Stereotype Tv Show Analysis

Stereotype TV show episode: Russell Peters “Indians don’t do physical work”

Russell Peters is a widely known American stand-up comedian, and many of his shows have been broadcasted and shown on TV. At the same time, many of his jokes have sparked controversy because of his many stereotypical themes. In this short clip, Russell is up on stage discussing a recent trip to South Africa, where he said that he was surprised to see many Indians there. He finds out that is because South Africans used to transport Indians from India as slaves. The stereotyping comes in here: Russell starts on a racial aspect of this discovery, wondering why people would want to use Indians as slaves because of their general tendency of laziness, and the fact that none of them do physical work. Then he
Our brains are unfortunately hard-wired to stereotype people by gender, race, religion, etc, so after listening to this type of joke, at least some others will be indirectly influenced to think that Indians are typically lazy, especially children; they like to copy others and are very easily influenced. So taking this sort of stereotyping in very young can mislead their thinking in the future, leading to discrimination (not choosing an Indian partner for school projects because they ‘might’ slack off), amongst many other things. Therefore this stereotype can be truly dangerous to the victims affected by it: they may not have the chance to reach their full potential. If others believe that Indians are lazy, an Indian who truly has a lot of potential and enthusiasm to work might be shunned out by companies who internalize that stereotype and are afraid that he/she will not work hard. Another very dangerous thing about this Indian stereotype is that it prevents others from knowing the real facts about Indians; rather, they obey the stereotypes spread around by people such as Mr.