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[SPEAKER_01]: This podcast is made possible through generous funding from the Henry loose foundation.
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[SPEAKER_01]: In conjunction with the Asian Pacific American Religious Research Initiative, Apari, and the Institute for Religion Media and Civic Engagement.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Access, Moody.
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[SPEAKER_04]: When Gidhar was in first or second grade, he was sitting in the backseat of a car with a friend of his who was Muslim.
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[SPEAKER_04]: As a parent, you get used to those backseat little kid conversations.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Half over her, half improvised, a little philosophical in ways adults forget kids can be.
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[SPEAKER_04]: At some point, his friend said something about his religion.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And then, with the directness only a child can muster.
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[SPEAKER_04]: He turned an asked,
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[SPEAKER_04]: and Kather answered very simply, like he was stating his favorite color, or what he wanted for lunch, I'm Hindu and Christian.
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[SPEAKER_04]: We'd been telling him this for years, very matter of factly.
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[SPEAKER_04]: His friend paused, you could almost hear that pause, the gears turning, the rules he thought he understood getting nudged out of place.
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[SPEAKER_04]: He said, you can't be both.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And Kiddar, just as calmly, without raising his voice or defending himself, like he'd been accused or something, said, yeah again, I'm both.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And that was it, two minutes, no argument, no drama, no adult stepping into mediator explained, just two kids stating what they believed to be true and who they were.
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[SPEAKER_04]: If you're a parent, you already know those are the moments that matter.
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[SPEAKER_04]: not the big speeches, not the carefully curated lessons.
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[SPEAKER_04]: It's the backseat, the car rides, the in-between spaces where kids test what they've absorbed and decide what they actually believe about themselves in the world.
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[SPEAKER_04]: In that moment I realized that all those years of preparation had landed because we had told him again and again, people are going to ask you what you are, they may not understand your answer, they may even challenge it and when they do, you can just say, I can be both.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Say it with me, I can be both.
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[SPEAKER_04]: That kind of clarity doesn't just happen, it takes intention, it takes repetition, and most importantly, it takes modeling.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Because it wasn't just what we told him,
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[SPEAKER_04]: It's how we lived.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And roughly the same period as the Backseat Religion Conversation.
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[SPEAKER_04]: There was a day we accidentally double booked ourselves.
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[SPEAKER_04]: I had committed to help at our church for an annual feast of thanks in giving.
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[SPEAKER_04]: One of the local Hindu temples invited John to speak at a Diwali event.
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[SPEAKER_04]: same day, same time.
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[SPEAKER_04]: So what did we do?
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[SPEAKER_04]: The Hindu went to church.
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[SPEAKER_04]: The Christian went to the Hindu temple.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And Kiddar saw that.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Every Sunday, he saw that we went to church together.
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[SPEAKER_04]: We celebrated Hindu holidays together.
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[SPEAKER_04]: At dinner, we didn't say one prayer, we said two.
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[SPEAKER_04]: So when he said, I'm both, it wasn't theory.
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[SPEAKER_04]: It was practice.
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[UNKNOWN]: Thank you.
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[SPEAKER_04]: I'm Dr. Kathy Joshee, I'm a scholar of Race Religion and Education, a tenure professor who has spent two decades teaching about and studying how identity actually gets formed, not just in textbooks, but in kitchens, classrooms, and car rides home.
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[SPEAKER_04]: I've written six books, including White Christian Privilege, the Illusion of Religious Equality in America, teaching for diversity in social justice, and Asian Americans in Dixie.
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[SPEAKER_04]: I've spoken to audiences from university lecture halls to the White House.
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[SPEAKER_04]: But this podcast isn't just research, it's personal.
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[SPEAKER_04]: It's where the scholarship and lived experience meet.
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[SPEAKER_04]: This is mixed.
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[SPEAKER_04]: It's one thing to say you're raising a child with two faith traditions.
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[SPEAKER_04]: It's another thing entirely to actually do it.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Day after day, meal after meal, holiday after holiday.
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[SPEAKER_04]: In the quiet ordinary rhythms of everyday life, it happens behind closed doors at the kitchen table at bedtime on Sunday mornings.
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[SPEAKER_04]: In those small moments, you are handing them something
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[SPEAKER_04]: So how do you do two religions?
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[SPEAKER_04]: You don't split the difference.
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[SPEAKER_04]: You don't dilute one into the other.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And you don't treat one religion like the quote unquote real one while the other becomes cultural decoration.
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[SPEAKER_04]: You live both fully, visibly, and without apology.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Again, at our dinner table, we don't say one prayer, we say two.
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[SPEAKER_04]: We begin with a Hindu prayer, something kid our John and I all recite together.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Then John leads a Christian prayer, and the two of us join in at the Amen.
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[SPEAKER_04]: It's seamless, just normal, and that's the point.
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[SPEAKER_04]: because faith in real families is rarely cinematic.
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[SPEAKER_04]: It's repetitive, a little messy, embedded in your everyday routine.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Kiddar Sami go to church most Sundays, not as an outsider, not as someone reluctantly attending, but as someone who belonged there in her own way.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And he saw John participate in Hindu religious and cultural events, not as a visitor.
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[SPEAKER_04]: not as someone observing from the sidelines, but as someone engaged, respectful, and present.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Kids are smarter than adults think.
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[SPEAKER_04]: They can tell when parents are uncomfortable with religion.
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[SPEAKER_04]: They can tell when something is performative, and they can definitely tell when adults are quietly embarrassed by one side of the family.
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[SPEAKER_04]: What children need is clarity, not certainty about every theological question, but clarity that the adults in their lives respect both traditions enough to practice them honestly.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And honestly, the prayers are doing more than blessing the food.
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[SPEAKER_04]: They are teaching rhythm, reverence, language, and belonging.
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[SPEAKER_04]: They are teaching our son that identity is not a multiple choice test.
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[SPEAKER_04]: That home can hold more than one story at a time.
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[SPEAKER_04]: So when Kiddar said, I'm both.
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[SPEAKER_04]: It wasn't a theory.
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[SPEAKER_04]: It was practice.
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[SPEAKER_04]: But most parents I have spoken with tell me with some specificity, the first time they realized the American bureaucracy was going to ask their child to pick one.
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[SPEAKER_04]: It is almost always a form, a school registration packet, a pediatrician's intake sheet, a summer camp application, a standardized test demographic page.
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[SPEAKER_04]: The form asks for race or ethnicity.
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[SPEAKER_04]: or religion, and the instruction says often in small print, check one.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Before any sociologist writes about forced choice dynamics, before any child has the vocabulary to describe what happened, the forms have already made the point.
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[SPEAKER_04]: The American system is built on the assumption that a person has one race, and where religion is asked about
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[SPEAKER_04]: And here's the quiet injury in that.
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[SPEAKER_04]: A child who has handed one of these forms, or watches a parent fill one out on their behalf learns that there is no box for them, not officially.
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[SPEAKER_04]: They can cram two identities into one checkmark by choosing the one the world seems to want them to choose, or they can select other and watch their identity disappear into a catch-all.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Either way, a very clear lesson has been communicated before anyone has said a word out loud.
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[SPEAKER_04]: It's worth understanding how recent even the limited accommodation of mixed identity is.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Before the 2000s, United States Census, Americans were required to mark only one race.
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[SPEAKER_04]: For the better part of 200 years, the federal government that counted as officially did not allow anyone to be counted as more than one thing.
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[SPEAKER_04]: If you marked more than one box in the 1990 census, the Bureau recategorized you into a single race typically the race of your mother.
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[SPEAKER_04]: If they could figure out who she was, this was the rule for the country's entire history.
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[SPEAKER_04]: It changed and it did not change long ago.
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[SPEAKER_04]: The change in 2000, the option to mark one or more races, was the result of years of advocacy by multi-racial families, scholars, and organizations.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Many of them led by mothers of biracial children who were tired of being handed forms that erased their children.
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[SPEAKER_04]: It's worth pausing on the demographic reality that drove the fight.
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[SPEAKER_04]: By the 1990s, millions of American children did not fit the boxes they were being handed, and their parents were exhausted by being asked to make them fit.
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[SPEAKER_04]: what is less often told and what mixed race families are sometimes surprised to learn is that the push for a multi-racial option was opposed by some of the most respected civil rights organizations in the country.
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[SPEAKER_04]: The NAACP and others argued.
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[SPEAKER_04]: against a separate multi-racial category.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And against the check-all that apply option, on the grounds that these changes would dilute the counts of black Latino and other minoritized populations, counts on which the enforcement of civil rights law depended.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Federal resource allocation, voting rights enforcement, school integration plans, public health funding, all of these leaned on population data.
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[SPEAKER_04]: and that data had been collected in single race categories for decades.
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[SPEAKER_04]: You can hold two things to be true at once.
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[SPEAKER_04]: The advocacy of mixed race families and organizations was legitimate.
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[SPEAKER_04]: These children existed and their identities deserved recognition.
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[SPEAKER_04]: The concern of civil rights organizations were also legitimate.
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[SPEAKER_04]: The categories were being used as a tool to protect hard-won gains, for communities that had been systematically counted, uncounted, and miscounted, for most of American history.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Both sides were fighting for something real.
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[SPEAKER_04]: The compromise reached.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Americans would be allowed to mark one or more races, but a separate multiracial category would not be created.
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[SPEAKER_04]: I tell this history because I think it helps to understand that forms are not neutral.
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[SPEAKER_04]: They carry the weight of a long argument about who gets counted and how and for what purpose.
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[SPEAKER_04]: When a kindergarteners registration packet asked for a single race and no more, it is not simply an oversight.
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[SPEAKER_04]: It is the bureaucratic residue of a society that has never made its mind up about whether
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[SPEAKER_04]: And the forms asking about religion are almost non-existent.
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[SPEAKER_04]: There is no routine federal demographic instrument that asks about religious identity, let alone multiple religious identities.
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[SPEAKER_04]: The work of the adults around mixed children is, in part, to say out loud, with the forms will not.
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[SPEAKER_04]: The form is limited, you are not.
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[SPEAKER_04]: You are both, you are multiple.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Your story doesn't fit in the box.
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[SPEAKER_04]: But before kiddo was even born, we knew this wasn't going to work unless we were intentional.
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[SPEAKER_04]: We went church shopping, not for aesthetics, not for the coffee hour, not because somebody had a better youth group brochure, but for alignment.
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[SPEAKER_04]: We were looking for a place where our family, not some edited down version of it, could exist honestly.
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[SPEAKER_04]: For example, it was really important to both of us that we find a church where I would be allowed to take communion, the bread and wine that represent the body and blood of Jesus Christ.
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[SPEAKER_04]: For Hindus, taking communion is not a theological problem.
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[SPEAKER_04]: It's actually quite familiar.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Many Hindus regard Jesus as a divine figure.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Also, communion is like Prasad.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Food that is consumed after being offered to the divine
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[SPEAKER_04]: For some churches, communion is a sacrament where all are welcome.
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[SPEAKER_04]: But in many churches, communion is a, quote, members only activity reserved for baptized Christians or for members of the church's specific denomination.
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[SPEAKER_04]: So while it was no contradiction for me at the church John grew up in Pennsylvania, I wasn't allowed to take communion.
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[SPEAKER_04]: You might remember that John is from a small town, Hershey, PA, that at the time had little in the way of religious and racial diversity.
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[SPEAKER_04]: His minister wouldn't perform our wedding ceremony because I wasn't Christian.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And John was very clear.
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[SPEAKER_04]: There's no way me and the kids are going up there while you're sitting in the pew.
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[SPEAKER_04]: That's not going to happen.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Here's John in his own words.
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[SPEAKER_00]: In the Episcopal Church, some believe that all are welcome at Communion, and in other church communities, Communion is restricted to people who are baptized Christians.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So it was important to me that when we went to church as a family,
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[SPEAKER_00]: Kiyathe could participate fully and our kids could see her participating fully.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't want a situation where I was going up for communion or I was taking our children up for communion and Kiyathe had to stay back in the fuse.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's not what I believe as a Christian and it's also not how I wanted my kids to see our family's participation in the church.
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[SPEAKER_00]: When we were looking for a church community to join after moving to New Jersey, it was important to find one where all of us would be welcome at the altar for communion.
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[SPEAKER_04]: That was a line in the sand because exclusion sends a message and we cannot build a family where one parent participates and the other is quietly sideline.
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[SPEAKER_04]: We shopped many different applicable churches.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And eventually, we found a community, St. John's Episcopal Church in Montclair, New Jersey, that felt different from the moment we walked through the doors.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Part of it was the Church's motto, many paths, one journey.
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[SPEAKER_04]: It wasn't just a slogan printed on a brochure.
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[SPEAKER_04]: It actually seemed to shape the culture of the place.
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[SPEAKER_04]: There was an openness to it, a warmth, a sense that people did not need to arrive already fitting perfectly into some narrow mold.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And then, there was Reverend Diana.
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[SPEAKER_02]: When you and John came to church, and, first of all, you told me that, you know, you were Hindu, and you wanted to know who to take communion, I said, of course, and what I got to ask, I'm a kid about, he was all like, so I'm going to do a push-up, and I said, absolutely.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And it was such a thrill to me.
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[SPEAKER_02]: because so much of our focus at St. John's particularly being a smaller church, but their hair is a spirit at St. John's that was there well before the an ICAN.
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[SPEAKER_02]: and we just became part of it and built on it.
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[SPEAKER_02]: There was an Arab inclusiveness.
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[SPEAKER_02]: There was also an era of not necessarily following all the rules all the time, which was terrific.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And the thing I remember particularly about Kethan's baptism is all the color, the sari's, but the different,
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[SPEAKER_02]: colors in the diversity, and I think it was a fall day, and the list of my memories.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So the leaves were falling, I mean, just was, it's what God is about.
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[SPEAKER_04]: After our very first service, she greeted us with genuine enthusiasm, not the strained politeness that interfaith families sometimes learned to recognize, but real joy that we were there.
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[SPEAKER_04]: That mattered more than I can explain.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Because if you are part of an interfaith family, you become very sensitive to spaces that ask you quietly or explicitly to leave part of yourself at the door.
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[SPEAKER_04]: But this felt different.
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[SPEAKER_04]: It felt less like entering foreign territory and more like entering into conversation.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Nobody has tried to convert me in all the years I've been there.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Nobody has suddenly expressed hoping I'd come around.
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[SPEAKER_04]: They've always respected the fact that I'm Hindu, fully.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Sometimes they've even asked me to speak about it, from the pulpit, to share our story, to talk about what it means to live this way.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And there's something powerful about that.
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[SPEAKER_04]: When a community doesn't just tolerate your difference, but makes space for it.
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[SPEAKER_04]: We didn't just blend traditions in everyday life.
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[SPEAKER_04]: We anchored them in rituals.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Kiddar was baptized at St. John's in Montclair, New Jersey, close to our home.
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[SPEAKER_04]: It was a beautiful day.
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[SPEAKER_04]: One of those moments where everything feels intentional and symbolic in the best way.
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[SPEAKER_04]: All three of us, Godparents, were there.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Two Hindus, my sister, and someone who is family in every way that matters.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And one Christian, John's cousin's son.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Already you can see the architecture of belonging being built, and one of the most meaningful parts was the water.
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[SPEAKER_04]: The water used for his baptism came from two sacred sources, the river Jordan, sacred and Christianity, and the Gangas, sacred and Hinduism, different geographies, different theologies,
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[SPEAKER_04]: The same act of blessing, the same child, at the same moment.
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[SPEAKER_04]: That's intentional integration.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And it matters because rituals are memory makers.
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[SPEAKER_04]: They are the things children return to when they're trying to understand who they are.
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[SPEAKER_04]: But it didn't stop there.
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[SPEAKER_04]: When he was 13 years old, Kiddhar also had his genoa ceremony, a Hindu coming of age ritual.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Now, depending on region, language, and family background, people may know it by different names.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Some listeners may be more familiar with the term Upanayana, or the sacred Thread ceremony.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Historically, the ritual was associated primarily with uppercast Hindu communities, especially boys from Bramman families.
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[SPEAKER_04]: It marked the beginning of formal Vedic study.
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[SPEAKER_04]: In some ways, it function almost like a religious initiation into education itself.
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[SPEAKER_04]: But modern Hindu practices are far more varied than people often realize.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Today, some families still perform the ceremony in traditional ways.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Others reinterpret it completely, some include daughters, some reject the cast dimensions entirely.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Some see it as cultural heritage more than religious obligation.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And many Hindu families simply don't practice it at all.
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[SPEAKER_04]: That's important to say because there isn't just one official Hindu experience.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Hinduism is incredibly regional, linguistic, cultural, and familial.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And when these rituals happen inside mixed faith families, they become even more layered.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Kiddhar having this ceremony was very important to both of us, not as a cultural or religious checkbox, but as an anchoring moment.
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[SPEAKER_04]: a memory maker.
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[SPEAKER_04]: My father set him down and explained his responsibilities.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Not abstractly, not symbolically, practically.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Watching my dad explain everything to Kiddar was incredibly moving.
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[SPEAKER_04]: During the years when my parents were opposed to me being with John, we worried about what our future would look like.
23:07.520 --> 23:19.663
[SPEAKER_04]: And then, years later, to stand there and watch my dad patiently guide Kader through the ceremony, to see how naturally the family's interacted, have fully everyone showed up for one another.
23:20.363 --> 23:22.643
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, it was extraordinary.
23:24.023 --> 23:26.644
[SPEAKER_04]: That was continuity across generations.
23:27.564 --> 23:31.225
[SPEAKER_04]: And in our family, it was also continuity across fades.
23:32.458 --> 23:40.887
[SPEAKER_04]: My father-in-law came to Atlanta for the Genoise ceremony and participated fully in parts of the ritual where family members were involved.
23:41.688 --> 23:45.592
[SPEAKER_04]: He was present, actively engaged, and there as K.D.
23:45.672 --> 23:48.315
[SPEAKER_04]: is grandfather and a member of the family.
24:02.546 --> 24:09.950
[SPEAKER_04]: Most of the confirmation process happened during the pandemic, which meant it wasn't as communal or celebratory as we would have liked.
24:11.171 --> 24:15.914
[SPEAKER_04]: But the substance was there, the instruction, the reflection, the engagement.
24:17.174 --> 24:28.101
[SPEAKER_04]: Sometimes coming of age rituals, like those described above, are designed with a clear singular purpose, to mark entry into adulthood with one tradition.
24:28.770 --> 24:36.137
[SPEAKER_04]: to affirm that you are now a Hindu man or to confirm that you are Christian and will live your life with that commitment.
24:36.958 --> 24:42.704
[SPEAKER_04]: These rituals often carry an implicit expectation of continuity, even permanence.
24:43.645 --> 24:45.687
[SPEAKER_04]: That is not what we were doing.
24:46.748 --> 24:51.352
[SPEAKER_04]: Our intention was not to secure a single religious identity for him.
24:52.364 --> 24:56.647
[SPEAKER_04]: Nor to stage a moment of declaration that would close off other possibilities.
24:57.587 --> 25:03.751
[SPEAKER_04]: We approach these rituals as forms of exposure and grounding rather than as endpoints.
25:04.632 --> 25:13.737
[SPEAKER_04]: We wanted him to experience the depth, beauty, and discipline of both traditions to feel what it means to participate.
25:15.078 --> 25:16.099
[SPEAKER_04]: Not just to observe.
25:17.848 --> 25:27.100
[SPEAKER_04]: At the same time, he wanted him to understand that identity, particularly in a multi-faith context, is not something that must be prematurely fixed.
25:27.640 --> 25:30.945
[SPEAKER_04]: In other words, the goal was not resolution, but anchoring.
25:32.200 --> 25:39.503
[SPEAKER_04]: We didn't want to signal what he was, we wanted to anchor him into the possibilities of who he could become.
25:40.444 --> 25:53.790
[SPEAKER_04]: We wanted him to grow up knowing that he stands with both lineages, that both have claims on his history and his imagination, and that neither needs to be diminished for the other to exist.
25:54.290 --> 26:00.973
[SPEAKER_04]: From that foundation, he can choose one, choose both, move between them, or define something new altogether.
26:02.007 --> 26:13.662
[SPEAKER_04]: The point was to give him the language, the familiarity, and the confidence to make that decision, if he decides to make one at all, on his own terms, in his own time.
26:21.869 --> 26:26.434
[SPEAKER_04]: You can prepare your kid for the road of life, but you can't walk it for them.
26:27.496 --> 26:33.523
[SPEAKER_04]: And so inevitably, Kiddar's childhood wasn't always marked by effortless belonging and recognition.
26:34.203 --> 26:35.905
[SPEAKER_03]: There were difficult moments, too.
26:36.566 --> 26:42.473
[SPEAKER_04]: Moments that revealed how even your own community will try to put you in a box and limit who you are.
26:45.289 --> 26:47.950
[SPEAKER_04]: one experience in particular has stayed with me.
26:48.791 --> 26:54.454
[SPEAKER_04]: It happened during Nov. 3, the nine-night Hindu Festival filled with music, dancing, food, and community.
26:55.294 --> 27:09.361
[SPEAKER_04]: If you've ever been to a big Nov. 3 celebration, you know the energy, women, and bright-genia jollies, the sound of garbum music pulsing through the room, little kids darting everywhere while adults trying to unsuccessfully keep track of them.
27:10.242 --> 27:12.303
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's exactly what Kiddar usually did.
27:13.315 --> 27:23.183
[SPEAKER_04]: He'd show up and immediately disappear into a pack of kids playing soccer or tag or just running around in circles for no apparent reason other than they had a lot of energy to burn.
27:24.023 --> 27:27.246
[SPEAKER_04]: But one year, he was maybe 9 or 10, something felt different.
27:28.327 --> 27:31.949
[SPEAKER_04]: We had gone to a never-a-three event where people didn't really know our family.
27:32.450 --> 27:37.634
[SPEAKER_04]: We had barely been there a few minutes when Kather walked over to me and quietly asked, what are we going home?
27:39.137 --> 27:40.338
[SPEAKER_04]: that really surprised me.
27:41.258 --> 27:43.159
[SPEAKER_04]: Because this was a child.
27:43.679 --> 27:46.060
[SPEAKER_04]: We normally had to drag out of these events.
27:46.720 --> 27:50.722
[SPEAKER_04]: He was social, energetic, completely comfortable in these spaces.
27:51.262 --> 27:54.784
[SPEAKER_04]: So the second he asked that question, I knew something was up.
27:55.584 --> 28:01.547
[SPEAKER_04]: For a second, I wondered if someone had said something to him or if there had been some kind of dramatic confrontation.
28:02.567 --> 28:04.468
[SPEAKER_04]: But then I realized what was going on.
28:07.227 --> 28:14.710
[SPEAKER_04]: But the other kids, all of whom were Indian, were trying to figure out who this white appearing kid was, and why was he here?
28:16.191 --> 28:19.732
[SPEAKER_04]: And Kiddhar could sense that those kids didn't think he belonged there.
28:20.212 --> 28:21.713
[SPEAKER_04]: His spidey senses were up.
28:22.733 --> 28:24.654
[SPEAKER_04]: We all know when we are not wanted.
28:24.934 --> 28:33.838
[SPEAKER_04]: You become very attuned to those moments, the pause, the glances, the subtle uncertainty that hangs in the air before anyone says a word.
28:35.593 --> 28:40.217
[SPEAKER_04]: So I walked over with him to those group of boys and said casually.
28:40.998 --> 28:42.459
[SPEAKER_04]: Hi guys, I'm Kathy Antie.
28:42.659 --> 28:43.500
[SPEAKER_04]: This is Kather.
28:43.540 --> 28:44.441
[SPEAKER_04]: Can he play with you?
28:45.082 --> 28:47.384
[SPEAKER_04]: And immediately, yeah, Antie, no problem.
28:47.764 --> 28:50.206
[SPEAKER_04]: And just like that, everything shifted.
28:50.967 --> 28:57.193
[SPEAKER_04]: Within minutes, he was off running around again, completely absorbed in the chaos and joy of being a kid at Nov. 3.
28:58.736 --> 29:10.592
[SPEAKER_04]: To the kids, I provided the authenticity badge, the explanation for why Kather, this white skinned, brownish red hair boy, belonged there.
29:11.345 --> 29:14.407
[SPEAKER_04]: To be clear, he didn't need permission to belong.
29:14.907 --> 29:31.795
[SPEAKER_04]: He belonged already, but sometimes communities trying to preserve culture and identity look for signals, for familiarity, for reassurance that someone is connected and that they are one of us, even if they don't immediately look the way people expect.
29:33.356 --> 29:35.477
[SPEAKER_04]: In that moment, I became the bridge,
29:40.161 --> 29:42.784
[SPEAKER_04]: Belonging is not just something we feel internally.
29:42.904 --> 29:47.510
[SPEAKER_04]: It's something to go shaded in real time, in community, often with that words.
29:48.191 --> 29:56.881
[SPEAKER_04]: For kids like Kiddar, Belonging could hinge on whether people were willing to see beyond first impressions or whether someone stepped in to help make that connection visible.
29:57.822 --> 30:02.445
[SPEAKER_04]: Real belonging happens when that translation is no longer necessary.
30:02.885 --> 30:10.809
[SPEAKER_04]: When a child can walk into a room fully as themselves without meeting anyone else to explain why they belong there.
30:19.694 --> 30:22.375
[SPEAKER_04]: And here's where it gets even more interesting.
30:23.155 --> 30:25.877
[SPEAKER_04]: While I live in New Jersey, Atlanta is still home.
30:27.002 --> 30:29.884
[SPEAKER_04]: I was raised in the Indian American community in Cobb County.
30:30.304 --> 30:39.869
[SPEAKER_04]: The temple I grew up in is still the one that is most familiar to me, because it is the one that has all my uncles and aunties, the community I grew up with.
30:40.550 --> 30:44.492
[SPEAKER_04]: When John and I began our relationship, bringing him to Atlanta was difficult.
30:45.513 --> 30:47.274
[SPEAKER_04]: And now when Kay Thar goes there?
30:48.143 --> 30:50.444
[SPEAKER_04]: It is where he really feels like he belongs.
30:51.164 --> 30:55.485
[SPEAKER_04]: He's known, he's recognized, he's not the kid who looks different.
30:56.005 --> 30:59.706
[SPEAKER_04]: He's Yogish and Madhu's grandson, he's Kathy's son.
31:00.406 --> 31:01.767
[SPEAKER_04]: That changes everything.
31:02.467 --> 31:03.947
[SPEAKER_04]: Nobody questions his presence.
31:04.588 --> 31:06.548
[SPEAKER_04]: Nobody wonders if he's in the right place.
31:06.988 --> 31:07.808
[SPEAKER_04]: He just is.
31:08.729 --> 31:09.409
[SPEAKER_04]: And he knows it.
31:15.005 --> 31:22.050
[SPEAKER_04]: And my father, seeing how important that is, has made it a point to talk to mixed families whenever he sees them in the temple.
31:22.690 --> 31:24.771
[SPEAKER_04]: He goes out of his ways to welcome them.
31:25.372 --> 31:28.013
[SPEAKER_04]: To make sure they feel like they should come back.
31:28.554 --> 31:30.435
[SPEAKER_04]: It's intentional community building.
31:31.215 --> 31:34.638
[SPEAKER_04]: It's recognizing that belonging doesn't happen by accident.
31:34.898 --> 31:35.678
[SPEAKER_04]: It's created.
31:36.459 --> 31:38.920
[SPEAKER_04]: So when people ask, how do you do both?
31:39.801 --> 31:42.383
[SPEAKER_04]: What they're really asking is, is this actually possible?
31:43.372 --> 31:50.036
[SPEAKER_04]: can you raise a child without forcing them to choose even though the whole world is saying otherwise?
31:50.776 --> 31:55.299
[SPEAKER_04]: Can you build a life where difference isn't managed but embraced?
31:56.500 --> 32:02.003
[SPEAKER_04]: The answer is yes, but you cannot do this passively.
32:02.723 --> 32:05.565
[SPEAKER_04]: You have to decide again and again.
32:11.938 --> 32:17.843
[SPEAKER_04]: You have to advocate when necessary, step in when needed, step back when possible.
32:19.144 --> 32:23.948
[SPEAKER_04]: You have to find communities that don't just accept you, but make space for you.
32:24.868 --> 32:28.351
[SPEAKER_04]: And sometimes that means you have to build that space yourself.
32:30.173 --> 32:35.697
[SPEAKER_04]: Because what you're really giving your child is not just exposure to two religious traditions.
32:36.798 --> 32:39.800
[SPEAKER_04]: You're giving them a framework that says and shows,
32:40.679 --> 32:43.362
[SPEAKER_04]: you don't have to shrink yourself to fit.
32:44.303 --> 32:48.367
[SPEAKER_04]: You don't have to choose when the choice is false.
32:49.328 --> 32:53.331
[SPEAKER_04]: You can live in complexity without being confused.
32:54.793 --> 32:57.536
[SPEAKER_04]: You can belong in more than one place.
32:59.036 --> 33:02.038
[SPEAKER_04]: But here's the part, people don't always want to hear.
33:02.958 --> 33:04.699
[SPEAKER_04]: This doesn't happen by accident.
33:05.519 --> 33:10.422
[SPEAKER_04]: If you leave a dead chance, the world will push your child to simplify themselves.
33:38.251 --> 33:47.614
[SPEAKER_04]: To pick, to explain, to justify, so you have to be deliberate, you have to be intentional.
33:49.214 --> 33:53.015
[SPEAKER_04]: Not rigid, not controlling, but very clear.
33:54.251 --> 34:02.695
[SPEAKER_04]: Because one day, your child is going to be in the back seat somewhere, and someone is going to ask them what are you.
34:03.655 --> 34:07.737
[SPEAKER_04]: And in that moment, you don't get to answer, they do.
34:10.398 --> 34:14.940
[SPEAKER_04]: And what they say will tell you everything about what you built.
34:25.116 --> 34:25.399
[UNKNOWN]: Thank you.
34:55.203 --> 34:57.164
[SPEAKER_04]: That's it for this episode of Mixed.
34:57.544 --> 34:58.905
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you so much for listening.
34:59.386 --> 35:09.131
[SPEAKER_04]: Mixed was created by me, Dr. Kathy Joshee, in conjunction with the Institute for Religion, Media, and Civic Engagement, and Access Mundi Media.
35:09.872 --> 35:13.094
[SPEAKER_04]: Mixed was produced by Andrew Gill and Bradley O'Neighee.
35:13.574 --> 35:16.796
[SPEAKER_04]: And the original music and engineering by Scott O'Kamoto.
35:17.477 --> 35:20.078
[SPEAKER_04]: Cari O'Neighee provided production assistance.
35:20.718 --> 35:22.700
[SPEAKER_04]: Our story editor is Lee Epang.
35:23.380 --> 35:33.032
[SPEAKER_04]: Mixed was made possible through generous funding from the Henry loose foundation and is made in collaboration with a party and the Under God's project.
00:00.031 --> 00:03.672
[SPEAKER_01]: This podcast is made possible through generous funding from the Henry loose foundation.
00:03.832 --> 00:11.435
[SPEAKER_01]: In conjunction with the Asian Pacific American Religious Research Initiative, Apari, and the Institute for Religion Media and Civic Engagement.
00:18.798 --> 00:19.838
[SPEAKER_01]: Access, Moody.
00:24.765 --> 00:31.187
[SPEAKER_04]: When Gidhar was in first or second grade, he was sitting in the backseat of a car with a friend of his who was Muslim.
00:31.967 --> 00:36.308
[SPEAKER_04]: As a parent, you get used to those backseat little kid conversations.
00:37.108 --> 00:42.829
[SPEAKER_04]: Half over her, half improvised, a little philosophical in ways adults forget kids can be.
00:43.569 --> 00:47.210
[SPEAKER_04]: At some point, his friend said something about his religion.
00:47.931 --> 00:51.271
[SPEAKER_04]: And then, with the directness only a child can muster.
00:51.871 --> 00:52.872
[SPEAKER_04]: He turned an asked,
00:56.555 --> 01:04.882
[SPEAKER_04]: and Kather answered very simply, like he was stating his favorite color, or what he wanted for lunch, I'm Hindu and Christian.
01:06.203 --> 01:09.926
[SPEAKER_04]: We'd been telling him this for years, very matter of factly.
01:10.887 --> 01:19.715
[SPEAKER_04]: His friend paused, you could almost hear that pause, the gears turning, the rules he thought he understood getting nudged out of place.
01:21.608 --> 01:23.148
[SPEAKER_04]: He said, you can't be both.
01:24.109 --> 01:32.491
[SPEAKER_04]: And Kiddar, just as calmly, without raising his voice or defending himself, like he'd been accused or something, said, yeah again, I'm both.
01:33.432 --> 01:44.555
[SPEAKER_04]: And that was it, two minutes, no argument, no drama, no adult stepping into mediator explained, just two kids stating what they believed to be true and who they were.
01:45.996 --> 01:49.977
[SPEAKER_04]: If you're a parent, you already know those are the moments that matter.
01:51.101 --> 01:55.185
[SPEAKER_04]: not the big speeches, not the carefully curated lessons.
01:55.645 --> 02:07.217
[SPEAKER_04]: It's the backseat, the car rides, the in-between spaces where kids test what they've absorbed and decide what they actually believe about themselves in the world.
02:08.378 --> 02:29.107
[SPEAKER_04]: In that moment I realized that all those years of preparation had landed because we had told him again and again, people are going to ask you what you are, they may not understand your answer, they may even challenge it and when they do, you can just say, I can be both.
02:30.267 --> 02:32.388
[SPEAKER_04]: Say it with me, I can be both.
02:34.845 --> 02:45.694
[SPEAKER_04]: That kind of clarity doesn't just happen, it takes intention, it takes repetition, and most importantly, it takes modeling.
02:47.776 --> 02:49.517
[SPEAKER_04]: Because it wasn't just what we told him,
02:50.427 --> 02:51.347
[SPEAKER_04]: It's how we lived.
02:52.428 --> 02:55.750
[SPEAKER_04]: And roughly the same period as the Backseat Religion Conversation.
02:56.390 --> 02:59.411
[SPEAKER_04]: There was a day we accidentally double booked ourselves.
03:00.192 --> 03:04.674
[SPEAKER_04]: I had committed to help at our church for an annual feast of thanks in giving.
03:06.035 --> 03:10.377
[SPEAKER_04]: One of the local Hindu temples invited John to speak at a Diwali event.
03:11.156 --> 03:12.957
[SPEAKER_04]: same day, same time.
03:13.738 --> 03:14.578
[SPEAKER_04]: So what did we do?
03:15.258 --> 03:16.439
[SPEAKER_04]: The Hindu went to church.
03:16.999 --> 03:18.760
[SPEAKER_04]: The Christian went to the Hindu temple.
03:19.641 --> 03:20.762
[SPEAKER_04]: And Kiddar saw that.
03:21.482 --> 03:24.904
[SPEAKER_04]: Every Sunday, he saw that we went to church together.
03:25.784 --> 03:27.946
[SPEAKER_04]: We celebrated Hindu holidays together.
03:28.886 --> 03:32.188
[SPEAKER_04]: At dinner, we didn't say one prayer, we said two.
03:33.089 --> 03:36.350
[SPEAKER_04]: So when he said, I'm both, it wasn't theory.
03:37.191 --> 03:38.812
[SPEAKER_04]: It was practice.
03:46.733 --> 03:48.239
[UNKNOWN]: Thank you.
04:16.817 --> 04:32.444
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm Dr. Kathy Joshee, I'm a scholar of Race Religion and Education, a tenure professor who has spent two decades teaching about and studying how identity actually gets formed, not just in textbooks, but in kitchens, classrooms, and car rides home.
04:33.265 --> 04:43.990
[SPEAKER_04]: I've written six books, including White Christian Privilege, the Illusion of Religious Equality in America, teaching for diversity in social justice, and Asian Americans in Dixie.
04:44.630 --> 04:48.095
[SPEAKER_04]: I've spoken to audiences from university lecture halls to the White House.
04:48.796 --> 04:51.980
[SPEAKER_04]: But this podcast isn't just research, it's personal.
04:52.641 --> 04:55.985
[SPEAKER_04]: It's where the scholarship and lived experience meet.
04:56.806 --> 04:57.868
[SPEAKER_04]: This is mixed.
05:14.219 --> 05:17.800
[SPEAKER_04]: It's one thing to say you're raising a child with two faith traditions.
05:18.000 --> 05:20.921
[SPEAKER_04]: It's another thing entirely to actually do it.
05:21.381 --> 05:25.222
[SPEAKER_04]: Day after day, meal after meal, holiday after holiday.
05:26.222 --> 05:36.144
[SPEAKER_04]: In the quiet ordinary rhythms of everyday life, it happens behind closed doors at the kitchen table at bedtime on Sunday mornings.
05:36.805 --> 05:39.445
[SPEAKER_04]: In those small moments, you are handing them something
05:43.241 --> 05:45.642
[SPEAKER_04]: So how do you do two religions?
05:46.603 --> 05:47.883
[SPEAKER_04]: You don't split the difference.
05:48.444 --> 05:51.205
[SPEAKER_04]: You don't dilute one into the other.
05:52.345 --> 05:59.089
[SPEAKER_04]: And you don't treat one religion like the quote unquote real one while the other becomes cultural decoration.
05:59.949 --> 06:05.572
[SPEAKER_04]: You live both fully, visibly, and without apology.
06:06.437 --> 06:10.960
[SPEAKER_04]: Again, at our dinner table, we don't say one prayer, we say two.
06:11.620 --> 06:16.383
[SPEAKER_04]: We begin with a Hindu prayer, something kid our John and I all recite together.
06:17.103 --> 06:22.506
[SPEAKER_04]: Then John leads a Christian prayer, and the two of us join in at the Amen.
06:23.367 --> 06:26.629
[SPEAKER_04]: It's seamless, just normal, and that's the point.
06:27.622 --> 06:31.423
[SPEAKER_04]: because faith in real families is rarely cinematic.
06:31.823 --> 06:36.664
[SPEAKER_04]: It's repetitive, a little messy, embedded in your everyday routine.
06:37.804 --> 06:46.886
[SPEAKER_04]: Kiddar Sami go to church most Sundays, not as an outsider, not as someone reluctantly attending, but as someone who belonged there in her own way.
06:47.787 --> 06:53.628
[SPEAKER_04]: And he saw John participate in Hindu religious and cultural events, not as a visitor.
06:54.584 --> 07:00.548
[SPEAKER_04]: not as someone observing from the sidelines, but as someone engaged, respectful, and present.
07:01.548 --> 07:03.209
[SPEAKER_04]: Kids are smarter than adults think.
07:03.570 --> 07:06.291
[SPEAKER_04]: They can tell when parents are uncomfortable with religion.
07:07.192 --> 07:14.917
[SPEAKER_04]: They can tell when something is performative, and they can definitely tell when adults are quietly embarrassed by one side of the family.
07:16.020 --> 07:29.387
[SPEAKER_04]: What children need is clarity, not certainty about every theological question, but clarity that the adults in their lives respect both traditions enough to practice them honestly.
07:31.308 --> 07:34.570
[SPEAKER_04]: And honestly, the prayers are doing more than blessing the food.
07:35.090 --> 07:40.853
[SPEAKER_04]: They are teaching rhythm, reverence, language, and belonging.
07:42.460 --> 07:47.187
[SPEAKER_04]: They are teaching our son that identity is not a multiple choice test.
07:48.048 --> 07:51.493
[SPEAKER_04]: That home can hold more than one story at a time.
07:52.414 --> 07:54.437
[SPEAKER_04]: So when Kiddar said, I'm both.
07:55.078 --> 07:56.220
[SPEAKER_04]: It wasn't a theory.
07:56.901 --> 07:58.183
[SPEAKER_04]: It was practice.
08:06.757 --> 08:16.066
[SPEAKER_04]: But most parents I have spoken with tell me with some specificity, the first time they realized the American bureaucracy was going to ask their child to pick one.
08:16.826 --> 08:28.357
[SPEAKER_04]: It is almost always a form, a school registration packet, a pediatrician's intake sheet, a summer camp application, a standardized test demographic page.
08:29.218 --> 08:31.540
[SPEAKER_04]: The form asks for race or ethnicity.
08:32.461 --> 08:36.523
[SPEAKER_04]: or religion, and the instruction says often in small print, check one.
08:37.523 --> 08:47.427
[SPEAKER_04]: Before any sociologist writes about forced choice dynamics, before any child has the vocabulary to describe what happened, the forms have already made the point.
08:47.968 --> 08:54.751
[SPEAKER_04]: The American system is built on the assumption that a person has one race, and where religion is asked about
09:01.475 --> 09:03.417
[SPEAKER_04]: And here's the quiet injury in that.
09:03.997 --> 09:13.665
[SPEAKER_04]: A child who has handed one of these forms, or watches a parent fill one out on their behalf learns that there is no box for them, not officially.
09:14.365 --> 09:27.916
[SPEAKER_04]: They can cram two identities into one checkmark by choosing the one the world seems to want them to choose, or they can select other and watch their identity disappear into a catch-all.
09:28.818 --> 09:35.076
[SPEAKER_04]: Either way, a very clear lesson has been communicated before anyone has said a word out loud.
09:38.397 --> 09:44.159
[SPEAKER_04]: It's worth understanding how recent even the limited accommodation of mixed identity is.
09:45.159 --> 09:51.382
[SPEAKER_04]: Before the 2000s, United States Census, Americans were required to mark only one race.
09:51.922 --> 09:59.525
[SPEAKER_04]: For the better part of 200 years, the federal government that counted as officially did not allow anyone to be counted as more than one thing.
10:00.465 --> 10:08.649
[SPEAKER_04]: If you marked more than one box in the 1990 census, the Bureau recategorized you into a single race typically the race of your mother.
10:09.530 --> 10:14.592
[SPEAKER_04]: If they could figure out who she was, this was the rule for the country's entire history.
10:14.912 --> 10:17.634
[SPEAKER_04]: It changed and it did not change long ago.
10:18.506 --> 10:28.836
[SPEAKER_04]: The change in 2000, the option to mark one or more races, was the result of years of advocacy by multi-racial families, scholars, and organizations.
10:29.357 --> 10:35.783
[SPEAKER_04]: Many of them led by mothers of biracial children who were tired of being handed forms that erased their children.
10:36.858 --> 10:40.161
[SPEAKER_04]: It's worth pausing on the demographic reality that drove the fight.
10:40.822 --> 10:50.612
[SPEAKER_04]: By the 1990s, millions of American children did not fit the boxes they were being handed, and their parents were exhausted by being asked to make them fit.
10:53.069 --> 11:06.456
[SPEAKER_04]: what is less often told and what mixed race families are sometimes surprised to learn is that the push for a multi-racial option was opposed by some of the most respected civil rights organizations in the country.
11:07.217 --> 11:09.578
[SPEAKER_04]: The NAACP and others argued.
11:10.078 --> 11:12.760
[SPEAKER_04]: against a separate multi-racial category.
11:12.780 --> 11:27.309
[SPEAKER_04]: And against the check-all that apply option, on the grounds that these changes would dilute the counts of black Latino and other minoritized populations, counts on which the enforcement of civil rights law depended.
11:27.770 --> 11:36.996
[SPEAKER_04]: Federal resource allocation, voting rights enforcement, school integration plans, public health funding, all of these leaned on population data.
11:37.736 --> 11:42.717
[SPEAKER_04]: and that data had been collected in single race categories for decades.
11:48.098 --> 11:50.139
[SPEAKER_04]: You can hold two things to be true at once.
11:50.719 --> 11:55.740
[SPEAKER_04]: The advocacy of mixed race families and organizations was legitimate.
11:56.040 --> 12:00.121
[SPEAKER_04]: These children existed and their identities deserved recognition.
12:00.781 --> 12:04.482
[SPEAKER_04]: The concern of civil rights organizations were also legitimate.
12:05.262 --> 12:17.171
[SPEAKER_04]: The categories were being used as a tool to protect hard-won gains, for communities that had been systematically counted, uncounted, and miscounted, for most of American history.
12:17.812 --> 12:19.993
[SPEAKER_04]: Both sides were fighting for something real.
12:20.834 --> 12:22.035
[SPEAKER_04]: The compromise reached.
12:22.956 --> 12:29.981
[SPEAKER_04]: Americans would be allowed to mark one or more races, but a separate multiracial category would not be created.
12:36.432 --> 12:41.473
[SPEAKER_04]: I tell this history because I think it helps to understand that forms are not neutral.
12:42.273 --> 12:47.895
[SPEAKER_04]: They carry the weight of a long argument about who gets counted and how and for what purpose.
12:48.695 --> 12:55.497
[SPEAKER_04]: When a kindergarteners registration packet asked for a single race and no more, it is not simply an oversight.
12:56.357 --> 13:02.719
[SPEAKER_04]: It is the bureaucratic residue of a society that has never made its mind up about whether
13:05.737 --> 13:08.838
[SPEAKER_04]: And the forms asking about religion are almost non-existent.
13:09.098 --> 13:15.879
[SPEAKER_04]: There is no routine federal demographic instrument that asks about religious identity, let alone multiple religious identities.
13:16.720 --> 13:22.961
[SPEAKER_04]: The work of the adults around mixed children is, in part, to say out loud, with the forms will not.
13:23.581 --> 13:25.582
[SPEAKER_04]: The form is limited, you are not.
13:26.082 --> 13:28.022
[SPEAKER_04]: You are both, you are multiple.
13:28.682 --> 13:31.043
[SPEAKER_04]: Your story doesn't fit in the box.
13:37.355 --> 13:42.600
[SPEAKER_04]: But before kiddo was even born, we knew this wasn't going to work unless we were intentional.
13:44.181 --> 13:52.349
[SPEAKER_04]: We went church shopping, not for aesthetics, not for the coffee hour, not because somebody had a better youth group brochure, but for alignment.
13:53.851 --> 14:02.319
[SPEAKER_04]: We were looking for a place where our family, not some edited down version of it, could exist honestly.
14:03.635 --> 14:14.300
[SPEAKER_04]: For example, it was really important to both of us that we find a church where I would be allowed to take communion, the bread and wine that represent the body and blood of Jesus Christ.
14:14.780 --> 14:18.502
[SPEAKER_04]: For Hindus, taking communion is not a theological problem.
14:19.122 --> 14:20.563
[SPEAKER_04]: It's actually quite familiar.
14:21.123 --> 14:23.804
[SPEAKER_04]: Many Hindus regard Jesus as a divine figure.
14:24.424 --> 14:26.905
[SPEAKER_04]: Also, communion is like Prasad.
14:27.586 --> 14:30.907
[SPEAKER_04]: Food that is consumed after being offered to the divine
14:33.878 --> 14:38.102
[SPEAKER_04]: For some churches, communion is a sacrament where all are welcome.
14:38.642 --> 14:49.952
[SPEAKER_04]: But in many churches, communion is a, quote, members only activity reserved for baptized Christians or for members of the church's specific denomination.
14:50.953 --> 14:58.460
[SPEAKER_04]: So while it was no contradiction for me at the church John grew up in Pennsylvania, I wasn't allowed to take communion.
14:59.623 --> 15:06.988
[SPEAKER_04]: You might remember that John is from a small town, Hershey, PA, that at the time had little in the way of religious and racial diversity.
15:07.669 --> 15:12.212
[SPEAKER_04]: His minister wouldn't perform our wedding ceremony because I wasn't Christian.
15:13.373 --> 15:14.714
[SPEAKER_04]: And John was very clear.
15:15.194 --> 15:19.437
[SPEAKER_04]: There's no way me and the kids are going up there while you're sitting in the pew.
15:19.897 --> 15:21.318
[SPEAKER_04]: That's not going to happen.
15:23.960 --> 15:26.342
[SPEAKER_04]: Here's John in his own words.
15:27.366 --> 15:38.791
[SPEAKER_00]: In the Episcopal Church, some believe that all are welcome at Communion, and in other church communities, Communion is restricted to people who are baptized Christians.
15:40.012 --> 15:45.935
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was important to me that when we went to church as a family,
15:47.056 --> 15:53.181
[SPEAKER_00]: Kiyathe could participate fully and our kids could see her participating fully.
15:53.622 --> 16:02.250
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't want a situation where I was going up for communion or I was taking our children up for communion and Kiyathe had to stay back in the fuse.
16:03.190 --> 16:11.378
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not what I believe as a Christian and it's also not how I wanted my kids to see our family's participation in the church.
16:12.169 --> 16:22.375
[SPEAKER_00]: When we were looking for a church community to join after moving to New Jersey, it was important to find one where all of us would be welcome at the altar for communion.
16:22.855 --> 16:33.642
[SPEAKER_04]: That was a line in the sand because exclusion sends a message and we cannot build a family where one parent participates and the other is quietly sideline.
16:34.422 --> 16:37.244
[SPEAKER_04]: We shopped many different applicable churches.
16:38.686 --> 16:47.971
[SPEAKER_04]: And eventually, we found a community, St. John's Episcopal Church in Montclair, New Jersey, that felt different from the moment we walked through the doors.
16:49.052 --> 16:52.874
[SPEAKER_04]: Part of it was the Church's motto, many paths, one journey.
16:53.435 --> 16:55.716
[SPEAKER_04]: It wasn't just a slogan printed on a brochure.
16:56.476 --> 16:58.878
[SPEAKER_04]: It actually seemed to shape the culture of the place.
16:59.738 --> 17:07.483
[SPEAKER_04]: There was an openness to it, a warmth, a sense that people did not need to arrive already fitting perfectly into some narrow mold.
17:09.432 --> 17:11.473
[SPEAKER_04]: And then, there was Reverend Diana.
17:14.774 --> 17:34.441
[SPEAKER_02]: When you and John came to church, and, first of all, you told me that, you know, you were Hindu, and you wanted to know who to take communion, I said, of course, and what I got to ask, I'm a kid about, he was all like, so I'm going to do a push-up, and I said, absolutely.
17:35.441 --> 17:37.942
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was such a thrill to me.
17:38.640 --> 17:52.402
[SPEAKER_02]: because so much of our focus at St. John's particularly being a smaller church, but their hair is a spirit at St. John's that was there well before the an ICAN.
17:53.425 --> 17:56.908
[SPEAKER_02]: and we just became part of it and built on it.
17:57.549 --> 17:59.851
[SPEAKER_02]: There was an Arab inclusiveness.
17:59.931 --> 18:05.996
[SPEAKER_02]: There was also an era of not necessarily following all the rules all the time, which was terrific.
18:06.437 --> 18:16.966
[SPEAKER_02]: And the thing I remember particularly about Kethan's baptism is all the color, the sari's, but the different,
18:18.815 --> 18:26.708
[SPEAKER_02]: colors in the diversity, and I think it was a fall day, and the list of my memories.
18:26.849 --> 18:32.298
[SPEAKER_02]: So the leaves were falling, I mean, just was, it's what God is about.
18:35.717 --> 18:49.016
[SPEAKER_04]: After our very first service, she greeted us with genuine enthusiasm, not the strained politeness that interfaith families sometimes learned to recognize, but real joy that we were there.
18:49.797 --> 18:52.060
[SPEAKER_04]: That mattered more than I can explain.
18:53.042 --> 19:02.906
[SPEAKER_04]: Because if you are part of an interfaith family, you become very sensitive to spaces that ask you quietly or explicitly to leave part of yourself at the door.
19:04.046 --> 19:06.127
[SPEAKER_04]: But this felt different.
19:07.447 --> 19:12.829
[SPEAKER_04]: It felt less like entering foreign territory and more like entering into conversation.
19:13.590 --> 19:17.451
[SPEAKER_04]: Nobody has tried to convert me in all the years I've been there.
19:18.592 --> 19:21.713
[SPEAKER_04]: Nobody has suddenly expressed hoping I'd come around.
19:22.789 --> 19:26.151
[SPEAKER_04]: They've always respected the fact that I'm Hindu, fully.
19:27.071 --> 19:35.955
[SPEAKER_04]: Sometimes they've even asked me to speak about it, from the pulpit, to share our story, to talk about what it means to live this way.
19:37.235 --> 19:39.496
[SPEAKER_04]: And there's something powerful about that.
19:39.737 --> 19:44.899
[SPEAKER_04]: When a community doesn't just tolerate your difference, but makes space for it.
19:46.799 --> 19:49.480
[SPEAKER_04]: We didn't just blend traditions in everyday life.
19:49.880 --> 19:51.580
[SPEAKER_04]: We anchored them in rituals.
19:52.481 --> 19:56.802
[SPEAKER_04]: Kiddar was baptized at St. John's in Montclair, New Jersey, close to our home.
19:57.042 --> 19:58.222
[SPEAKER_04]: It was a beautiful day.
19:58.842 --> 20:02.884
[SPEAKER_04]: One of those moments where everything feels intentional and symbolic in the best way.
20:03.684 --> 20:05.624
[SPEAKER_04]: All three of us, Godparents, were there.
20:06.104 --> 20:11.386
[SPEAKER_04]: Two Hindus, my sister, and someone who is family in every way that matters.
20:12.046 --> 20:14.627
[SPEAKER_04]: And one Christian, John's cousin's son.
20:15.907 --> 20:23.811
[SPEAKER_04]: Already you can see the architecture of belonging being built, and one of the most meaningful parts was the water.
20:24.971 --> 20:37.958
[SPEAKER_04]: The water used for his baptism came from two sacred sources, the river Jordan, sacred and Christianity, and the Gangas, sacred and Hinduism, different geographies, different theologies,
20:39.310 --> 20:44.433
[SPEAKER_04]: The same act of blessing, the same child, at the same moment.
20:45.434 --> 20:47.515
[SPEAKER_04]: That's intentional integration.
20:48.736 --> 20:52.258
[SPEAKER_04]: And it matters because rituals are memory makers.
20:52.898 --> 20:58.362
[SPEAKER_04]: They are the things children return to when they're trying to understand who they are.
21:02.264 --> 21:03.405
[SPEAKER_04]: But it didn't stop there.
21:05.048 --> 21:10.870
[SPEAKER_04]: When he was 13 years old, Kiddhar also had his genoa ceremony, a Hindu coming of age ritual.
21:11.590 --> 21:18.132
[SPEAKER_04]: Now, depending on region, language, and family background, people may know it by different names.
21:18.612 --> 21:25.714
[SPEAKER_04]: Some listeners may be more familiar with the term Upanayana, or the sacred Thread ceremony.
21:26.434 --> 21:33.763
[SPEAKER_04]: Historically, the ritual was associated primarily with uppercast Hindu communities, especially boys from Bramman families.
21:34.604 --> 21:37.127
[SPEAKER_04]: It marked the beginning of formal Vedic study.
21:37.628 --> 21:42.774
[SPEAKER_04]: In some ways, it function almost like a religious initiation into education itself.
21:44.033 --> 21:48.477
[SPEAKER_04]: But modern Hindu practices are far more varied than people often realize.
21:49.158 --> 21:53.402
[SPEAKER_04]: Today, some families still perform the ceremony in traditional ways.
21:54.163 --> 22:00.809
[SPEAKER_04]: Others reinterpret it completely, some include daughters, some reject the cast dimensions entirely.
22:01.409 --> 22:05.093
[SPEAKER_04]: Some see it as cultural heritage more than religious obligation.
22:05.874 --> 22:08.876
[SPEAKER_04]: And many Hindu families simply don't practice it at all.
22:09.838 --> 22:14.541
[SPEAKER_04]: That's important to say because there isn't just one official Hindu experience.
22:15.562 --> 22:20.625
[SPEAKER_04]: Hinduism is incredibly regional, linguistic, cultural, and familial.
22:21.866 --> 22:27.590
[SPEAKER_04]: And when these rituals happen inside mixed faith families, they become even more layered.
22:28.591 --> 22:37.036
[SPEAKER_04]: Kiddhar having this ceremony was very important to both of us, not as a cultural or religious checkbox, but as an anchoring moment.
22:37.978 --> 22:38.859
[SPEAKER_04]: a memory maker.
22:40.039 --> 22:43.202
[SPEAKER_04]: My father set him down and explained his responsibilities.
22:44.843 --> 22:48.405
[SPEAKER_04]: Not abstractly, not symbolically, practically.
22:55.530 --> 22:59.253
[SPEAKER_04]: Watching my dad explain everything to Kiddar was incredibly moving.
23:00.373 --> 23:06.838
[SPEAKER_04]: During the years when my parents were opposed to me being with John, we worried about what our future would look like.
23:07.520 --> 23:19.663
[SPEAKER_04]: And then, years later, to stand there and watch my dad patiently guide Kader through the ceremony, to see how naturally the family's interacted, have fully everyone showed up for one another.
23:20.363 --> 23:22.643
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, it was extraordinary.
23:24.023 --> 23:26.644
[SPEAKER_04]: That was continuity across generations.
23:27.564 --> 23:31.225
[SPEAKER_04]: And in our family, it was also continuity across fades.
23:32.458 --> 23:40.887
[SPEAKER_04]: My father-in-law came to Atlanta for the Genoise ceremony and participated fully in parts of the ritual where family members were involved.
23:41.688 --> 23:45.592
[SPEAKER_04]: He was present, actively engaged, and there as K.D.
23:45.672 --> 23:48.315
[SPEAKER_04]: is grandfather and a member of the family.
24:02.546 --> 24:09.950
[SPEAKER_04]: Most of the confirmation process happened during the pandemic, which meant it wasn't as communal or celebratory as we would have liked.
24:11.171 --> 24:15.914
[SPEAKER_04]: But the substance was there, the instruction, the reflection, the engagement.
24:17.174 --> 24:28.101
[SPEAKER_04]: Sometimes coming of age rituals, like those described above, are designed with a clear singular purpose, to mark entry into adulthood with one tradition.
24:28.770 --> 24:36.137
[SPEAKER_04]: to affirm that you are now a Hindu man or to confirm that you are Christian and will live your life with that commitment.
24:36.958 --> 24:42.704
[SPEAKER_04]: These rituals often carry an implicit expectation of continuity, even permanence.
24:43.645 --> 24:45.687
[SPEAKER_04]: That is not what we were doing.
24:46.748 --> 24:51.352
[SPEAKER_04]: Our intention was not to secure a single religious identity for him.
24:52.364 --> 24:56.647
[SPEAKER_04]: Nor to stage a moment of declaration that would close off other possibilities.
24:57.587 --> 25:03.751
[SPEAKER_04]: We approach these rituals as forms of exposure and grounding rather than as endpoints.
25:04.632 --> 25:13.737
[SPEAKER_04]: We wanted him to experience the depth, beauty, and discipline of both traditions to feel what it means to participate.
25:15.078 --> 25:16.099
[SPEAKER_04]: Not just to observe.
25:17.848 --> 25:27.100
[SPEAKER_04]: At the same time, he wanted him to understand that identity, particularly in a multi-faith context, is not something that must be prematurely fixed.
25:27.640 --> 25:30.945
[SPEAKER_04]: In other words, the goal was not resolution, but anchoring.
25:32.200 --> 25:39.503
[SPEAKER_04]: We didn't want to signal what he was, we wanted to anchor him into the possibilities of who he could become.
25:40.444 --> 25:53.790
[SPEAKER_04]: We wanted him to grow up knowing that he stands with both lineages, that both have claims on his history and his imagination, and that neither needs to be diminished for the other to exist.
25:54.290 --> 26:00.973
[SPEAKER_04]: From that foundation, he can choose one, choose both, move between them, or define something new altogether.
26:02.007 --> 26:13.662
[SPEAKER_04]: The point was to give him the language, the familiarity, and the confidence to make that decision, if he decides to make one at all, on his own terms, in his own time.
26:21.869 --> 26:26.434
[SPEAKER_04]: You can prepare your kid for the road of life, but you can't walk it for them.
26:27.496 --> 26:33.523
[SPEAKER_04]: And so inevitably, Kiddar's childhood wasn't always marked by effortless belonging and recognition.
26:34.203 --> 26:35.905
[SPEAKER_03]: There were difficult moments, too.
26:36.566 --> 26:42.473
[SPEAKER_04]: Moments that revealed how even your own community will try to put you in a box and limit who you are.
26:45.289 --> 26:47.950
[SPEAKER_04]: one experience in particular has stayed with me.
26:48.791 --> 26:54.454
[SPEAKER_04]: It happened during Nov. 3, the nine-night Hindu Festival filled with music, dancing, food, and community.
26:55.294 --> 27:09.361
[SPEAKER_04]: If you've ever been to a big Nov. 3 celebration, you know the energy, women, and bright-genia jollies, the sound of garbum music pulsing through the room, little kids darting everywhere while adults trying to unsuccessfully keep track of them.
27:10.242 --> 27:12.303
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's exactly what Kiddar usually did.
27:13.315 --> 27:23.183
[SPEAKER_04]: He'd show up and immediately disappear into a pack of kids playing soccer or tag or just running around in circles for no apparent reason other than they had a lot of energy to burn.
27:24.023 --> 27:27.246
[SPEAKER_04]: But one year, he was maybe 9 or 10, something felt different.
27:28.327 --> 27:31.949
[SPEAKER_04]: We had gone to a never-a-three event where people didn't really know our family.
27:32.450 --> 27:37.634
[SPEAKER_04]: We had barely been there a few minutes when Kather walked over to me and quietly asked, what are we going home?
27:39.137 --> 27:40.338
[SPEAKER_04]: that really surprised me.
27:41.258 --> 27:43.159
[SPEAKER_04]: Because this was a child.
27:43.679 --> 27:46.060
[SPEAKER_04]: We normally had to drag out of these events.
27:46.720 --> 27:50.722
[SPEAKER_04]: He was social, energetic, completely comfortable in these spaces.
27:51.262 --> 27:54.784
[SPEAKER_04]: So the second he asked that question, I knew something was up.
27:55.584 --> 28:01.547
[SPEAKER_04]: For a second, I wondered if someone had said something to him or if there had been some kind of dramatic confrontation.
28:02.567 --> 28:04.468
[SPEAKER_04]: But then I realized what was going on.
28:07.227 --> 28:14.710
[SPEAKER_04]: But the other kids, all of whom were Indian, were trying to figure out who this white appearing kid was, and why was he here?
28:16.191 --> 28:19.732
[SPEAKER_04]: And Kiddhar could sense that those kids didn't think he belonged there.
28:20.212 --> 28:21.713
[SPEAKER_04]: His spidey senses were up.
28:22.733 --> 28:24.654
[SPEAKER_04]: We all know when we are not wanted.
28:24.934 --> 28:33.838
[SPEAKER_04]: You become very attuned to those moments, the pause, the glances, the subtle uncertainty that hangs in the air before anyone says a word.
28:35.593 --> 28:40.217
[SPEAKER_04]: So I walked over with him to those group of boys and said casually.
28:40.998 --> 28:42.459
[SPEAKER_04]: Hi guys, I'm Kathy Antie.
28:42.659 --> 28:43.500
[SPEAKER_04]: This is Kather.
28:43.540 --> 28:44.441
[SPEAKER_04]: Can he play with you?
28:45.082 --> 28:47.384
[SPEAKER_04]: And immediately, yeah, Antie, no problem.
28:47.764 --> 28:50.206
[SPEAKER_04]: And just like that, everything shifted.
28:50.967 --> 28:57.193
[SPEAKER_04]: Within minutes, he was off running around again, completely absorbed in the chaos and joy of being a kid at Nov. 3.
28:58.736 --> 29:10.592
[SPEAKER_04]: To the kids, I provided the authenticity badge, the explanation for why Kather, this white skinned, brownish red hair boy, belonged there.
29:11.345 --> 29:14.407
[SPEAKER_04]: To be clear, he didn't need permission to belong.
29:14.907 --> 29:31.795
[SPEAKER_04]: He belonged already, but sometimes communities trying to preserve culture and identity look for signals, for familiarity, for reassurance that someone is connected and that they are one of us, even if they don't immediately look the way people expect.
29:33.356 --> 29:35.477
[SPEAKER_04]: In that moment, I became the bridge,
29:40.161 --> 29:42.784
[SPEAKER_04]: Belonging is not just something we feel internally.
29:42.904 --> 29:47.510
[SPEAKER_04]: It's something to go shaded in real time, in community, often with that words.
29:48.191 --> 29:56.881
[SPEAKER_04]: For kids like Kiddar, Belonging could hinge on whether people were willing to see beyond first impressions or whether someone stepped in to help make that connection visible.
29:57.822 --> 30:02.445
[SPEAKER_04]: Real belonging happens when that translation is no longer necessary.
30:02.885 --> 30:10.809
[SPEAKER_04]: When a child can walk into a room fully as themselves without meeting anyone else to explain why they belong there.
30:19.694 --> 30:22.375
[SPEAKER_04]: And here's where it gets even more interesting.
30:23.155 --> 30:25.877
[SPEAKER_04]: While I live in New Jersey, Atlanta is still home.
30:27.002 --> 30:29.884
[SPEAKER_04]: I was raised in the Indian American community in Cobb County.
30:30.304 --> 30:39.869
[SPEAKER_04]: The temple I grew up in is still the one that is most familiar to me, because it is the one that has all my uncles and aunties, the community I grew up with.
30:40.550 --> 30:44.492
[SPEAKER_04]: When John and I began our relationship, bringing him to Atlanta was difficult.
30:45.513 --> 30:47.274
[SPEAKER_04]: And now when Kay Thar goes there?
30:48.143 --> 30:50.444
[SPEAKER_04]: It is where he really feels like he belongs.
30:51.164 --> 30:55.485
[SPEAKER_04]: He's known, he's recognized, he's not the kid who looks different.
30:56.005 --> 30:59.706
[SPEAKER_04]: He's Yogish and Madhu's grandson, he's Kathy's son.
31:00.406 --> 31:01.767
[SPEAKER_04]: That changes everything.
31:02.467 --> 31:03.947
[SPEAKER_04]: Nobody questions his presence.
31:04.588 --> 31:06.548
[SPEAKER_04]: Nobody wonders if he's in the right place.
31:06.988 --> 31:07.808
[SPEAKER_04]: He just is.
31:08.729 --> 31:09.409
[SPEAKER_04]: And he knows it.
31:15.005 --> 31:22.050
[SPEAKER_04]: And my father, seeing how important that is, has made it a point to talk to mixed families whenever he sees them in the temple.
31:22.690 --> 31:24.771
[SPEAKER_04]: He goes out of his ways to welcome them.
31:25.372 --> 31:28.013
[SPEAKER_04]: To make sure they feel like they should come back.
31:28.554 --> 31:30.435
[SPEAKER_04]: It's intentional community building.
31:31.215 --> 31:34.638
[SPEAKER_04]: It's recognizing that belonging doesn't happen by accident.
31:34.898 --> 31:35.678
[SPEAKER_04]: It's created.
31:36.459 --> 31:38.920
[SPEAKER_04]: So when people ask, how do you do both?
31:39.801 --> 31:42.383
[SPEAKER_04]: What they're really asking is, is this actually possible?
31:43.372 --> 31:50.036
[SPEAKER_04]: can you raise a child without forcing them to choose even though the whole world is saying otherwise?
31:50.776 --> 31:55.299
[SPEAKER_04]: Can you build a life where difference isn't managed but embraced?
31:56.500 --> 32:02.003
[SPEAKER_04]: The answer is yes, but you cannot do this passively.
32:02.723 --> 32:05.565
[SPEAKER_04]: You have to decide again and again.
32:11.938 --> 32:17.843
[SPEAKER_04]: You have to advocate when necessary, step in when needed, step back when possible.
32:19.144 --> 32:23.948
[SPEAKER_04]: You have to find communities that don't just accept you, but make space for you.
32:24.868 --> 32:28.351
[SPEAKER_04]: And sometimes that means you have to build that space yourself.
32:30.173 --> 32:35.697
[SPEAKER_04]: Because what you're really giving your child is not just exposure to two religious traditions.
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[SPEAKER_04]: You're giving them a framework that says and shows,
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[SPEAKER_04]: you don't have to shrink yourself to fit.
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[SPEAKER_04]: You don't have to choose when the choice is false.
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[SPEAKER_04]: You can live in complexity without being confused.
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[SPEAKER_04]: You can belong in more than one place.
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[SPEAKER_04]: But here's the part, people don't always want to hear.
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[SPEAKER_04]: This doesn't happen by accident.
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[SPEAKER_04]: If you leave a dead chance, the world will push your child to simplify themselves.
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[SPEAKER_04]: To pick, to explain, to justify, so you have to be deliberate, you have to be intentional.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Not rigid, not controlling, but very clear.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Because one day, your child is going to be in the back seat somewhere, and someone is going to ask them what are you.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And in that moment, you don't get to answer, they do.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And what they say will tell you everything about what you built.
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[UNKNOWN]: Thank you.
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[SPEAKER_04]: That's it for this episode of Mixed.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you so much for listening.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Mixed was created by me, Dr. Kathy Joshee, in conjunction with the Institute for Religion, Media, and Civic Engagement, and Access Mundi Media.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Mixed was produced by Andrew Gill and Bradley O'Neighee.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And the original music and engineering by Scott O'Kamoto.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Cari O'Neighee provided production assistance.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Our story editor is Lee Epang.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Mixed was made possible through generous funding from the Henry loose foundation and is made in collaboration with a party and the Under God's project.
