This is probably gonna be weird and sappy and you can totally ignore this, but I got to get this off of my chest.
Thank you for making me realize my internal hatred. That sounds weird, but I don’t know any other way to say it. Months ago, you made this video called “the anti Indian sentiment of disney’s jessie” and that was the first video of yours that I ever watched. Let me just tell you, it was eye opening.
I’m South Asian (just FYI, I’m Pakistani, not Indian), so it wasn’t really a surprise to see you discuss the Indian stereotype, but it really made me realize how damaging all this bad media has done for me. When I was a kid, I watched Jessie all the time, so it’s really no wonder that I spent most of my childhood hating myself.
Every time my mom would make me dress up in Desi clothing for school picture day, I would beg her to dress me up in Western clothing, so that people wouldn’t gawk at me or think I was weird. Every time one of my parents spoke at my parent-teacher conferences, I would cringe and sink low in my seat because of their accents and their broken English (Punjabi was their first language). Every time a kid at school would go up to me and ask if I was Indian because I “looked the type,” I would get hot with embarrassment.
I digested American media where I was portrayed as the bad guy, someone to mock, to be embarrassed about, to be fetishized. I internalized that so much I pushed South Asian culture out of my life as much as I could. So much that years later, I realize that I actually feel disconnected with my culture.
And all of these realizations started happening because of your video. For the first time in a long time, I actually feel proud of my culture. I actually want to learn more about it. I refuse to feel ashamed for being me.
Also, thank you for treating the topic with respect. The reason why your video even caught my attention was because you weren’t South Asian. Typically, when someone talks about the Indian stereotype, they’re usually South Asian. So, just thank you. Thank you for supporting us and not tearing us down. POCs deserve so much better and if we just work together, we can make things better for all of us.
I’m starting to sound like a broken record, but thank you so much. I hope that you get everything you want because from one WOC to another, let me just say that you deserve better. We all deserve better.