‘Parks and Rec’ Star Aziz Ansari Gets ‘Red Dot’ Question Onstage

Aug 09, 2011

Last Friday Parks and Recreation star Aziz Ansari was performing standup in Los Angeles when a female audience member asked, "Why don’t you have a red dot on your forehead?"

The audience immediately gasped, according to Entertainment Weekly. A shocked Ansari came back with a not-so-racist but equally offensive rebuttal. He went on to ask her why she didn’t have the word "c– on her forehead." Then remarked about how there are still "racist" people in the world.

Ansari grew up in Bennettsville, South Carolina, the eldest son of two Indian immigrants. He told Rolling Stone Magazine that there were no other Indian families in town.

"You read that I was the only minority in school, you envision this little brown boy sitting in a corner by himself. It wasn’t like that-the level of teasing I got was on par with what a fat white kid would go through," he told Rolling Stones. "Sixty-five percent of what a fat white kid would go through."

In that same July 2010 Rolling Stone interview Ansari also said he’s experienced very little racism in show business also.

Good for him, because ?according to Screen Actors Guild Casting Data Reports, APIs held only 3.8 percent of all TV/Theatrical roles in the 2008. This percentage is far less than the actual percentage of the API population in the U.S. that same year.