Eventhough you are black, you look beautiful

People living in a certain era tend to exaggerate the intensity of events that occur during their lifetime. Add to this the fact that the world is now more interconnected and interdependent with events happening in other parts of the world having an impact on our lives - we got ourselves 2020. Half of 2020 has already passed and we are already terming it as one of the worst years in human history. Attributed to the novel Coronavirus, the global pandemic has devastated people from all walks of life with the vulnerable being most affected.

To be sure, it was not as if the world had been prosperous before the Coronavirus came. New and old problems are still at large - the looming threat of climate change, rise of nationalistic strongmen, terrorism, intrusive big tech, disregard for human rights, general intolerance in various shades and so on. Yet, the biggest shocker this year was that, one of the model liberal democracy states has been completely ravaged by the Coronavirus. The United States has topped the list of the number of people affected by the virus. There is a general consensus that the U.S administration has delayed in its fight against COVID-19. With a non-presidential person at the helm, the U.S has also been embroiled in a bitter trade war with China. 

More recently, America has been consumed by the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests in the wake of the brutal murder of George Floyd by a white policeman. Police brutality is not new in America. While racial slavery ended with the thirteenth amendment of 1865 and this was followed by the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, racial injustice continues to plague colored communities to this day in various modern forms. George Floyd is only the latest in a series of institutional killings. Much has been written and debated with regard to this, both for and against. Though it is unfortunate that such mass protests and sometimes incidents of escalated vandalism are taking place in the midst of a pandemic, throwing caution to the wind, one can understand the long held deep anger against the repressive Police.

More than the killing itself, it was the attitude and intention of the white police officer that shocked people to the core. The global outrage this time is only because the heinous act was caught live on a smartphone camera for over 8 minutes. Indians expressed their shock and solidarity on social media in different forms. Some were recounting their own experiences and drawing parallels between racism in the US and India, which raises the question - to what extent does racism exist in India? 

India being home to diverse ethnic groups numbering in the thousands, it is not surprising that there are inequalities of multiple kinds such as region, religion, caste, language, sex and colour. These are mostly manifested in a layered combination and have existed for thousands of years. Discrimination in modern India has acquired new and subtle forms. Although some cruel social practices like sati, child marriage etc have been rooted out from society, horrific acts like honour killings and mob lynchings still do take place. But apart from that, there is still a social sanction for indirect discriminatory outlooks that are hierarchical and exclusionary. 

Coming to racism, it is hard to point to a distinct trend that shows the prevalence of racial discrimination as extensive or institutional as found in the US. However, one can find ample instances in our day to day lives that shows Indians consider dark skin as something unfortunate. Sometimes, it is just the colour and sometimes it is readily associated with a particular socio-economic background. And like always, here too, women bear the brunt of it. There is a north-south divide within India having racial and linguistic undercurrents. People from the north eastern states have always been on the receiving end of this madness. In fact, depending on where a person resides, they are called using certain pejoratives. Teenage being an impressionable stage, young adults face these passive and sometimes extreme incidents and carry negative self-images of themselves throughout their lives. 

While South Indian cinema is notorious for casting fair-skinned actresses as leads, several Indian brands contribute to this obsession by selling skin-lightening products. Even comedy tracks are replete with both body and colour shaming and the irony is that, often in these scenes, a dark skinned comic actor verbally assaults or cringes on encountering a dark skinned woman or vice versa. In real life, matrimonial alliances in arranged marriages break off when the said groom finds to his disappointment a mismatch in the bride's skin colour or the parents of the groom heavily sigh that "Ellam ok, color dhaan konjam kammi" (Everything is fine, only fairness is lacking). 

This fetishisation for fair skin has become a norm that we fail to even see these crass acts, let alone calling them out for what it is. The most common dialogue we come across with respect to this is the title of this post. It not only conveys that dark skin to be considered beautiful is an exception but automatically assumes all fair skin is beautiful. Racial discrimination also works in other deviant ways. For instance, by a combination of name and skin colour of a person, people are categorised as 'safe - anti-social', 'vegetarian-non-vegetarian' and so on. 

Fortunately, there has been a gradual but perceptible shift in the attitude, especially among young people. We are seeing different platforms, aided by technology, to bring out a counter-narrative from the 'other' side. As the spectrum of voices gets wider and richer, society becomes more tolerant and progressive in its outlook.