Someone Has Stolen My Identity for RootsCamp!

Thanks for featuring my biography New Organizing but I think I am a victim of identity theft. Who is this PREMA LAI person?

Credit goes to NOI for fixing it within a few hours, though these things really shouldn’t happen. This actually isn’t the first time I have been called “PREMA LAI” by someone at NOI. I was ticked off when it happened at a RI4A summit last June and made a fuss about it. I wonder if the same mistake would be made again and again, if NOI hired someone with knowledge about India and Indians (read: people of color desperately needed in new media organizing). Then again, it can be solved by just having someone who can copy-paste and spell properly.

I am proud of my name and have been told that it suits me. PRERNA means Inspiration (popularized by the TV serial Kasauti Zindagi Kay) and LAL is a common Indian last name in both India and Fiji and it means red (color). I am not Indo-Chinese from Singapore; I am an ethnically Indian Fiji Islander.

Spelling my name wrongly (and those of other ethnic minorities), consistently, is yet another way of othering through a labeling process and a denial of our unique ethnic identities. I think I should start mis-spelling the names of white Americans in a counter-hegemonic labeling process.