The Lab: Deepika Arwind – Why I Want to Be White

What does a newly arrived Sikh delivery driver in Berlin have to do with the rising level of the ocean? Where do avocadoes and billionaires and yoga meet, and what do they eat for lunch?

Why I want to be white is the opposite of a TED talk. It is a factually sort-of-accurate history of how ‘whiteness’ – the world’s most successful group project – continues to manage the algorithm of supremacy and send us down mental health spirals.

This searing, funny and personal performance travels geographies and centuries, returning again and again to the disturbing ‘brilliance’ of the masterplan of whiteness and the cost of believing in it.

Written and Performed by Deepika Arwind | Dramaturgical Input by Sophia Stepf