I was a kindergartner racist. I used to really believe that I was superior to my mom, was more “civilized”, because I spoke proper English and she didn’t.

I remember when the monster RACISM, came to life. I was in kindergarten. My mom would always walk me to school and pick me up. The day the monster RACISM came to life, it was pouring. I was about to be late to school and something in my shoes was bothering me. We saw a teacher that I knew who worked with my kindergarten teachers, and she took me to class in the elevator, and thankfully I wasn’t late. However, before we got on the elevator, my mom told my teacher that my shoes were bothering me, and the teacher assured my mom that when we got upstairs to the classroom, she would take a look at my shoes. It turned out, there was a small rock inside, and then I was all better.

However, a half hour later, my mom comes rushing into the classroom with a brand new pair of shoes, shoes that I was forbidden to wear because they were my New York shoes (I lived in New Jersey and we were about to move to New York). My mom was dripping wet and she had run back home, gotten the new shoes, and rushed back to school so her daughter wouldn’t be in pain.

She came in, all the kids were screaming “Hi Nidhi’s mom” the way little kids do, and my mom told me to take off my shoes and wear the new ones in my native language, Gujarati. I was so ashamed, so embarrassed that she had come to my kindergarten class, and worse, she spoke Gujarati.

I said to her, in English, “no, no, go away. Why’d you come here? I’m fine”.

Later that day, my teacher said that she was really disappointed in me for speaking to my mother that way. I came home and told my mom that and apologized. However, I wasn’t really sorry that I had spoken to my mother that way, I was feeling guilty because I had disappointed my teacher.

Now, as a 20 year old, I can say that I am completely mortified over what I had done, the crimes that I had committed that day.

I had judged and hurt my mom for speaking Gujarati and had also rejected my language. And you wanna know the icing on the cake: a year ago, when I was in pre-k, I DID NOT KNOW HOW TO SPEAK ENGLISH. My MOM SPOKE ENGLISH.

I remember the first day of pre-k. It was so strange and I remember my mom telling my teachers that I didn’t know how to speak English. Sure, she had an accent, and couldn’t speak “proper English”, but she spoke English nonetheless and communicated for me when I couldn’t explain what I wanted to say. And now, a year later, I was judging her for speaking accented English.

The Students’ Right to Their Own Language manifesto says, “accepting a new dialect means accepting a new culture” (8). It took me 4-5 months to learn to speak English (I knew how to understand English when I started pre-k and I thank Dora the Explorer, SpongeBob Squarepants, and the rest of the merry Nickelodeon and Noggin gang for helping me do so). However, I didn’t speak English a year ago in pre-k. And a year later in kindergarten, I did.

When I yelled and dismissed my mom, I didn’t realize that I was “rejecting [my] native dialect [and language]” and therefore I was rejecting my culture (8). I don’t know it happened. Or why it happened, since all of my teachers in kindergarten were bilingual and so were many students in the class. I often heard my teachers speaking in Spanish to my classmates so they could better understand an activity or assignment.

All I know is that I’ve been ashamed of my native language and my mom’s accented English many times after the kindergarten incident. About a month or two ago in my Creative Nonfiction class, I had to pick a Creative Nonfiction essay and respond to it. I picked Amy Tan’s Mother Tongue. That was the first time I wrote about this incident and really reflect on it. However, when Elizabeth asked if anyone wanted to read their response out loud, I shied away only because I mentioned the language “Gujarati” in my piece. So, in reflecting on my disrespect for my culture and heritage, and as an apology to my mom: Varsha Gandhi (even the name, my own name Nidhi Gandhi tends to make me cringe, wow I’ve got a lot of issues), I am posting my journal entry/response to Amy Tan’s Mother Tongue below:

“I know this for a fact, because when I was growing up, my mother’s ‘limited’ English limited my perception of her. I was ashamed of her English. I believed that her English reflected the quality of what she has to say. That is, because she expressed them imperfectly her thoughts were imperfect. And I had plenty of empirical evidence to support me: the fact that people in department stores, at banks, and at restaurants did not give her good service, pretended not to understand her, or even acted as if they did not hear her” (Amy Tan, “Mother Tongue”). 

But it was I who did not hear her, who did not hold her hand and encourage her while she struggled to find the words to articulate what she wanted to say. I was ashamed of the way she spoke English: with an Indian accent when I should’ve been proud that she spoke English at all, and more so, spoke more than one language and was at trying even with little education in English. I mean, who was I? A little six year old, balloon-headed fuck who believed I was God’s gift to man because I was smart, intelligent, and spoke perfect English, when in reality, I was speaking broken English just a year ago. I mean, I didn’t even understand English, I could only speak one language, I couldn’t even say one word, so who was I to judge and be embarrassed by her? 

I remember, it was raining and I was late to school. Something was hurting in my shoe, as my mom walked me to school. I came to the class, and a teacher helped me take off the shoe and a little rock, a pebble came out. Not 45 maybe even 30 minutes later, my mom came to class, with brand new shoes that we had bought for the move to New York. She was soaking wet, dripping, but she had hurried home and back to school with the new shoes that I was not allowed to wear because they were for New York, came in rushing because she was crushed with the possibility that I was hurt,  uncomfortable, and could be injured by the pain in my shoe. She came in, speaking her mother tongue, Gujarati, and told me, “Nidhi, baby, I brought you these shoes.” And I was so mean to her. Embarrassed by the way she spoke, another language, I told her in perfect English, “go, go, go, it’s fine just go.” I remember that day my teacher had said that she was disappointed in my behavior toward my mother and that I should apologize to her. 

I went home that day and told my mom what my teacher said but I remember not really understanding how I hurt my mother but rather that I had disappointed my teacher.