Indians - What we are shown may not be how we should see.

If I asked you to think of an Indian character in a movie or show who would come to mind? Maybe this guy?

Or maybe this one?

Or this?

In any case, you probably didn't think of some strong football player, or the latest Miss America winner. They way our media often portray Indian's is as the smart, emotionless character that has a hard time expressing themselves. Or in other types of media we see the mistreatment of women and the unrighteous rule of men. But these reports are not always an accurate description of these wonderful people and because we are ignorant, our understanding of who Indian's really are is incomplete. To highlight this, listen to this snippet taken from a recent Huffington Post report on Miss America:

How does this happen? How do we reverse this horrid trend of seeing the color of someones skin and immediately putting them into a specific category in our mind? Our skewed view is easily accepted because it is masked with the cloak of comedy or through the glass of past experiences (9/11, Osama Bin Laden, etc.). But the truth is, Indians are mostly hard working, loving, religious people that live in an impoverished country riddled with corrupt government and complex cleanliness issues. How do we let the very few extremists of different cultures set the definition of all similar ones?

(Images found on Google)

While these pictures don't represent all of India, these are the images we would expect to see, or rather that we would be accustomed to seeing. This is how a lot of India lives day in and day out. A harsh reality often over-shadowed by the comedy or cruelty we relate with when we see people of Indian descent.

The New York Times ran an article just yesterday about Government officials with the title "In India's Politics, Jail Time a Badge of Honor". The article goes on to describe how most if not all of India's officials have been involved in criminal activity. What this tells me is that our popular media misrepresents this race because we mostly see Indian's as that 'behind-the-counter-smart-guy' who likes math and different random American traditions.

It's hard to know who people really are unless you see them face to face and interact with them on a daily basis. If only this was possible! We would be a much more educated people than we currently are because we would understand our world much better than we do now.

So in summation, the invitation this post gives is to explore people and try to see them as they really are and not as how the media gives them for you to see. Because, the media is bias and usually won't give you a clear view of how it really is.