Sunil Tripathi

This film about the life of Sunil Tripathi was one that was incredibly emotional and human. The Boston bombing was one of the most tragic and devastating events of the 21st century and when it occurred when I was very young and naive about the world around me. At that impressionable age, my mind was a sponge and I would believe just about anything that anyone told me. At 21 years old now, I consider myself to be an independent thinker and also an open-minded one as well. I do not like popular culture telling me what I should or should not believe and that is something that makes me aggravated about social media platforms and how mass media uses these platforms as valid resources for evidence to support society’s implicit bias about a person. 

When I educated myself more on not only the disappearance of Sunil Tripathi, but also the overall life story of this talented, intelligent college student, it made me feel heartbroken and aggravated that people would target a family in their time of worry and despair because of people’s flippant remarks circling the internet about a potential resemblance Sunil had to a suspect. The footage itself was grainy and I found that while I understood the pain a lot of people suffered due to having loved ones be affected by this atrocity, there was not nearly enough subtantial evidence to reduce a the life of a brilliant and talented soul to just what his appearance his and particularly, to what his ethnic origins and roots are. I remember hearing about his disappearance in 2013 and how he was then considered to be a suspect due to other people’s implicit bias. 


I bring up the concept of implicit bias because if Sunil had been a traditional blonde haired and blue eyed caucasian man, for instance, I can guarantee that he would not have been targeted as severely and as disgustingly. After seeing how lovingly his family described him and how bright his future was, it made me very emotional seeing how people reduced the value of his strong character and his musical talents and gifts because of the fact that he “looked like a potential terrorist.” It also hits me that he suffered from depression so deeply because a lot of people close to me have suffered from it and I would not wish their memories to be disgraced like his was. I really hope that society can watch this film and learn to use social media platforms for the benefit of humanity as opposed to against it.





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