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I Am Sikh and Tired
Wracked with pain about being othered, I dressed up like Captain America. Here’s what happened.
My turban and beard have always made me a target of anxiety, stereotyping, or outright racism. Post-9/11, the hate has been taken to a whole new level. Sikhs have been killed, attacked, and verbally abused in a never-ending American saga. We might not ever know what was in the mind of 19-year-old Brandon Hole, who shot and killed eight people including four Sikhs at a FedEx warehouse in Indianapolis on April 16. But it hurts to keep seeing Americans who look like me paying the price for looking different, for standing out.
Ten years ago, in my anger and frustration, I accidentally found a way to confuse fellow Americans into thinking I am one of their own.
In the aftermath of the 2012 massacre on a Sikh house of worship by a White supremacist in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a photographer convinced me to don the uniform of an American superhero I had illustrated months before. And so, dressed as Captain America, I walked out onto the streets of New York City.
This is not a Black and White problem only. It is an American ailment. It is a human disease.
