Ok, I’m starting to get irritated by the growing comments I’ve seen both here and around the internet about Mindy Kaling writing “self-insert characters”. You realize this is racist, right? It is racist and offensive to say a South Asian woman is writing “self-insert characters” simply because she centers South Asian female main characters. Do you say this about all the white male TV producers and writers who write toxic white male characters (and their often blonde girl love interests)?

I’ve criticized Mindy as much as anyone about the predominantly white love interests she gives her WOC MCs (and the toxic/racist/sexist dynamics that often emerge in them). It’s been frustrating. She’s wrong to continue doing that and I hope she changes her approach. But let’s also be real here—she’s far from the only one doing that in Hollywood. From To All The Boys I Loved Before, The Summer I Turned Pretty, Ginny And Georgia, to Bridgerton, pairing POCs with white love interests is pretty par for the course. Those shows also are (and should be) criticized for centering white love interests. But let’s not say that it automatically makes the POC characters “self-insert” just because they’re written by POC, because that’s gross. Centering white love interests and whiteness as the epitome of beauty and desire is an industry-wide (and society-wide) problem. Everyone has to unlearn this.

And finally if you’re trying to justify the “self-insert” comments because Mindy often writes messy, complicated, & sexually liberated South Asian female MCs, you’re missing why it may be liberating to write South Asian female characters who counter the model minority myth and “sanskari girl” stereotypes that constrain South Asian women between patriarchal ideas about modesty and submissiveness and racist ideas about our conformity. Variety is always good, and important. But it doesn’t make it “self-insert” to write characters that challenge those powerful cultural forces that shape and constrain our lives.