There are so many aspects to love about being Indian, but there is a dark underbelly to
the bias in our communities.
Recently, an absolutely terrible travesty occurred across in the USA where George Floyd
was brutally murdered on camera, sparking debatably, one of the largest civil rights
movements since the ending of segregation in the 60s, and this got me to thinking:
everybody is holding the white community accountable for the role that they’ve played in creating
such a system and this is good, open communication is important. But nobody wants to talk about
the internal racism that we hold in our own communities relating to India’s obsession
with fair skin…
It’s perplexing because it’s difficult to call it what it actually is sometimes,
casual racism. And even as I say that, I feel my own internal biases firing off as I immediately
go to defend my roots with, it’s not racism, it’s just culture! But if we can’t even
admit what the real problem is, then I don’t see how we’re ever gona be able to bring
about positive change. Really, there is no comparison between recent
events and my own experience; it’s just that the injustices highlighted globally help
to throw into sharp focus my own community experiences of the infamous skin lightening
wall as you walk into Indian beauty shops or nobody wanting to go out into the sun and
actually tan or constantly being told how lucky I am to have light eyes, features pertaining
to that of Western beauty or girls constantly mixing up face masks with turmeric and yoghurt
to lighten their skin – in fact this is a ceremony performed at Indian weddings to ‘cleanse’
the bride and groom, a ‘tip of the hat’ to our colourism preconceptions, if you will.
My experiences are reflective of the culture here in Scotland and the UK overall, but this
mentality transcends borders and in fact, intensifies the further East you go.
Fair skin = beautiful has been embedded in the mass Indian psyche for a very long time,
which has become evident through the fact that global spending is set to triple to £24bn
on skin lightening products by 2024, with the biggest spenders originating from the
Asia-Pacific region. Does this surprise me? Unfortunately not. It seems that every person
that I’ve ever met from South Asian descent has had some sort of a comment on their skin
colour, whether that's negative or positive – we are weirdly obsessed with each others
skin colours.
This fixation on colour really has its roots in the Hindu caste system and was only exacerbated
by British Colonialism. The caste system (which still exists today) is a hierarchical structure
based on what you did for a living. Outdoor, manual labour work was at the bottom of the
system and naturally in India’s climate, this darkened your skin tone, giving the upper
and middle classes a ‘status symbol’ by having fairer skin.
We were already prejudicing ourselves, way before the white man came along to do it to
us, so my question to people of South Asian descent is, how can we ask other races to
treat us fairly, when we can’t even do this for our own?
And don’t get me wrong, I really don’t blame any of our people for having this mindset,
this is all an entire race of people have ever known, so this isn’t any one person’s
fault and we definitely shouldn’t be going around pointing the finger at anybody. More
than likely, if you hail from this culture, all of us have been guilty of this at some
point in our lives.
Evidently, this issue is a systemic problem, relating back to the days of the caste system,
so how do we go about changing such deeply ingrained attitudes? Yes trying to change
the overall system is an important goal, but if we can change the environment immediately
around us, our own parents, aunties, cousins and friends, then hopefully this will have
a domino effect.
Open conversations are really important, coming from a place of understanding because approaching
our families with an accusatory tone will never end productively and ultimately, we
wanna be able to speak about these issues and actually have others listen.
It’s not something that we’re gonna be able to change overnight, at the end of
the day, we’re trying to rectify a state of mind that has been passed down for many
generations and with some industries heavily relying on our internal biases, it’s gonna
take a lot to change the whole country; but these attitudes start from the moment a child
is born, when parents and extended family start comparing their skin colour to the other
children and this is where, I feel, we need to start making the changes – from the very
beginning.
We are really lucky to now be living in the age of information and with each new generation
comes a wave of openness and understanding that our culture needs and with recent movements
demanding justice and fairness for all, wouldn’t it be beautiful if all cultures with any form
of ingrained prejudice followed suit. What are your experiences with racism within
your own community? Is this something you’ve experienced before?
Let me know in the comments below.