The Racist within...

Picture courtesy: Indian View String

With a wheatish complexion, I can’t much think of any particular instance, when I would have actually wished to be fair skinned. I know and have seen girls of my age (that has passed and that in which I am) touchy about their skin and looks. They would rather die than see a tiny pimple on their faces.  Nothing wrong with looks, but to worry for your colour and do every possible bit to make it go white, is a bit too much. I have been quite a contented on this front; never obsessed with my looks or desperate to be 'white' to be appealing and attractive to others. Actually, I never really knew what significance, so to say, colour held, and holds. I would acknowledge unabashedly that I was too slow for my age to catch up with stuff like this. Now, when I think back, I recall some shady memories of my school days.

I remember my 'so called' friends, who would match their skin colours with each other and the fairer of all would take pride in it, as if the birth in human form was just about that. Different skin shades were analysed and then the darker once mocked and made fun of. Being fair was like all a girl could dream of in life, to be able to look appealing and attractive in peer circles. I never internalised these frivolous thoughts and talks, good heavens!

I, now draw linkages between what happened then and what is popularised, sometimes in a subtle way, through the media. I see Shah Rukh Khan mockingly advising the boy to use 'mardon wali fairness cream', to look fair and handsome. During my high school days, advertisments of 'beauty soap- 'fair & glow' used to be advertised frequently in between daily soaps and programmes. Fair and Lovely was already there even before I was born! The advertisements of  'fair & glow' sounded so convincing like an assured tested formula to make the skin go fair that for once,  I was lured into using it. Today, when I think of this, I laugh to myself. Now there are a plethora of such fairness products rocking the markets. Bollywood personalities too have been endorsing these fairness products for the time immemorial. Such advertisements also become carriers of the superfluous message that ‘white is desired’ besides creating a market demand for the products.

When I surf through television channels and serials, seldom do I see dusky and dark female protagonists, in any of the leading soaps (as per the most talked and watched serials at home by most women). Dark is projected and perhaps, perceived as poor, substandard, low class and unattractive in the general sense. One may disagree with this, but deep within, most girls, sometimes even their mothers, are desirous of fair skin for their daughters, which is considered beautiful and attractive, half war to secure ‘good’ prospects won with this alone. I have seen children as small as those of pre-primary and primary schools showing and articulating reservation in befriending dark skinned counterparts, and parents not really vehemently objecting to it. Even in the matrimonial, one would often come across the wish for a fair bride.


If one gets conscious of the entrenched racist mindset, I am sure, like me, others will also see racial discrimination in one’s own surroundings. External wars on racism and ‘apartheid’ may have been won in the political front, but it is extremely difficult to gain victory over our own internally distorted mindsets. 

We get perturbed with the news of racial attacks on Indians abroad. Which racism then do we get repulsive about, and what are the different parameters of the racism of which America and Britain are accused of and that which we practice in the society, in our homes, with our near ones, if not dear ones? A racist resides deep within every average and highly placed individual. It is not really the education which helps you see through all this and challenge, but the over emphasised and reinforced stereotypes, which make us accept things unquestioningly, as a normal way of life. This is how minds are conditioned and stereotypes are abetted.