Hasan Minhaj, the beloved comedian of "The Daily Show," has brought to viewers his new show "Patriot Act," a new political comedy that breaks through dunk fatigue of other shows and brings real issues to the forefront. Set up like a stand-up comedy routine, Minhaj simply addresses the crowd and utilizes visual effects to punctuate important points without having to rely on dunking on commonly unpopular figureheads or ideas: namely the president. NPR, in a review of the show, mentions "for the moment, [the show] demonstrates early that whatever he has to say about the president, Minhaj has a lot of other things on his mind that he wants to talk about." Which I believe is important when so many other issues exist besides the fact that our president may be less than ideal (to put it mildly).

One of the issues that affect many young Americans that are applying to colleges is the idea of affirmative action, which is the basis of Minhaj's first episode. Since early summer of 2017, the media has been covering the contentious issue of the lawsuit against Harvard led by a group of Asian-Americans and backed by Ed Blum, a white man who's notorious for backing up causes that push for the dissolution of affirmative action. Minhaj starts his show with the idea of illuminating the controversy and discrepancies revolving around involving Asian-Americans. It is quite refreshing that a stand-up comic does not fall for the typical pitfalls of expounding on the same jokes about one person. Ed Blum, a man with questionable moral standing when it comes to the fight to end affirmative action, is willing to throw in the towel and back Asian-American students and treat them as the righteous victims in this lawsuit. Clearly, this man is worth all sorts of mockery, sarcastic bard, and dumb humor but Hasan does not fall into that lull and instead talks about how the involvement of Asian-Americans affect other truly marginalized minorities such as African American.

The ultimate message of this episode is that it takes more than just one man or one group of students but a collection of ideas and beliefs that brought us to this situation. Asians, who were once a true minority, are fighting for a chance to go to Harvard even though they have the same chance as every other student. Minhaj's attempt to highlight the absurdity of this scenario with a quick "So this is the cross Asians are willing to die on?" is totally justified and I am a firm believer that the worst-case scenario for us, in this case, is to go to a non-Ivy League school. Big freaking whoop.

I am a proud Indian-American born and raised in Edison, NJ (shoutout to the Edison shoutout in this episode) and I am for affirmative action because other minorities that are NOT Asians deserve a chance at a good education. My parents raised my sister and me with the idea that everyone should have a fair shot in anything that life has to offer and it is with this very same idea that we applied to colleges and ended up at very good universities. I was not raised with the idea that I am entitled to an Ivy-League education just because of my race and it disgusts me that my fellow Asian-Americans are that fucking elitist enough to take those opportunities out of pity.

Edison, NJ, for those who do not know the town, is colloquially known as "Brown Town" where a good majority of the population is Asian (primarily Indian). Every kid in my high school was raised with the idea that studying hard and breaking SAT records means that you have a legit shot at getting into a college. Which is true to a certain extent and what many people tend to forget is this idea that even if you are the best and the brightest, sometimes it is not enough to get into the Ivy-Leagues. It is very true that we have some of the best students that end up going to these schools but it is not just because of our race. We're smart to know how to stack our college applications well enough to get noticed and the fear of the 'Asian parent' disapproval is enough of a motivating factor to push forward. But if we do not get into our dream school we do what every other normal human being in that situation does: we move on.

To be perfectly honest, I have a love-hate relationship with being from Edison. While I take pride in having come from a rigorous public high school, I also loathe the underlying assumption that we are entitled to everything just because our parents struggled to establish themselves. My parents are no exception to this rule but they never told me that I was entitled to get the best education and to cash in on how they struggled. So I struggled to try to reconcile how other Asian-Americans (especially the ones on this lawsuit) thought it was a good idea to fight this. Because, to be frank, it makes us who are not like that look bad and, on top of it, we are involving a Jewish conservative white man to fight this fight for us.

So I thank Hasan Minhaj for shedding light on the implications of involving Asian-Americans in the debate about affirmative action. Because the way I see it, it is still going to be an issue of contention for a while and get rid of affirmative action may not be the easy solution that everyone seems to think. But it opens our eyes that we are no longer a marginalized minority anymore and blaming Ivy-League schools for a chance to sit at the table throws out every value that our Asian parents taught us. And I will not stand on the side of my fellow Asian-Americans.