It’s summer and I’ve found myself with enough time to watch more than my weekly hour and a half of TV. As finals were wrapping up at the end of this past semester, a wise soul introduced me to what I didn’t know at the time would be one of the most educational, inspirational shows I’ve seen in a while. At this point, you may be reading this and think that this is about to be a lame Netflix show review where I over-exaggerate how funny the jokes are and how great the story line is. The truth is that Master of None is set up like a regular sitcom. The lessons I learned from watching it were so subtle that I wasn’t in a place to unpack it all until I had sat through all two seasons. This show is not the pretty blonde cheerleader or the star athlete who end up flooring everyone at prom. This show is the kid who sits in the back and is known by barely anyone until they get out of college a few years later and own a multimillion dollar company. It’s highly underrated and here’s why…

Master of None takes place in present day Manhattan. The show stars and is written by comedian and actor Aziz Ansari. He plays Dev, the son of two Muslim Indian immigrants, which is an identity Ansari knows all too well. The sitcom follows Dev as he navigates the stage of young adulthood where you’re considered a real adult but you don’t have your act together at all. Dev is a regular guy who tries to build a career, find love, travel, nurture friendships and be happy. However, this show doesn’t shy away from the fact Dev is undeniably still a brown man living in America. The stories told in Master of None have successfully found a way to normalize people of color within society without overlooking and watering down the fact that our experiences are so unique due to our minority identities.

Wait a minute. Are you saying that this show only speaks to brown people? The simplified answer is no. The answer is that it speaks to everyone but it does not speak to POC and white people in the same way. While this may be a comedy, the themes within the show portray characters who live out their identities in a world that is constantly alienating and there’s a few reasons why it makes this show amazing.

1. POC get to define their identities on their terms

The first episode is about Dev’s frustration as an actor. He struggles to get through an audition without being asked to fake an Indian accent. The problem wasn’t that he couldn’t pull it off but that he didn’t want to and shouldn’t have to. For far too long, POC have had their white counterparts put their identities into boxes and then freak out when we don’t all conform. This explains why being African and speaking better English than a white person makes me an “anomaly”. This explains why an Asian person who doesn’t like math or anything STEM-related is an “anomaly”. This explains why a Latinax person who is timid and doesn’t have an fierce temper/attitude is an “anomaly”. This is not to say that the stereotypes will never match up with certain minorities to a certain extent. The important lesson here is that POC identities are not the sum of these stereotypes and that we don’t need to align with them for our identities to be valid.

If a black kid prefers Chopin over Lil Uzi Vert, they are not less black or less valid. If a black kid bumps to Future on a night out, they too are valid. If a Latinax person doesn’t speak fluent Spanish like their family members, they are still worthy of brown pride and they are still valid. If a Latinax person is a bilingual beauty, they are equally valid. If an Asian kid is into sports, the humanities or the arts, they are not weird and they are valid. If an Asian kid grows up to be a CPA, they are awesome and they are valid. If a mixed-race kid doesn’t know which identity box to fit into, they may as well kick the box because they are valid regardless. These all seem like obvious things to be affirming but, sadly, the POC narratives that society upholds do anything but that.

POC will be the kind of POC they want to be and, honestly, white people don’t get a say in what that looks like. Point blank period.

2. POC are not your token friends

I shouldn’t have to explain this one but here I am in 2017 explaining to people

that NOBODY should ever be a token. Dev’s friend group is made of four people.

There’s him, a brown Muslim man. There’s Denise, a queer black woman. There’s Brian, a man of Chinese descent. Last but not least, there’s Arnold, a cis-het white man. Throughout the show, there isn’t one instance of anyone being called a “[insert random minority identity] friend” just for the sake it. It highlights an important truth: If you’re friends with minorities so you can write #diversitysquad on all your Instagram posts and appear “woke”, it’s not much of a friendship. Tokenizing POC has often been disguised as celebrating them and I’m calling absolute BS on the whole thing. Dev is the friend that you can get tacos and try out new food places with. Brian is the friend who has an appreciation for performance arts. Denise is the friend who gives solid advice and tells hard truths. Arnold is the friend who’s often very animated, dramatic and emotional but he still finds the time to be very nurturing of his friends. Notice how the most vital roles that they play in contributing to each other’s lives have nothing to do with their societal labels. They never deny the things that make them different but, at the same time, it is not the end-all-be-all of their friendship’s value.

I thought you said this show was for everyone. Why do you keep talking about POC? What does this show do for white people?

This is the moment many of you have been waiting for. This show is perfect for white people to watch. I would recommend this to any white person because the way it engages white people is by….

*Drum Roll*

CALLING. THEM. OUT.

Some of my favorite parts of this show have been when Dev calls a white person in his life a racist. This is always a great thing to watch because it teaches a few important things about the way that racism works. As a white person, if you take nothing else away from this show, do learn this: you are racist. You may not be a bad person at all. You may not hate POC at all. You may vote as a Democrat. You may be a liberal. You may be a feminist. You may support Black Lives Matter. You may support every POC movement you can. Despite all that, you are still racist and here’s why.

Racism is not about whether you use malicious slurs, whether you are nice to people who aren’t white or whether you’ve committed unspeakable crimes against POC. Those are all just the tip of the iceberg. The definition put forward by South African grassroots activist Sobantu Mzwakali states:

“Prejudice refers to a positive or negative evaluation of another person based on their perceived group membership. Racism, on the other hand, refers to social actions, practices or beliefs or political systems that consider different races to be ranked as inherently superior or inferior to each other. Furthermore, racism is socio-economic, with systemic structures which promote one race’s powers over another.”

That last line is key. Racism is not simply a moral flaw that only mean people possess. It is woven into society so carefully that it has become the backbone of those who live comfortably in their white spaces even though they may not realize it.

The show portrays two different kinds of reactions that white people have when being called racist. The instances where it was handled in the best way possible was when Dev calls out his love interests. He calls out his girlfriend Rachel for imitating a foreign accent while she was pretending to be a maid. He called out his Italian lover Francesca for referring to him as “a curry person” even when she said she meant it as a “joke”. Things don’t go as well for him though when he confronts his one night stand about keeping her condoms stashed in a racist Mammy jar. Just to give you some context, http://www.historyonthenet.com/authentichistory/diversity/african/1-mammy/this article from historyonthenet.com explains that “Mammy is the most well-known racial caricature of African American women. She was created during the era of American slavery as manufactured evidence that black slave women were content and even happy to be slaves, and thus, that slavery was a humane institution.” Despite the history of the Mammy jar, the woman Dev met responded with nothing but defensiveness about being called out on her racism because she equated it with being called a bad person. Who would’ve thought? It’s almost as if only the people who really cared deeply for Dev responded with an open mind and worked on correcting their harmful behavior instead of being defensive and making it all about them and their white guilt.

The point here is that you are not a white ally until you can admit you are participating knowingly or unknowingly in a racist society. No exceptions.

All in all, this is a great show because Aziz Ansari is hilarious and that alone should be reason to watch MoN. However, if you don’t get around to watching it, here’s what I have to say to you a reader:

My beloved people of color,

You are beautiful. You are loved. You are valid. This is not up for debate.

White allies and white non-allies alike,

You are racist. It’s like me telling you there’s a little smudge of something on your face. Fix it please because it affects other people negatively. It shouldn’t be my job to tell you this but alas here I am.

Not everything is about you and your white fragility. Do some soul-searching and crack a book before you get butthurt. It could save lives. Literally.