Essentialism and Non-Essentialism in Terms of Defining Race, Demonstrated In Aziz
Ansari’s Master of None – Indians on TV
In today’s increasingly multicultural world it is not unusual to have a mixed cultural identity
and feel a sense of belonging to a few different cultures, instead of just one. However,
viewing culture in very essentialist terms often leads to stifling the identities of people that
have mixed cultural backgrounds. The television show Master of None, episode: Indians on
TV, demonstrates the way in which this occurs, focusing on Indians/Indian-Americans in the
United States. Through dialogue and discourse between the characters, the episode
explores the way in which two characters with non-essentialised views of their racial identity
cope with an environment that forces essentialist views and cultural stereotypes on them. It
especially highlights how strong essentialist views about a culture can negatively impact
upon people whose heritage is rooted to any degree in that cultural background.
Stubblefield (1995, 341) states that “essentialists conceptions of race hold that
characteristics of physical appearance are indicative of more profound characteristics of
personality…cognitive abilities or natural talents shared by all members of a racially defined
group.” This idea is demonstrated in the introduction for Indians on TV, which opens with a
montage of Western television programming that satirizes Indian culture, reducing it to
funny accents, eating exotic foods and working at 7/11s. It strips Indians and their culture of
any complexity, portraying them as a homogenous group, without much purpose other than
comic relief in Western television. These essentialist beliefs, despite not seeming to hold any
extreme negative ideas about Indians, forms the basis for othering Indians, or Indian
Americans as a group, and harmful stereotyping.
Commented [E1]: Good thesis statement, Ananya.
Commented [E3]: Use full quotation marks.
