother and him better opportunities? Was that worth it?
Krishna spent many evenings with his parents and friends wading through the past and looking towards the future. He asked his parents if they regretted leaving their family in India. He wondered aloud what they would want for him when it came to balancing a career and family. Conversations led to both sorrow and hope, lament, and more questions.
As a college kid, Krishna still had choices to make about who he was and how he wanted to live his life. His parents reassured him that he would do the best he could and encouraged him not to take things too harshly. “You try your best,” they said. “You think about what your family would want. They want you to be happy and successful, and if that means sometimes you must put family aside for a little bit, they will always be there for you.”
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