If you are 15 million and the rest of the population using ‘brown’ to denote something else is 285 million, you cannot appropriate. By the way, this is out of context here, but I was reading your blog. Happy Eid to you. I said this 3 times today to “real” people I know. A question to you: did you manage to say L’Shana Tova to anyone yet this year or last year? or Happy Diwali ? I don’t need an answer for a year!

I hope is pronunciation of Basmati is intentional.

Hilarious

20 · ctrlalteredmind said now you can go figure out how cool it is to be calling yourself brown..

Umm. It’s called appropriation. You know, we appropriate the word, so that we actively choose its meaning in an attempt to render it meaningless to those who use it in an insulting way. I, personally, prefer mocha. Much more exotic. And delicious. And hot.

not to be a party pooper, but doesn’t UPS use ‘what can brown do for you’ as their slogan? I bet they even have it trademarked or something.

Actually I want to be a downer and throw water on your self back patting endeavors. “What can brown do for you” started off with UPS giving it high visibility and then some comedians caught on to that. Of course, Aasif might have seen it on this site, but the sepia is far from being original in the usage of brown. By the way, brown is the color used in the US to describe human scat, whereas in India, we use the color yellow for that.

now you can go figure out how cool it is to be calling yourself brown..

Brown is the new white. See…Barack Obama.