Peer interview #1 essay

Emmy Desire

The City College of New York

English 21002

Professor Kay Bell

Aman Chand is an Indian male who was born and raised in India for 12 years. He moved to the U.S. at 13 years old and is now in his college years. When Aman came to the U.S. his new home and community was in Queens, Elmhurst New York. His community was very diverse. He grew up around a lot of Bangladeshi, Chinese, Spanish, and Indian. The Queens community that he lived in faced gang violence every now and then. He had access to parks, basketball courts, and plenty of stores leaving him with varieties of food to eat. He had access to a soccer field as well. This played a big role in his life seeing as soccer was his first sport. He also mentioned that back in India they did not have much of those resources around. When interviewing Aman, we explored both communities that he experienced living in, but mostly focused on the one he currently lives in.

A question that I asked Aman during his interview was “what was the culture in your community like growing up?” to which his response was, “there were many cultures I was surrounded by, so I experienced a gist of every single one of their holiday and moving forward I learned more about them.” Here he spoke about how being surrounded by many different cultures, he was exposed to traditions and holidays that different cultures followed and celebrated. This allowed him to be more open and be aware of other people’s way of living. I then followed up with the question, “did you ever face the discrimination about it?” He then responded, “so many people who know me will say I don’t look Indian, not in a mean way but I guess I didn’t give them that Indian vibe. People usually thought I was Hispanic, and my looks did make me blend in with the Hispanic community. In my area as far as I could remember I did not face any discrimination or disrespect but when I went to the city and places populated with less colored individuals, I did experience them.” Here he spoke about how he did not face much discrimination in his own community since it was already very diverse, but he would face more discrimination when visiting communities where most people were white.

After interviewing Aman, something that surprised me was that he did not mention having or being surrounded by any black people in his community. Before interviewing Aman, I did not have many stereotypes about his community seeing as we live within the same borough. I did not expect him to mention that there was a bit of gang violence in his area. That did surprise me. Hearing this did change my perception a little bit about the area we live in.

The way that the issue of gang violence can resolved within Aman’s community is by providing better education systems, getting impoverished neighborhood to have a better relationship with the police, police reform, create more after school youth programs. Ways to advocate for this community is by going to community council meetings, emails to city officials, and through petitions and protests. I did not have any stereotypes. Interacting with my interviewee did alter my perception on the community by expanding upon what my view of Queens already was based on where I live and where I have been.

Aman’s community is different from mine in a few ways. There is not much gang violence where I live, and my community is also very diverse, but I am also surrounded by a lot of black people. I would not consider Aman’s community to be marginalized based on what he said. I think what separates his community from marginalization is the fact that they are not denied resources and are not being ignored socially, politically, etc.