By Sharanya Gopinathan
Heeeeh. Videos like these don’t often actually make me laugh out loud, but this one is so good, I had four legit LOLs.
Miss Imsong posted a new video titled Presumptuous chinky assumes the North Indian way, and it attacks all the stereotypes people from the North East face in “mainland India”. And she’s just so good, and has this subtle sense of comedic timing that just absolutely makes the video. And for once, the comments on the video reflect exactly how I feel about something: everyone who sees the video just seems to love it.
It’s also good timing for a video like this, that exposes the different kinds of stereotypes we hold that contribute to cultures of racism. The past few weeks have brought Indian racism to the forefront of public discourse, with the barrage of horrifying and racist attacks on African students in Noida. A little before that, we were reading reports on Higio Tama, a student from Arunachal Pradesh who was studying in Bangalore, being beaten up by his landlord and forced to lick the landlord’s shoes. As people have been pointing out lately, we pay lots of attention to racism when the victims are Indians living abroad, but seem to be totally okay with practising it at home.
Videos like this go a long way in contextualising and pointing out different kinds of homegrown racism, and contribute to efforts directed towards dispelling the stereotypes that lead to racism, violent or otherwise. Plus, she’s really, really funny.