FacingRacismLR

A Cultural Racial Identity Struggle
Karen Dowling’s story by Annemarie Voss
Karen is 41 years old.
I was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to Ashok Inamdar, who had immigrated from
India as a thirty-year-old man to pursue an engineering degree, and Kathleen, who was
of Czechoslovakian descent. My parents had met in a hospital in Youngstown, Ohio,
where my father was working in a blood lab, while attending engineering school, and
my mother as a registered nurse. Getting married in 1974 was complicated because my
mother was Roman Catholic and my father was a Hindu. The Roman Catholic Church
in which she had grown up refused to marry them until they had proof from India that
my father had no other wives. Therefore, they first got married in front of Justice of
Peace and later in the Catholic Church.
Neither of my parents impressed their cultural identity upon me or my brother. In
his great desire to become a true American and to pursue the American Dream, my
father did not want to teach me his language or his culture or tell many stories about his
upbringing or his Indian family. Except for having a few Indian friends and liking Indian
foods, he suppressed his Indian identity. When we got together with Indian friends and
a few family members, I was excluded because I could not understand that language.
My mother also did not stress her national heritage much, other than special foods for
holidays and special occasions and the Roman Catholic religion.
My cultural identity crisis began already when I was yet a small child. People would
stare at me with my dark hair, dark skin, and dark eyes, wondering how I could possibly
be my blue-eyed, light-skinned mother’s child, noting that my six-year-younger brother
had inherited her features. Some would even ask me whether I belonged to my mom.
The issue of my cultural identity continued to be problematical during my school
time. My father’s job as chemical engineer, required us to move frequently, each move
necessitating a new integration into a school, where others attempted to classify me. In
one place with a large Hispanic and African-American population, I was more accepted
but assumed to be either of Hispanic origin or half black. When others would discover
that my outer appearance features were from my Indian background, they would
classify me as a model minority, assuming I was of superior intelligence and the child of
a medical doctor. To be a faux Indian or a faux Czech was not satisfactory.
My sense of unease with my identity continued into my years as a college student,
studying Spanish and Japanese. One evening in 1996, when my father drove me back
to my apartment we talked about my dreams to get a Masters and a Ph.D., a love for
education that I shared with him. I had always admired his love for learning that had led
him to leave his family in hope of better opportunities in the United States. We talked
about my desire to go to Spain to get an authentic language experience. That evening we
had a very special moment, I call it “God’s timing,” in which he came to understand my
yearning to come to terms with who I was. We made plans to travel to India to visit his
family, a trip he had only taken once since he had left.
This promise and my hopes were dashed when I learned two days later that my father
had suddenly died of a heart attack. That might have been the end of my journey of selfdiscovery
if it had not been for three fortuitous events that converged in 2013.
The first was a contact from a cousin in India, the son of my father’s only sister, who
contacted me on Facebook and welcomed me to the family and invited me to visit. The
second was my new friendship with an Indian mother of a little boy. I felt a certain
kinship with her, and she invited me to be her companion on a trip to India for her
sister’s wedding. The final opportunity was through my job as a director of education
at Indiana Wesleyan. The University had a relationship with two Indian schools in
Pune, both—though unofficially—Christian. The schools had requested training for the
teachers and administrators. My all-American husband immediately understood that
this was an opportunity I could not refuse.
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