I knew the DM would come. It always does.
The moment I saw the notification, my heart rate spiked. My palms went damp against my phone. A familiar tension settled in my chest—the kind that comes when you already know what’s coming next.
“Will there be an anti-South Asian survey in Black communities, too?”
I didn’t even need to read the whole thing. I already knew the beats, like a song I didn’t ask to hear again.
Our team had been gathering responses for a survey on anti-Blackness in South Asian communities—an effort to document what so many of us already knew but rarely saw written down. And yet, here it was. The predictable loop.
South Asians are accused of being anti-Black.
Black people are criticized for not engaging with South Asian struggles.
Both sides retreat into self-defensiveness, and nothing changes.
Accusation. Deflection. Another cycle we inherit.
As a Black person committed to cross-racial solidarity, I’ve seen how these conversations play out—how both of our communities get caught in loops that prevent us from moving forward together. I wanted to dismiss it, to move on.
Instead, I responded.
“I can’t tell whether you’re being genuine or gaslighting us.”
“I would like some time to think and reply,” they wrote back. “It’s a sensitive but vital subject.”
I sat with that. It wasn’t a dismissal. It wasn’t the usual backpedal. It was rare, but for the first time in a long time, I felt something shift.
If seeing ourselves in the mirror is uncomfortable, what happens when we refuse to look away?
The Internet Launders Colonial Tropes Into Content
The philosophy underpinning the White Man’s Burden rested on the so-called “Three C’s of Colonialism”: Civilization, Christianity, and Commerce. Colonizers justified their violence by claiming they were “civilizing” non-white people—insisting that indigenous cultures were primitive, their ways of life unsanitary, their traditions backward.
That colonial disgust didn’t disappear—it just got better branding.
Now, it’s repackaged as “concern” and delivered in 4K with an indie soundtrack.
We see it when white travel bloggers gawk at Indian street food, calling it “dirty.” When viral TikToks reduce South Asian markets to aestheticized chaos. When the indigenous Hadzabe people of Tanzania are put on display for millions of views—exoticized, othered, commodified.
The empire never fell. It just got a TikTok account.
The Machine Is Working Exactly as Designed
Because the real question isn’t who said what in a quote-tweet. It’s:
Who built the machine that keeps us fighting while they count the views?
The algorithm isn’t broken. It’s working exactly as designed.
When The Washington Post put TikTok’s algorithm under a microscope, they found that engaging with just one racist post led to a flood of the same—like an echo chamber with the volume stuck on max. The tension? The outrage? That’s not a glitch. It’s the whole business model.
Before social media, racism stayed in boardrooms. Now, it trends.
Marko Elez tweeted "Normalize Indian hate." When he got caught, he resigned. Then, Elon Musk and JD Vance ran a poll to see if he should come back. The result? Racism isn’t just tolerated—it’s rewarded.
Daniel Penny killed Jordan Neely. He was “canceled” online, then acquitted. Vice President JD Vance invited him to the Army-Navy game. Shortly after, Andreessen Horowitz, one of the most powerful venture capital firms in the world hired him.
For some, outrage fades. For others, it turns into a badge of honor.
The internet didn’t create racism. It just made it profitable.
The Cost of Silence Is Life and Death
The consequences of not showing up for each other aren’t abstract. They are life and death.
When Jaahnavi Kandula was killed by a speeding police vehicle, the officer who hit her laughed about it. When Rajan Moonesinghe was shot outside his own home, there was no national outcry. When Pervez Taufiq was harassed with racist slurs, too many looked away.
These aren’t isolated incidents. They are reminders. Reminders that South Asians face similar violence Black people have been fighting for centuries. Reminders that silence doesn’t make anyone safe—it just makes them complicit.
And yet, history tells us another story. A story where Black and South Asian communities, when united, have shaped revolutions.
In the 1950s, All India Radio broadcast in Swahili, Hindi, and Gujarati to East Africa, amplifying anti-colonial movements. In 1976, Black and South Asian women in northwest London walked out of the Grunwick factory in protest of brutal working conditions—20,000 people followed. In 1990, Black and Brown activists stood shoulder to shoulder to dismantle apartheid in South Africa.
When we fight together, we win. But today, too often, hesitation replaces action. Too often, people act as if they don’t know how to connect the dots—how to push forward instead of running in place.
The Choice Is Ours
For me, the easiest action would have been to block the person, delete the DM, and move on with my day. But after doing this work for as long as I have, I had to ask myself:
What if there’s another way?
What if, instead of shutting the door, I held it open?
I had to lean into empathy. So, I replied.
And although I’m still waiting for their response, the fact that they took the time to DM me at all—to engage, even briefly—was enough to inspire this piece and remind me why I continue this mission.
The mirror is two-sided.
One side reflects what we’ve been told: that our struggles are separate, that if we wait long enough, the storm will pass. The other side reveals the truth: Black people have been on the front lines, calling racism by its name, extending hands even when none reach back.
So when the world reminds South Asians they are not safe, will they still choose the shadows?
Or will we—Black and South Asian people, together—finally understand that justice isn’t something we wait for, it’s something we fight for, side by side?
Because no one else is coming to save us. It’s us—or no one.
For further reading:
Jonah Batambuze is a Ugandan-American interdisciplinary artist, cultural architect, and community builder remixing diaspora and identity into radical narratives of connection. As the founder and leader of two global communities—BlindianProject and South Asians for Black Lives, Batambuze creates spaces where shared histories turn into dialogues and action. His work cracks open the intersections of Black and Brown cultures, taking sonic memory, moving images, culinary traditions, and words and flipping them into tools for liberation
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