The Good Immigrant

by Nikesh Shukla

I can’t change my skin tone. White people debate it. We live it.

the totalitarian oppression of The Political Correctness Brigade committed the heinous Stalinist crime of actually making it a bit difficult to take the piss out of ethnic minorities, gay or disabled people, and only ever regard women as either battleaxes or sex objects.

we soon learn we’re supposed to be ‘reasonable’ about racism.

Looking back, this dismissal of my Indian cultural reference points must have caused me to start burying that side of my identity – if it wasn’t relevant to my social growth, what use was it?

‘Black’ men from all 54 African countries live in England, so even a conservative estimate would put a least 1,000 different types of them in the country.

‘What kinda film you making? Did you become an actor to further the Muslim struggle?’ an officer screamed, twisting my arm to the point of snapping.

Human colour is the colour I’m truly interested in, the colour of your humanity. May the size of your heart and the depth of your soul be your currency.

it’s supposedly fine to cast white actors in ethnic minority roles (Angelina Jolie, Emma Stone, Mickey Rooney, I could go on …) but the other way round? There’s more chance of seeing Benedict Cumberbatch in the dole queue.

there are three steps to writing a good character of colour: 1. Write a stonkingly good, well-rounded character 2. Make the ‘effort’ to cast a person of colour 3. That’s it!

It’s remarkable how so many of the country’s economic problems were blamed, not on the misfiring calculations of the financial sector, but instead on the ills of mass immigration.