practical guide to racism

Some Drunk Guy Confused Mindy Kaling for Malala Yousafzai

NEW YORK, NY - OCTOBER 11: Mindy Kaling attends The New Yorker Festival 2014 wrap party at the Top of The Standard Hotel on October 11, 2014 in New York City. (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The New Yorker)
Photo: Dimitrios Kambouris/2014 Getty Images

Turns out that being super famous and selling out a panel at the New Yorker Festival isn’t enough to buffer you from casual racism. After chatting with Emily Nussbaum about anal sex, Mindy Kaling attended the VIP after-party at the Boom Boom Room. There she was accosted by “a tipsy man in his 80s†who “showered her with compliments.†Only, he had a case of the all-look-the-same blues and mistook Kaling for another famous brown woman: youngest-ever winner of the Nobel Peace Prize Malala Yousafzai. “Congratulations on your Nobel Prize,†he said to her. After he was out of earshot, Kaling wondered aloud: “Did he really think I’m Malala, and that if I were, I’d be at the Boom Boom Room?†As is her wont, she took the whole incident in stride, “That’s the best thing that’s happened all night.†We can practically hear the joke writing itself on The Mindy Project.

Some Drunk Guy Confused Mindy Kaling for Malala