Revolutions are integral to the history of people of color. And they’re increasingly seen in tensions growing closer to home in 2017. But where have all the South Asian women gone? It seems in stories of race and revolution on screen, South Asians, specifically, South Asian women, are glaringly absent. Then walked in John Ridley’s Guerrilla. … Read More
This piece was originally posted on Homegrown. In February of 2016, a Tanzanian student in Bangalore was pulled out of her car, assaulted and stripped by an angry mob after a 35-year-old pedestrian was knocked down by a Sudanese student in another car. This horrific incident added fuel to the “India is racist” debate, with … Read More
This morning, Brit-Sri Lankan rapper M.I.A. was reported as saying in the current issue of ES Magazine that Black Lives Matter is a limited movement. “It’s not a new thing to me — it’s what Lauryn Hill was saying in the 1990s, or Public Enemy in the 1980s. Is Beyoncé or Kendrick Lamar going to say … Read More
Last week, I published a frustrated piece on Coldplay’s “Hymn for the Weekend,” exhausted that I have to reiterate what South Asians and other people of color have been saying for generations — the co-option, then ridiculing, then romanticizing of our struggles and cultures by white people for entertainment isn’t cute anymore. And yet, here we are. … Read More
