EPISODE 30: AASIF MANDVI
AASIF MANDVI
On Parenting, Otherness, Racism, and Connection.
Aasif Mandvi is an actor, writer, producer, comedian and author. He has appeared in and worked on many TV shows, most notably The Daily Show, The Brink, and currently, Evil on CBS. Aasif has also done many notable films and worked extensively in theatre. He was in Oklahoma! on Broadway and starred in the Pulitzer Prize winning show, Disgraced, for which he received a Lucille Lortel nomination. Aasif won an Obie for his one-man show, Sakina's Restaurant.
QUOTES FROM THIS EPISODE
29:30 ~ “I was given the message that I was inferior to white male heterosexual masculinity and that was what you had to be... if you weren't that, then you were inferior in some ways... so there's a part of me that I think has always wanted to get the affirmation of the larger culture, which is made up of that world of white power, and I don't mean even necessarily in a white supremacist kind of way, but just the world is shaped by white men or that's been my experience.”
33:17 ~ “Anything that we imagine gives us power or superiority is holding us back from a real human experience.” - KF
35:58 ~ “That stuff around caste and race... It's systemically created, so like you're dealing with it on a personal level, but you're also dealing with it on a systemic level.”
45:23 ~ “I think it's incredibly important that...The collective American psyche ultimately come to terms with its horrific racial past and this myth of American exceptionalism.”
51:49 ~ “Racism is not just an accident... It's a systemic system of oppression that exists in order to keep certain down and other people in positions of power. And that is what it is.”
1:06:08 ~ “I have arrogance and self-loathing at the same time, you know, so it's a really lovely combination.”
1:06:51 ~ “This is something that is a mistake of the mind - that there are people who are more important and people who are less important. This is not a real thing. And when we give it credence, we separate ourselves from what I believe is the reason that we're here, which is to understand that, in fact, we are all one in the same in so many ways.” - KF
1:16:12 ~ “There's all kinds of complicated ways in which we choose who to glorify and who to demonize.”