Minority or Majority

I'm gonna veer off my theme this week because I really want to talk about a line from "Civil Disobedience." Thoreau writes, "A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then." This made me think about what it means to be a minority. Like many others, I was always told to fit in my whole life. Whether through blatant comments about my skin color and lunch contents or more subtly through advertisements showing me that Indians weren't pretty enough to be featured wearing the newest fashion trends in malls. I knew from a very, very, young age that my status as a minority meant I was treated differently than my peers. I always did my best to fit into what society deemed, for lack of a better word, "white." I refused to watch Indian movies and listen to Indian songs because it would make me that much more "Indian". I desperately tried to cling to the idea that people didn't like me for me, not because of my race. If people didn't like me for me that was a problem with me. I could "fix myself". If I were to ever admit that the problem was in them not me, then the fragile world I'd created would shatter. 

To me, this line makes it seem like fitting into the whole would make me powerless. However, I want to state the opposite. Not fitting into the whole made me a target. It made me much more powerless than fitting in ever did. Even when I fit in with the majority I was still a minority. Nothing will ever take that title away from me. I will always be too Indian to be American and too American to be Indian. A minority doesn't have to power less; but, fitting in or not won't change that status.