PART 1: Your Privilege is the Problem

What a privilege it is to choose how others view you. What a privilege it is to get to control how you are represented to the world. A privilege that people from marginalized groups, not too long ago, never had. Even today, we’re still at the mercy of stereotypes and writer’s rooms on shows about us that don’t have the slightest clue of what it is like to be us or to live in our skin. We’re just lucky that some people, like you, reader, are paying attention to this problem. What we want, and need your help with attaining, is full control over how we are viewed on screen so that we can see ourselves in the mirror to our world that is ENTERTAINMENT.

I take my first sentence of this post from the words of South Asian stand-up comedian Hari Kondabolu who made the documentary The Problem with Apu. Apu is a character in the classic American cartoon, The Simpsons, and the longest standing South Asian character on American TV. He also happens to perpetuate white people’s stereotypes and impressions of South Asian immigrants. Yes, he is funny. Yes, he is so lovable. But a) he is voiced by a white guy (whose accent is terrible) and b) for almost 20 years, he was the only representation of Brown people on American television. Even after the white men of Hollywood started writing some Brown characters, they were, well, written by white men! They were representations of how they see us. If they were lucky, the actors playing these roles could gain some agency in their careers and tell their authentic stories, like Aziz Ansari and Mindy Kaling. However, as much as I like these two, they don’t entirely represent me, just a small portion of our shared brownness.

Back to Hari Kondabolu’s documentary. He sets up his mission in the film as getting Hank Azaria, the iconic voice of Apu, to speak on the record for the film. After countless rejections from Azaria’s publicity team, the actor himself emailed Hari telling him he would talk to him after the film was finished because it was in his best interest “not to throw himself at the mercy of [Hari’s] edit”. This, followed up by a “keep up the great work” and “I think what you’re doing is great” from Azaria, incited Hari’s reaction being the first sentence of this post. And indeed, when you’re a white, rich, powerful man trying to protect your image despite ruining the image of an entire diaspora of South Asians for thirty years leading to childhood bullying and a generation of Brown kids desperate to be validated as non-stereotypical… Allow me to catch my breath… you have an insurmountable privilege that us Brown folk cannot stand against. Or can we? I’d argue that after Priyanka Chopra publicly condemned Apu on The View, he might have met his match.

What you have to understand is how even as a South Asian person, I didn’t realize this was a problem until a few years ago. I didn’t realize it was problematic how no one on screen looked like me and when there was someone, they were almost nothing like me, my family members or any South Asian people I knew. Yet, when we watched something and saw someone Brown on our TV, we’d literally exclaim “look, a Brown person!” and intently watch them with our jaws dropped because it was someone like us. I still do this.

As an actor, I wanted to be the one on screen and when I became a little older and started noticing how many auditions I got that requested an accent and how few auditions I got that specifically called for a South Asian actor or BIPOC person in general. I also began to see how rare it was that if it did call for one, none of the writers, directors or producers were Brown. So, at some point maybe four or five years ago (deep into my yucky, hormonal, adolescence) I became angry seeing Brown people on-screen because I wanted it to be me. I started resenting the success of Brown women in Hollywood like Priyanka Chopra, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, and literally any Brown actress I’d see and find everything about them that wasn’t as good as me. I don’t even know them! I’ll go more into this notion of competitiveness among women in another post.

When Hari made that comment about Hank Azaria’s privilege and Brown people’s lack of it, something clicked. I suddenly felt intensely remorseful for the past few years of tearing down Brown people’s success in the industry. Then, the little voice within me said I must radically love and support all the Brown folk like me who are simply trying to pursue their dream and make up for the decades of misrepresentation.

Still, loving them won’t give them or our people as a whole any more privilege and power than we already have.