DEFINING RACIAL DISCRIMINATION:
It is any biasness against individuals on the basis of their skin colour/racial/ ethnic origin.1
Note of caution!
Nothing in this article is directed or aimed at hurting any individuals' feelings either directly or indirectly. Any usage of words like 'dark-skinned' / 'dark-complexioned' / 'olive complexion' etc is not meant to dishonour anyone's skin colour. In fact, I don't even see these as disrespectful terms at all, on a personal level. I find no reason to compare one shade of colour with another when the whole idea of existence is diversity. The latent idea of using "dark" as an epitome of something negative is merely a creation of societal misconceptions and bias since I believe, black is beautiful.
RACIAL DISCRIMINATION
Quite a lot has been discussed about the idea of ethnic or racial disparity partially due to the #blacklivesmatter2 campaign and partially because this debate was always pertinent in our society. We all know that the very idea of disparity is something humiliating and besotted. No race is superior and no race is inferior. People from all races take in oxygen and give out carbon dioxide. People from all races eat, drink, play, run, laugh, cry, struggle and ultimately succeed and that's the whole purpose of life. But when we start to judge a book by the colour of its cover, we fall victim of victimizing others. Therefore, this article aims at digging deep in such conscious and unconscious behaviours and actions behind racial discrimination which may go unnoticed otherwise. How does it come out in our society? What factors retain it? What has been the history of such a disparity? Why should we even bother? and what is the solution or more correctly the plan of action for a big change?
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| Source: Unsplash By:- Mike Von |
HOW DOES THIS COME OUT?
Though disparities such as these are so well ingrained in our societal perceptions that sometimes we ourselves unknowingly discriminate against a person through jokes that "are not meant to hurt their feelings" but actually do that particular thing of hurting. Just look around, there is a huge market of makeup out there, which is nothing but the indicator of how uncertain we are regarding our "first expressions" or simply "looks".
Matrimonial ads and websites having a separate column for skin tones, we getting praise for light skin but not for dark skin, throwing jokes "only" offensive to the dark-complexioned people, are some of the examples of such implicit discrimination. However, apart from this, there are a few instances where racial discrimination comes out so explicitly that for once we do not accept that it's a kind of discrimination and it's illegal according to Article 15 of the Indian Constitution3. These examples include:
Bollywood movies and songs
Beauty product ads
Society
Social media
Making victims majorly the:
Dark complexioned people
North-eastern people
Africans
BOLLYWOOD SONGS:
Let's begin with our own favourite Bollywood industry. Name just ten pictures out of thousands that are produced, casting a dark-skinned actor or actress in the lead role. Since its inception, the Bollywood industry has served its audience with the lead role being fair-skinned, well built and thus smart. As if this wasn't enough, that Bollywood went beyond its limits to cast dark-complexioned people as either the funny character or someone whom everyone hated. Why? Because he/she is dark-skinned right. Who bothers about talent, skill or education or simply the nature of a person? According to the Bollywood logic, you need just three things to succeed in life- fair skin, fair skin and fair skin. Even songs like "Chittiyaan kalaiyaan" and "Kala chashma jachda e gore mukhde te" celebrate racism openly and shamelessly. Now you may ask, what's the problem? How does it impact us? Well, most of us have grown up watching these movies which unconsciously built in our minds wrong beauty standards and false image of "fair equals beautiful". Looking at someone who is of a dark shade, we throw at them the most celebrated dialogues of Bollywood that use slangs and slurs like "kaliya" and 'kallu'.
SOCIETY:
I hate visiting my relatives. Now that may sound insensitive or rude of me, but I got reasons to prove myself right. Just think, what is the first thing that you get to hear as you visit your relatives' place. How is your study going? Or what is the course you are pursuing? right? Or maybe not. Guess what I get to hear? O beta! you have turned so fat or you have turned so thin. They are never satisfied with my physique. And this made me realise one more thing about it.
(Not stereotyping, but) In the rural-urban divide, where we see everything from the economic prism, social discrimination is more prevalent in the rural reaches than it does in the urban domain. In the families residing in the countryside, people value "looks" more than "education". Thus, they want a girl to be suitably tall, fair-skinned, and slim and a boy to be well built and fair-skinned. They give negligible attention to what we call "ability" and "qualifications". This might be true looking at data, where most of the students drop out of schools at an early age in rural areas more than they do in the urban areas. In the hinterlands, there is either no development or least development, leading to not being comparatively so progressive and surrounded by more uncertainties which automatically turn out to face racial or any other form of discrimination.
SOCIAL MEDIA:
With the coming age of digital revolution where you may be physically miles away from each other but digitally just a few messages away. Whatsapp, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, YouTube have become the tokens of this new revolution. More and more users are getting enrolled on these social media platforms each year to become the heavy consumers of what is served on such handles to go by the trend. But one of the worst things that have happened due to this digital revolution is the replication of television on the mobile phone - with the same Beauty cream ads and promotions on the smaller screens. People keep on scrolling down the screen and see those so-called "fair-skinned beautiful social media influencers" promoting the very same beauty products which add on to the uncertainties to those who are consuming it.
What do social media filters tell us indirectly? They give us a filter to look spotless and white, but no filter to look a little dark-complexioned because they have set out the standards that yes! you need a spotless white filter to improve your skin tone to look beautiful and thus again they succeed in proving that "fair is beautiful"
BEAUTY PRODUCT ADS:
One of the worst impacts of globalisation, liberalisation and privatisation on India was the influx of so many fairness creams. Yes, you heard it right. Fairness creams! Creams to make you fair, “Fair & Lovely” being the torchbearer of all such creams. The brand has maintained its consistency in making people( especially girls) feel that fair equals lovely and the only saviour of their life is this Cream. If you fail in interviews, fair & lovely is there. If your boyfriend is not accepting you, fair & lovely is there. No matter what the problem is, fair & lovely is the solution. It is so heartbreaking to see famous celebrities, who are naturally fair, giving credits of their fairness to such creams, and endorsing them, just for the sake of commercials. Why don't they accept the fact that these creams are nothing but a hoax? Just type down "how to be fair" on YouTube and you will get an endless list of videos to watch. For years, we have waged wars against racial discrimination all over the world and here in India we buy and sell racial discrimination so conveniently.
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| Source:- Unsplash By: Anastasiia Ostapovych |
India’s skin whitening market is expected to achieve an annual market revenue of $720 million by 2023. It is currently dominated by Fair & Lovely, fairness cream and which today holds more than 50 per cent market share. (data quoted as it is)
NORTHEAST INDIANS AND AFRICANS:
When we talk of racial discrimination, some of the first victims, that come in my mind are the Northeastern Indians. People from various parts of India have, for long, being discriminated on the basis of their ethnicity or in simple words their "race".
Now here we need to go back to the Indian history and relate it to the paradigms of races in India. The general belief is that the North Indians belong to the Aryan race and the South Indians belong to the Dravidian race. According to legends, Aryans arrived from Iran and Southern Russia sometime around 1500 B.C. Before the Aryans, only the Dravidians resided in India. The Dravidian is a naturally black race. Therefore most south Indians are black. The population of North-East India is formed of several racial stocks, principally, the Mongoloids, the Indo-Aryans, the Australoids or Austrics and the Dravidians( a very minor group represented by some immigrant population). Minority groups not falling within, either large group mostly speak languages belonging to the Austroasiatic and Tibeto-Burman language families and mostly live around Ladakh and Northeast India, Nepal, Bhutan and the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh. The traditions of different ethnic groups in South Asia have diverged, influenced by external cultures, especially in the northwestern parts of South Asia and in the border regions and busy ports, where there are greater levels of contact with external cultures. There is also a lot of genetic diversity within the region. For example, most of the ethnic groups of the northeastern parts of South Asia are genetically related to peoples of East or Southeast Asia. There are also genetically isolated groups who have not been genetically influenced by other groups. Since Indo Aryan race is the most dominated one in South Asia, therefore, racial discrimination will surely be rendered towards those who are of a minority race, the first victims of which are northeastern people, who are not considered Indian enough and are again called through disregarding slangs and slurs and often compared with being Nepali or Chinese.
In the same line of discussion where we see discrimination against our own Indian fellow mates, we need to also explore the various dimensions of discrimination meted against Africans. Most of them are seen as drug abusers and hence this false presumption claims the lives of many Africans residing in India each year. The projection of blacks in Bollywood movies as someone of a suspected character is the most disheartening fact and truth.
WHY SHOULD WE EVEN BOTHER? 4
In a 2015 essay, author Neha Mishra cited a survey that asked Indians between the ages of 20–25 to describe “pretty.” 71 per cent of those surveyed used words such as “fair” or “light.” The survey also revealed that the pressure to look fair is much higher on Indian women than men.
Almost two years after an attack on five African nationals in Greater Noida that drew global outrage, not much has changed, with many Africans stereotyped as drug-peddlers and pimps, as they keep facing racial discrimination and violence in their everyday lives in the country.
“Most of the Africans in India are seen as criminals. I don’t know why Indians think we are drug-peddlers or burglars. I am not saying all of us are innocent, but for the fault of a few, all Africans who come to India should not be seen through the prism of discrimination and hatred,” Michael Kwaje (name changed), a law student from Ghana, told Gulf News.
Things turn out ugly when people from northeast India or Africa are beaten to death. Why? They were just racially different. This is something scary and thus needs our utmost attention and quick repairs.
HISTORY:
India has always been a land of ethnic divide and racial diversity. It never witnessed the exclusive dominance of one race over the other. Then why do we see such an ugly face of racial biases when we had no history of one. The major reason quoted by most of the legends is the race of those who have ruled India in the past.
The various settlers, rulers, invaders, and colonizers who entered India starting in the 1400s were relatively light-skinned. This includes the Mughals, Dutch, French, Portuguese, and of course, the British. Centuries of conditioning under these white-skinned rulers made us believe that white is superior and Black or fairly dark complexion is inferior. Adding on to this, during the British Empire, skin tone prejudice became formally engrained; the colonizers kept light-skinned Indians as allies, giving them extra advantages over the rest of the “blacks.” Prejudices came so much so to be apparent that they had towns named- the“White Town” and the “Black Town.”
Parallel to this theory runs a caste theory as well which puts its focus on the fact that the lower castes are dark-skinned, therefore poor and inferior and the upper castes are white-skinned therefore rich and superior. Though the reason behind this is very simple and logical. The lower castes performed most of the manual labour, remaining in the sun for the most part of the day. However, the upper caste lived their luxurious lives in their houses built by the same lower-class.5
WAY AHEAD: A PLAN OF ACTION
When a problem is so well established in society, the solution can't be one. We need to attack and vandalise the very idea of "fair equals beautiful" from all dimensions and directions. We need to embrace and embellish the very concept of diversity. Focussing more on qualifications, eligibility, success, education, etc rather than skin colour. Famous celebrities and social media influencers should be in the frontline in the same capacity as they were while promoting fairness creams, even if this requires paid commercials to enchant the idea of "all races are equal". A major part of all these changes could be brought in by introducing education in the uneducated and underdeveloped reaches of the country. Bollywood movies should encourage and incorporate people from south India and northeastern India to perform the lead roles. Our actors should be skilled and talented, not fair-skinned. Investing 2 to 3 hours in a movie should leave us with a novel message and not add on to our pre-existing uncertainties. All this is secondary, the primary is the change at the personal level. We need to look into our behaviours and reflect upon them to dismantle the discrimination within. We should retrospect our behaviour towards those who are dark-skinned and mend what has been destroyed. Only when we do things at personal, social and community level, will the big change advance in.
REFERENCES:
1. George Floyd incident in the USA (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52928304 )
2. Article 15 of the Indian Constitution prohibits discrimination on the basis of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth
3. data quoted as it. https://gulfnews.com/world/asia/india/the-dark-face-of-indian-racism-1.61161168
4. Kathy Russell Cole, the author of the book, “The Color Complex: The Politics of Skin Color in a New Millennium,” notes that many people from lower castes have darker skin because, for generations, they have been subjected to hard physical labour in the sun. Since caste and class often intersect, fair skin is also perceived as being evidence of “better financial and social status of a person.”
gulf news "The dark face of Indian racism"
Sharma, Ram Nath; Sharma, Rajendra K. (1997). Anthropology. Atlantic Publishers & Dist. p. 109. ISBN 978-81-7156-673-0.
WRITTEN BY:
POOJA RANI
Powerful!
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