'Who is this rag head?' Racist comments after Facebook video stars Sikh man

Post by Facebook Tips.

The above video looks quite innocuous, it’s about tips for using Facebook and how likes ensure that your News Feed gets more content. And sure while some of us might not like Facebook videos on our News Feed, that doesn’t mean we’re going to start swearing at the person in the video who happens to be Vishavjit Singh, an Indian-American Sikh and New York-based cartoonist. Singh has a website called Sikhtoons for his cartoons. When the video was put up on Facebook’s Tips page, most of the comments were racist, some calling Singh a ‘rag head’ or terrorist. As Singh himself noted in this post on Salon, the comments were something like this, “Get the sand niggef off my news feed. Please and thank you." “im not takeing advice from men it those kinda hats period lol” “Bombs..made by him. Lmfao” “Terrorist” “Why would you use a towel head to promote this, ur as crooked as Obama…….no wonder ur a billionaire” One comment even had a person saying, “I had rather cut my wrist than see this.” One person called him an ISIS terrorist, while another asked if they could “borrow your towel on your head I ran out of toilet paper please sir?” [caption id=“attachment_1850763” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Screenshot from Facebook video [/caption] Singh wrote in the post, “These users have taken umbrage with my countenance. A turban, mustache and a DNA spiral of a beard have provoked a range of responses, some of which I have never heard before despite being stereotyped and targeted all my life for standing out.” In an interview to Huffington Post Singh said, “I don’t know who these people are. I don’t know their stories. If I were to judge them, then I’m a bit more like them in that moment.” Racism against Sikhs and basically anyone who is not white is nothing new. Post 9/11 attacks, Sikhs have often been targeted in the America and even other Western countries, their turbans often mistaken for a sign that their were Arab Muslims. The Huffington Post piece points out that Singh had moved to India a child and survived the 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom and has faced “abuse and stereotyping,” in America as well. This is not the first time that a Sikh man in an ad for a prominent company had faced racist comments or backlash. Last year clothing company GAP had released posters with Sikh actor and jewelry designer Waris Ahluwalia. The posters were then vandalised with racist comments. In response, the company had then made the posters their cover photo for both their Facebook and Twitter accounts. The Facebook Tips video featuring Vishavjit Singh has been viewed close to five million times. A number of recent comments on the post though have criticised the racist comments and called them shameful.