Its the twenty-first century, come on people. We can’t look past a little racism. Yes it exists. Yes people conform with society’s ways and allow themselves to discriminate against certain races. Yet, we can’t help but conform to what society wants because we feel the need to impress others around us, and we come face to face with peer pressure.

 

Typecast as a Terrorist by Riz Ahmed starts off with, “To begin with, auditions taught me to get through airports. In the end, it was the other way around. I’m an actor”. Being an actor means that you are capable of putting different “faces” on, and showing that to others. In this day and age where we cannot help but judge anyone from their face, taking into consideration their skin colour and facial features an individual can think that they know someone purely based off of their face. Riz Ahmed puts importance on racism happening in our society today and the struggles that come with it. As a Pakistani man he’s learnt to treasure the little things in life and when those things disappear to find a new one, because when you are assumed into a stereotype it sticks with you forever.

 

As a member of an ethnic minority in Britain, Ahmed stated, "you are intermittently handed a necklace of labels to hang around your neck, neither of your choosing nor making, both constricting and decorative". Ahmed, was born and raised in north London but suffered racist abuse by fellow England football fans in 2014, he had hoped a career in acting "might be able to help stretch these necklaces". He heard that America was the place to go when it came to loosening the ties on stereotyping in the film industry. Little did he know at that point exactly how difficult it would truly be.

 

While on his journey to the United States film industry, Riz Ahmed, discovered that he was having trouble finding feasible work. Also he did learn a valuable lesson from the searches he had gotten from security in airports. He said, “And so it dawned on me that these searches were a fictional role-play taking place in a bubble, rather than an assessment of my worth”. This is the way that Ahmed started viewing audition , and as soon as he changed his view on auditions he started getting the roles again.

 

Overall, if Ahmed never faced that racism throughout his life and his security checks in the airport, he would’ve never had the realization that, they were role-play. He took the opportunity and adapted the idea. I’m not saying that racism is a good thing, quite the opposite if you ask me. What I’m saying is that racism does make us blend in with the rest of our culture. Yet, it can also break the bubble.