Hasan Minhaj is the diaspora’s “Cool Brown Friend”

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By Fareeha Molvi

(This post was originally published to Instagram on August 24, 2020)

Do you remember that feeling in adolescence of being between two worlds? Your “home self” shaped by your parents’ rules and values and your “school self” where you just struggled to fit in without making waves? Every day you carried your brown body with some awkwardness, making friends while trying not to come off too foreign, too Muslim or too different.

But maybe you had a friend, someone slightly older, perhaps a cousin or family friend who was back from college for the summer. Like you, they are brown and American but they’ve got this confidence about who they are. Your school friends meet them and they’re struck by how funny and smart they are and just undeniably cool? We’ll call them your Cool Brown Friend (CBF). In situations where you might shrink away in panicked shame (“What is this watering can in your bathroom?” your friend asks), CBF takes joy in enlightening your friends (“And it’s actually so much more sustainable than toilet paper,” CBF explains). 

You are struck by the ease at which CBF charismatically embraces both identities, in a way that actually piques your friends’ respectful curiosity. It makes you feel comfortable in your own skin, like maybe you don’t need to hide so much about yourself after all. The summer is over and CBF goes back to college, but you are forever grateful for the heavy lifting CBF did in making space for your brown identity among your friends. 

Thanks, Hasan Minhaj for doing the work.