An Indian-origin woman clapped back at a TikToker who used the infamous video of a desi woman arrested for shoplifting in the US as a way to mock the Indian accent. In her video, TikTok user @itsjustluxe mimicked the Indian woman who was filmed on a cop's bodycam urging them to let her pay for the products she was charged with shoplifting at a Target store in US.
The content creator titled the video "Indian lady at Target" and mocked her accent while laughing. The video, which garnered over 1.4 million views, was slammed by Indian-origin creator Cassandra Jerome, who called out the US woman for her casual racism.
Jerome admitted that stereotypes can sometimes be funny, laughing at just an accent comes off as "so uneducated". "If the Indian accent is used in a joke that has some context and is done so well that it shocks me, it gets a laugh. But when the punchline is that we sound weird, I have learned something about you. All it tells me is that your worldview has not moved much past your nose. When does it stop being funny?," she asked in an Instagram video.
{{/usCountry}}Jerome admitted that stereotypes can sometimes be funny, laughing at just an accent comes off as "so uneducated". "If the Indian accent is used in a joke that has some context and is done so well that it shocks me, it gets a laugh. But when the punchline is that we sound weird, I have learned something about you. All it tells me is that your worldview has not moved much past your nose. When does it stop being funny?," she asked in an Instagram video.
{{/usCountry}}Jerome added that she faced problems in the US after she moved here and had an accent. "To me, it was normal. Thousands of people around me had that accent. You're hehe-ing and haha-ing over an accent that tons of people have. Expand your horizons and leave us alone. Please," she concluded.
The video garnered thousands of views, and many users pointed to the casual racism on display. "It gets especially frustrating when it's coming from another person of colour, like why are we infighting, we should be on the same side, not put each other down," said one user.
Another added, "When the joke is the accent itself, we’ve lost the plot."