In the Margins: The Power of Questioning

I was born in Kathmandu, Nepal and adopted as an infant by a White mother of German Catholic heritage and a Nepali father who had himself been adopted by a White American family and later emigrated to the United States. Growing up in Olympia, Washington, in a predominantly White family and neighborhood, I learned that racism was primarily a problem that plagued people in the South. Even the commission of a hate crime at my parents’ home, during which the perpetrator painted a racial slur on the fence in an attempt to equate me with a terrorist, did not teach me the truths about racism. If racism existed in my own community (and I wasn’t convinced that it did), it was because of bad individuals, not the system of which I desperately wanted to be a part.

Reflecting on my high school and college experiences, what I most recall is a desire to be an average and normal American. After all, this was how I saw myself. I had no memory of Nepal, so when people asked me where I was from, all I could say was “here.” It wasn’t until I was 31 years old, during a trip to India, when I found myself surrounded by people who all looked like me. Gazing around the New Delhi airport, I saw for the first time in my life that the crowds of people, the billboards, the advertisements for products: all of it looked like me. I did not know what to make of it.  Up until that time, I had not considered myself anything other than an upper-middle-class White person, despite having brown skin. Not an immigrant, and certainly not an ethnic South Asian.

In the midst of the attacks against AAPI people and their families last spring, I listened to the stories of my brother Jesuits who had come under attack due to their appearance. I felt shock and compassion in equal measure, but I did not know how to fully connect with their experiences given my complex history with my own racial identity.  Face to face with my own internalized racism, I grappled with questions of identity and race. Who am  I? How do I make sense today of being a Nepali-American Jesuit deacon, soon-to-be priest? Who is Jesus calling me to become?

I know that Jesus calls me to stay with these difficult questions even as I sit with them with no answers, promising that he will remain with me while I figure it out. I know one thing for sure, though: only when we love and value each other for who we really are do we see ourselves as God does, created in God’s image and very good.  In the end, God doesn’t care if I’m White or Asian.  God simply delights in God’s beautiful creation in me and others. My hope and prayer is that one day, I will get to a place where I too no longer wonder, but simply delight.