Glad I’m not a kid watching that Disney Channel clip.

This is what I would have done if I had seen that clip as a child:

1) laughed along

2) made some joke to my friends about how lame Indians were.

Because that’s what a kid who has no other reflection of herself or her family will do when confronted with stereotypes: internalize them, and distance herself from anything vaguely resembling the thing being mocked. Because its always better to be in on the joke, to be the one they’re laughing with, rather than the one they’re laughing at. 

Every time a Desi person asks me why I take things so seriously, why I’m so “over-sensitive” about these things, my heart hurts, because I was once there too. I was isolated and brainwashed and had no support, and felt the same way they did.

Distancing yourself from the stereotype means rejecting those who choose to care about the stereotype, because avoiding the problem at hand is often easier than dealing with it, in the short-term. 

Until things get so bad that you can’t avoid it any longer, and then you turn yet another burned out, angry, over-sensitive bitch with a chip on her shoulder. Because its better than thinking of yourself as white, when others clearly do not see you that way. When they will never see you that way. 

Seriously, I talk about this racism shit not because I particularly want to, but because I don’t want to see anyone else hurt themselves through their isolation. When I discovered people like me, after I went away to college and after I started reading more, worlds opened for me, and I didn’t have to live the way I was living. Anything I can do to help reduce the isolation of others growing up as a member of an extreme minority in a white country — I’ll do it.

24 Notes/ Hide

  1. nahintho said: yes. yes. yes. and there are definitely little desi kids reacting the way you just described. makes me want to reach out and just hold them. including the little boy acting in that clip because god, how much that feel?
  2. mycrazytruth reblogged this from anedumacation and added:
    still do this. When...say “I just find it impossible not to laugh
  3. kindelling said: What Disney Channel clip?
  4. anedumacation posted this

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