Twinkie. Banana. Oreo. These are words to describe people of an ethnic background (in these cases, Asian and Black) who have abandoned the culture of their mother country and have been “whitewashed.” But what does culture really mean? Is it always tied to race?

Immigration and assimilation have become touchy subjects over the last few decades. In America’s earlier days, people from different backgrounds would emigrate from their homelands of Ireland or Italy, for example, and would often face ostracism by Americans at the time. Soon they would become part of American society, contributing food, music, and even holidays to mainstream American culture. This was the “melting pot,” where people from different communities would become more like their American counterparts while also contributing a little something of their own, changing the country at the same time.

To an extent, that cultural blending still happens today. Now Americans have access to food, music, and traditions from a myriad of backgrounds across the world. It may be more difficult to find multicultural flavors in other parts of the country as readily as in the Bay Area.

I was born in New York State and moved to Connecticut when I was four years old. The demographics of the area I lived in were not diverse. In my elementary school, most of the children were fair-skinned. There were a couple of blacks, very few Asians, and almost no one else laid claim to the same ancestral roots as my own. My parents did not see any problem with integrating into the mainstream culture, and as a result I was brought up learning about many of the same traditions my white classmates did.

I learned to love decorating the tree at Christmas, digging into the Thanksgiving turkey, watching in awe as fireworks heralded the fourth of July, and feeling tears come to my eyes when I sang “The Star Spangled Banner” while focusing my attention on Old Faithful. When someone asked me about my culture, I related all of the above to them. I still knew where my ancestors were from, of course. My parents taught me all about the Hindu religion and many other traditions. But I learned that the color of our skin doesn’t shape who we are, it only gives us an indication as to who our ancestors were. In the end, we were all part of American culture. However, I learned the hard way that some people didn’t quite see it in the same way.

When I moved to California at age thirteen, I was ready for the far more diverse atmosphere. What I didn’t know yet was that Californians viewed American culture in a much different light than my previous home. In Connecticut, I was treated like any other person. But in California, I was suddenly different from everybody else. Upon viewing my coloration, people would react with “Oh, you must be Indian! Excellent!” and my freshman math teacher said, “Well you must be joining the Indus club, right?” All of a sudden, I no longer was an American. Now I was an Indian, and everyone assumed that my culture revolved around Diwali, Bollywood, Bhangra, and not eating beef. At first I was adamant, insisting to my colleagues that yes, I was an Indian, but culturally I was very tied to the American mainstream in which I grew up. Unfortunately, this didn’t help my situation. I was now subject to admonitions such as, “What do you mean? It’s not like you’re white. It’s a shame you’ve abandoned your culture like that. You have to stop trying to be so white.”

Excuse me? Where does it say that America is a white country, and that if you aren’t white you have your own, different, ethnic culture? Ethnic groups have special societies where their culture can be preserved, free of the mainstream interpretation. All people of fair skin are lumped into one category, the white people, and they constitute American culture. Of course, since everyone in this category must be white, it can simply be called white culture.

Apparently my identity has no place in a society where cultures are divided based on ancestral heritage and the color of one’s skin. Americans are white; Indians are brown. The whole concept of this cultural divide impacts the social structure (and creates hierarchy, some might say), and it is absolutely ridiculous. Americans of an ethnicity that sequester themselves with members of their own culture and race just for the sake of familiarity makes dialogue in the public sphere very difficult, only increasing the tensions between different races and cultures because people just don’t understand each other. As an Indian by ancestry and an American by birth and upbringing, I see that pluralism, while an excellent idea that engenders creativity and exposure to other cultures, stifles and deprecates the American mainstream. Pluralism as it is conceived forces ethnic people to live their ancestral culture, thereby making America even whiter. Soon enough, the falsehood that American culture is for white people will become true as more ethnic people turn away from America in favor of their ancestral traditions. At that point, the social divide would be akin to segregation, and Martin Luther King’s dream that “little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers” will be dead.

Does this scenario seem improbable? At my high school, this cultural segregation is already starting. My high school was predominantly white, with a smattering of Blacks, Latinos, Asians, and Indians to improve our demographic image. While there were too few Indians to form a community, which I was thankful for, many (not all) members of the Black and Latino communities spent most of their time at school in racial groups. Nobody in the administration saw this as a problem. In fact, pulling the ethnic card on every issue seemed to be encouraged.

The only dialogue we had occurred during student assemblies, where minorities would stand up and rant to the rest of us that we could never understand who they were. We’d have to accept the fact that they were ethnic, pretty much telling us that we could never get along. Is this the kind of dialogue we wish to encourage among our youth? One day I took the initiative and stood at the podium, telling the audience my experience as a minority, much of which I have already related to you. When I finished, most of the student body stood up and cheered. Those who didn’t were mostly members of the administration and the core affiliates of the multicultural clubs. The ethnic divide was as clear as ever that day. The segregation among the student body was absolutely ridiculous.

I’m not saying celebrating pluralism is a bad idea. Establishing connections and dialogue between people of all backgrounds will help make America whole in the future. We can be one nation, one people, and still be different at the same time. But we have to realize that multiculturalism is the celebration of all cultures, eventually making everyone privy to every culture out there, including that of mainstream America. Hopefully, when that day comes, we can look up into the sky on the fourth of July, surrounded by our fellow Americans, and proclaim, “I am proud to be an American!”

Reprinted with permission of The Stanford Review. See more at www.stanfordreview.org