Jay-Z said it on Reasonable Doubt in 1996 and J-Cole said it on The Warm Up almost thirteen years later. Eleven years after 9/11, the question still remains. Can I live? I’m constantly asked and harassed on the street for the simple fact that I am: that I am Sikh, more precisely a Sikh American growing up in a largely Islamaphobic and xenophobic world. This was not the America I knew nor was used to. There’s always one question that always bothered me the most, a question that caused me hours of introspection and reevaluating my identity. What are you? The question wasn’t who are you or where do you come from. It was blunt and reminded me of the “Guess my race” game we used to play as kids. It didn’t matter what you were like or how athletic you were or how intelligent you came off to be. It was for the simple fact that my eyebrows were a little bushier than the average and I had a turban on my head that made me an automatic contestant for this game void of winners or losers. They expected me to fall into some neat category, to objectify my entire being into one particular race. For me growing up in a white suburban community, I considered myself to be more American than anything else but for some reason, that wasn’t enough. I had to be exotic or something for me to appease my peers. It is this hyphenated identity that caused me to question who I really was and what I stood for. Eleven years later, I realize there’s nothing wrong with being considered both a Sikh and an American as I am able to play up on my multicultural identity that makes up my self. Because the truth is I see myself as a devout Sikh and a good American. In some sense, when you drop the hyphen, you lose an entire history and ancestral roots that at least for me adds to my sense of pride. 9/11 served as a shock to the core of many Americans, creating for many communities a call for action. Misguided hatred consumed the thought arena for many minorities as we were divided collectively as a nation into “us” and “them.” This very polarization disrupted the way things “were” and Sikhs today are still struggling to correct our misrepresented image, largely perpetrated by the media, which associates our image with scenes from the Middle East. And I reiterate my opening statement: can I just live? Peace out brothers and sisters, Manjot Singh
