What Do Punjab Sikhs Think Of White Converts

[Guest Jacfsing2]

I have personally seen and heard racist sikh losers including my own grandmother talk about white people like they are scum- there are indeed many racist punjabi sikhs, that's a given.

Try to understand the different times I would assume either her or someone she knows lost many loved ones during the partition which was probably one of the Greatest genocide caused by community violence, (Punjab was completely different geographically and demographically). That doesn't excuse her for racism today; however, the wounds are most likely permanent.

[Guest From a convert]

As a convert, which would seem this thread is without, I will comment even though this is a rather old post. I converted some time ago and have attended Gurdwaras in nearly half of the U.S. States. I am visible. As a white person I am immediately spotted and questioned. But it is always in an effort to be welcoming. And usually out of curiosity. They usually want to know how I found Sikhi and what made me want to become Sikh myself. I usually tell them that it felt as if I had been searching for it my whole life, and finding it felt like home to me. Never once have I felt judged for being a convert. In fact, I am often asked to speak at events about why I converted and once a Sikh man told me he thought it made me specifically Sikh to have chosen a life he had took for granted. So yes, go to the Gurdwara if you haven't already. It is a wonderful place. There is a good deal of cultural crossover where you may notice topics like "homosexuality" or "tattoos" or "meat" come up, where people use their cultural experiences to make decisions about their faith expectations. Ultimately, Sikhism is about your own relationship with God. 

 

I will add that as a white person in America, I do make sure that when I am visibly Sikh, whether that is wearing a turban in public or speaking at a Sikh event, that I am very careful to use my white privilege to lift up the religion and not to take the spotlight from Indian Sikhs. I can read all the books about what it is like to be a person of color or to be from the Punjab that saw so much bloodshed and was ripped in half, but that is not my history no matter how connected I feel to it. And I will always have the privilege of a white American male, so I try to make sure I am constantly conscious of how that affects how I fit in the Sikh world. 

 

As an amusing anecdote to end off with, I am learning Punjabi, which is a huge feat given that I am also deaf. I had gotten to the point of being able to pronounce the letters, even though I did not know what I was saying. And one day I with a bunch of Sikh's who thought it would be fun to have me read the paper. So, I read the same word in several articles and decided that was important enough to ask what it meant....so then, I asked a room full of people what "America" was. In Punjabi, America is pronounced basically the same, America. But I was sounding out the letters so slowly that I didn't realize until I had already asked. Very amusing.