Thread by @thebrownhijabi

I am absolutely fuming.
Just watched @BBCTwo's "Lost Boys? What's Going Wrong For Asian Men" presented by Mehreen Baig and I am in shock about how disgracefully she happily used her "insider" status to reproduce racist, culturally essentialising tropes & ignore racism.
A thread:

First off, how the hell are you going to make a documentary about Asian men in Britain and "what's going wrong" for them without ever ONCE mentioning race, racism or class? It's absolutely dismaying that the analysis completely removes Asian boys & men from their context!

Mehreen arrives in Bradford and has clearly never ever had to live in or even SEEN terraced houses before as she's in shock about how "close together the houses are" in an indescribably patronising anthropological tone reminiscent of colonial ethnographers studying the "ethnics"

Mehreen's whole positioning relies on the contradiction of distancing herself as much as poss from "other Pakistanis" by placing herself in proximity to whiteness & thuss reproducing an "outsider's" perspective whilst at the same time REAPING the trust of her "insider" status.

She consistently narrates on behalf of the Asian men she speaks to and manages to discuss education, housing and employment without once mentioning the structural class and race factors which so obviously and evidently disadvantage Pakistani men in Britain

She goes on to compare "mirpuris" with "gujratis from uganda" which amazingly conflates "Asians" at the same time as subtly reinforcing every stereotype about Pakistanis in the north of England & pretends there is no historic, colonial or class difference in experience(!!!)

The fact she valorises the ONE Gujrati family she meets for drinking alcohol reminds us that her solutions to Asian men's problems in Britain don't entail grappling with racist, classist or islamophobic systems but with literal assimilation directed overhelmingly at Muslims

I'm just SO ANGRY that she uses her "insider" positionality to do this classist ethnography where she just uses her opinion as FACT and ignores swathes of research to the contrary - that prove Mirpuri men in Britain face structural disadvantage of every kind

from intergenerational cycles of poverty to racist employment markets and being "written off" at school - as well as actual DIVESTMENT from young asian boys at the outset of the counter-terrorism strategy in the UK which saw money channeled to young asian girls disproportionately

The whole documentary made me sick to my core.
Best evidence you'll ever see for Fanon's explanation of the colonial psyche. Mehreen's approach is absolutely that of trying to claim closeness to whiteness in order to differentiate yourself from the Other. Definition of sell-out.

And all for what? To play yourself by ignoring racism and structural disadvantage and use your gender to play off tropes of "sexist asians" - PARTICULARLY WORKING-CLASS MIRPURIS (which SHE IS NOT!!!!) - just so unjust and morally reprehensible

It was almost hilarious that she consistently asked questions to prove how Pakistani boys are inherently sexist because *apparently UNLIKE ANY OTHER 19 year old boys* they've grown up used to their mother's cooking for them & find the transition to living away novel!

If it helps in anyway I STILL LIVE AT HOME AND GET HOME-MADE FOOD BECAUSE OF THE ECONOMIC CLIMATE OF BRITAIN WHERE YOU CANNOT BE A HOME OWNER IF YOU ARE NORMAL AND YOUNG!!!! How does she make this specific to Pakistani men?

A hilarious highlight of the #LostBoys documentary is also when Mehreen goes to the actual bit of Mirpur that the Mangla dam drowned & claims "this is where the boys are from" as if a wild ahistorical trajectory will help her story especialy WEN SHE MAKES NO REFRNCE 2 COLONIALISM

hONESTLY like what was even the point of the whole documentary but to perpetuate stereotypes about Pakistanis in Britain and VALIDATE them because of your "insider" status which becomes a thumbs-up to liberal-racist rhetoric and the demonisation of working-class northern Muslims

So absolutely disgusting. I'm not overreacting. To act like we live in some vacuum where our EVERY experience isn't shaped by racism, xenophobia, islamophobia, classism & othering is stupid at best and deliberate at worst.

she even GOES TO PAKISTAN and meets the LIGHTEST-SKINNED PAKISTANI IVE EVER SEEN who's moved there FROM Britain & she's too scared to say "racism" might have played a par although its CLEARLY alluded to!!!

I'm sorry but I actually wish a white person had made that documentary so I could just remain unsurprised that it was a shoddy piece of colonial anthropological voyeurism working to reinforce stereotypes, justify racism and act as if people live outside state strucutres & history

In the final scene there's some absolutely dehumanising stuff around "if only asian men could balance their identities of being pakistani/british/muslim, then they'd be able to move forward" - WHAT ABOUT IF ONLY THERE WAS NO RACISM OR STRUCTURAL POVERTY OR ISLAMOPHOBIC DIVESTMENT

Final tweet (I think) - what did you gain Mehreen?
What do you gain from shoving us under the bus?
From playing your race and gender to distance yourself from our paki/terrorist selves & exceptionalise yourself?
How has internalising coloniality freed u sis?
I pray for u.

final final - at all of us --- NEVER TRUST A PERSON WHO DECONTEXTUALISES UR LIFE & won't name the structures...
And to all my northern working-class mirpuri men - you may be a mess but by GOD YOU ARE NOT A MESS WE WILL LET BE THROWN UNDER THE BUS <3

Have been informed that if you want to direct your rage somewhere productive and where it can't be dismissed if enough of us do it - drop a really quick email to BBC Director General [e-mail] to explain why this show was harmful & hopefully it may have some impact