Riz Ahmed’s essay on being typecast in auditions and at the airport is scathingly brilliant
Riz Ahmed has never shied away from discussing his experiences as a brown man living in a white world—that is, a Muslim Pakistani Brit living in a post-9/11 world. Not only has he explored these themes in the roles he has taken in films like Four Lions, The Road To Guantánamo, and The Reluctant Fundamentalist, as well as on HBO’s The Night Of, but also when he raps as Riz MC. In “Typecast as a terrorist,” a piece he penned for The Good Immigrant, a collection of essays by British minority writers on race, identity, and immigration, he delved even further into his experiences, using both the audition process and airport detainments as a means to explore the boxes society insists on putting Ahmed and other brown people into.
He begins the essay, which you can find and should read at The Guardian, by describing the labels people put on minorities: “The jewellery of your struggles is forever on loan, like the Koh-i-Noor diamond in the crown jewels.” He’s referring to the famous, centuries-old diamond found in India that was taken by Great Britain when they colonized the nation, and now rests on the Queen Mother Crown. “You are intermittently handed a necklace of labels to hang around your neck, neither of your choosing nor making, both constricting and decorative.”