I once dated for a few months a desi sister who remained my friend. She had separated from her longtime boyfriend, who was African-American. Her family’s disapproval was one of the big stresses on their relationship. So it was quite a step when they got back in touch and rekindled. I was honored to be privy to this, and with it, to R.’s management of her parents’ anxieties.

The next year they married, in her family’s backyard in Orange County. The aunties were in full effect, all gossip and jewels and rolls of flesh. They inquired hungrily as to my status. The uncles were hanging out. R. and W. sat before the pandit, soaked in sweat from their garments, the fire and the summer heat. No one was paying any attention. Except, that is, for W.’s family, a cortege of beautifully turned out Black folks from Arkansas and Texas. They sat for hours in the sun, sole occupants of the front row, wearing looks of deep confusion. I believe I was the only guest to attempt to explain the proceedings. The aunties looked right through them.

The wedding was a triumph for R.; her parents, lovely people, had come around. But it said little for the community’s readiness to miscegenate in the blackward direction. That pesky little problem, which many mutineers will be at least anecdotally familiar with, is not one of the themes of Lavina Melwani’s article “The Color of Desi” in the January 2006 edition of Little India (shout-out to Cinnamon Rani).

The article is a positively giddy celebration of desi mixitude:

Think Halle Berry, think Tiger Woods, think Saira Mohan, think Lisa Ray, Sarita Chowdhury.
These are the faces of the future, faces where cultures and races blend, where different essences combine to create a new fragrance — haunting but you’re never quite sure of what it is. Musk? Attar? Tuberoses? Or a mix of all?
Welcome to the brave new world of children of intercultural unions, families that defy the old rules — hopscotching over national borders, criss-crossing cultures and a babble of languages to create a new race, a new reality. It’s almost as if the great showman in the sky, sitting in his director’s chair and bored with the same old, same old, is experimenting and bringing some pizzazz to the leela or celestial play.

In fact, it turns out, desis are straight-up cultural pioneers:

What will surprise Indian Americans, however, is that they at the front of the ranks. According to the 2000 US census, 220,000 Indians — almost 12 percent of the total Indian population of 1.9 million — identified themselves as multiracial, i.e. they listed themselves as Indian and one other racial group, which is five times the national average of 2.4 percent. Nationwide, almost 2.5 percent of all Whites, 4.8 percent of Blacks and 14 percent of Asians identified themselves as multiracial.

The story goes on to introduce us to a variety of mixed couples or children thereof. (Like the white-desi couple who named their kids Britteny, Bradley, Brijesh and Bhavika.) Each one tells us of the stresses or joys of balancing their two cultures. The one sister we meet who has married a Black man, Nisha Kutty, lives in the biracial paradise of Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Kutty is self-aware:

America is still so much about race – even though it likes to think it’s not – so will she face any special challenges bringing up Surya? Without blinking an eyelid, Kutty says, “Yes, definitely I will. I think if I had married someone white the whole story would have been different.”

The article refrains from developing that angle, lest perhaps it upset the ambient happiness. Instead we move on to a half-Scandinavian sister for whom “The white and Indian issue is not a big deal in terms of being a problem of identity.”

There’s more here than a single blog post can handle – long held ethnic and racial prejudice, notions of immigration and assimilation, the dreaded Model Minority question, a whole lot of class issues, and intergenerational stuff as well. I’m not going to pretend to develop all these themes, some of which have been touched on here before.

Still, being biracial myself (my moms is Jewish American) I’ve always held a special interest in these topics. During my guest residency here, I’m going to try to assemble some thoughts, throw out some questions, and hopefully report on some experiences that folks are having out there. The politics of mixing are my concern. If you’re half-Black, are you desi? If you’re half-white, are you a person of color? Are there desi quadroons, octoroons?

And beyond the labels, which anyone can put on or remove at will, what do these identities mean to you politically, living in the United States, or in the other multiracial societies where Mutineers dwell?

Peace.