Hasan Minhaj

There's video footage of every Indian kid you know dancing as a child for some reason.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And to me, this is like a love letter to the culture.

But if I didn't grow up this way, I would have never been able to write this movie and share it with the world.

So we're in post-production on it and I'm sitting in the edit and I think about all the things that have happened to me in my life.

It is only because of my lived experience.

It is only because of how often I went back and forth between America and Delhi in India.

It's only through my immersion as this bridge between both American culture, totally understanding American popular culture, and understanding Bollywood culture that I'm able to talk about this this way as this kind of like third culture kid.

And maybe this thing can be a bridge to help

again, add my chapter to what the American musical can be.

I mean, the weirdest thing for me is that, and Black Americans have been talking about this for a long time,

is that there's the America that it presents itself to be and then what America is.

And so when my dad came in the 80s, there was this word that was talked about very proudly when it comes to the United States of America.

It's the M word, it's merit.

This is a country that values merit.

And what I'm seeing, what has happened and the actions that the country has now taken

in regards to the rollback of civil liberties, civil rights, African-American history, ICE, the illegal seizure and deportations of particular people of melanin, is that merit only matters for a particular type of American.

Yes.

I call it white valedictorian energy.

I was told just be the best and you get to be the valedictorian.