Rampant Racism or Natural Human Behaviour?

This article appeared in Outlook magazine in the June 29, 2009 issue. I came across it recently and it appealed to me so much that I knew I had to re-post it to get the message across to a lot of people in India who live with this sense of false pride I have sensed time and again. Do follow the link at the bottom of this article to follow the rest of the comments because they provide with a lot more insight on the subject, including some other personal experiences.

opinion

'India Is Racist, And Happy About It'

A Black American's first-hand experience of footpath India: no one even wants to change 

In spite of friendship and love in private spaces, the Delhi public literally stops and stares. It is harrowing to constantly have children and adults tease, taunt, pick, poke and peer at you from the corner of their eyes, denying their own humanity as well as mine. Their aggressive, crude curiosity threatens to dominate unless disarmed by kindness, or met with equal aggression. 

Once I stood gazing at the giraffes at the Lucknow Zoo only to turn and see 50-odd families gawking at me rather than the exhibit.

On a visit to the Lucknow zoo, people gawked more at me than at the exhibits.

Parents abruptly withdrew infants that inquisitively wandered towards me. I felt like an exotic African creature-cum-spectacle, stirring fear and awe. Even my attempts to beguile the public through simple greetings or smiles are often not reciprocated. Instead, the look of wonder swells as if this were all part of the act and we were all playing our parts. 

Racism is never a personal experience. Racism in India is systematic and independent of the presence of foreigners of any hue. This climate permits and promotes this lawlessness and disdain for dark skin. Most Indian pop icons have light-damn-near-white skin. Several stars even promote skin-bleaching creams that promise to improve one's popularity and career success. Matrimonial ads boast of fair, v. fair and v. very fair skin alongside foreign visas and advanced university degrees. Moreover, each time I visit one of Delhi's clubhouses, I notice that I am the darkest person not wearing a work uniform. It's unfair and ugly.

Discrimination in Delhi surpasses the denial of courtesy. I have been denied visas, apartments, entrance to discos, attentiveness, kindness and the benefit of doubt. Further, the lack of neighbourliness exceeds what locals describe as normal for a capital already known for its coldness. 

My partner is white and I am black, facts of which the Indian public reminds us daily. Bank associates have denied me chai, while falling over to please my white friend. Mall shop attendants have denied me attentiveness, while mobbing my partner. Who knows what else is more quietly denied?

"An African has come," a guard announced over the intercom as I showed up. Whites are afforded the luxury of their own names, but this careful attention to my presence was not new. ATM guards stand and salute my white friend, while one guard actually asked me why I had come to the bank machine as if I might have said that I was taking over his shift. 

It is shocking that people wear liberalism as a sign of modernity, yet revert to ultraconservatism when actually faced with difference. Cyberbullies have threatened my life on my YouTube videos that capture local gawking and eve-teasing. I was even fired from an international school for talking about homosociality in Africa on YouTube, and addressing a class about homophobia against kids after a student called me a 'fag'.

Outside of specific anchors of discourse such as Reservations, there is no consensus that discrimination is a redeemable social ill. This is the real issue with discrimination in India: her own citizens suffer and we are only encouraged to ignore situations that make us all feel powerless. Be it the mute-witnesses seeing racial difference for the first time, kids learning racism from their folks, or the blacks and northeasterners who feel victimised by the public, few operate from a position that believes in change. 

Living in India was a childhood dream that deepened with my growing understanding of India and America's unique, shared history of non-violent revolution. Yet, in most nations, the path of ending gender, race and class discrimination is unpaved. In India, this path is still rural and rocky as if this nation has not decided the road even worthy. It is a footpath that we are left to tread individually.

---

(The writer is a Black American PhD student at the Delhi School of Economics.)


My Comment:

Mr Kuku, 

First of all I would like to apologize from the bottom of my heart on behalf of my fellow countrymen for the treatment meted out to you. I know the tendency among my countrymen to give preference to fair skin in every field of life. Being a North Indian, I am also well aware of the fact that this practice is more prevalent in North India than in South India. But there are some intricacies that need some discussion. 

First of all, it’s not racism. It’s more a fascination for the white skin (which is exemplified by the fact that Indian Premier League (IPL), Cricket’s top tournament currently, has white cheerleaders of every team!). And the primary reason that this is prevalent more in North India than in the South is that an average North Indian is, so to say, fairer-skinned than an average South Indians. Also, over the past few decades, education has been held more important in the Southern states of India and has thus had a greater impact in South India than in the North. This is another reason for the backwardness of thinking of the people in the North. 

Another important thing of note is that India is full of very different cultures, and you will find people with very different personalities and preferences over a distance of just a hundred miles. Not all cultures breed this exclusionary attitude. Hailing from Shimla in Himachal Pradesh, and having lived in Shimla, Chandigarh, Indore, Pune, Mumbai and Bangalore, I can vouch for the fact the people from Himachal Pradesh, being hill people, or may be because of some other reason, are much warmer towards people and would go completely out of the way to help you out, no matter what is the colour of your skin. And I’ve seen it happen – it’s all there in the speech, in how strangers reply to you. It all comes across, and I’ve had the privilege to compare this nature of the natives of all the six cities. So when you say North Indian, let us not generalize. The same goes for New Delhi. If you feel people of New Delhi are more inclined in their preference towards the fairer skin, that may be true, but then there are a lot of people who will be very helpful and who will never discriminate on the basis of your skin colour. Delhi has a population of over 22 million, and people in Delhi come from all over, especially the labour class, most of which is a victim of urbanization from the poorer nearby states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and the kind. It all depends on who you are interacting with. ATM people and autowallahs have very low education levels, as most of India is still very poor. Almost none of them have had any exposure to different cultures within their own country, let alone abroad. So it is their ignorance and naivete that comes across as “racist” to you. I know it’s very hard for you facing all this every single day, but I would like to ask you to forgive us for our poverty, which perpetrates lack of belief in basic education, which thus makes people behave like this. 

We were ruled by Britishers for over 200 years. And this is the time during which poverty in India became widespread, as we were denied very basic human rights by the Britishers, and we were persecuted for a long time by those who forcefully ruled us and treated us like speck of dust on their shoes. Maybe this deep rooted preference for white skin emanates from this subconscious idea that was hammered into our minds that white people are superior. Who is to blame? Widespread poverty and a very late opening up of our economy to the outside world perpetrated this thinking and in a society where caste discrimination was already rooted since millennia, a new aversion towards darker skin was not difficult to assimilate. That said, I have to mention that it is a very sad state of affairs, and I feel ashamed of this bigoted behaviour on the part of my countrymen. 

Specific to the problems faced by you, I think the gawking that you get is more out of curiosity and our own lack of awareness or access to the outside world. This is mainly attributed to the fact that there are very low Africans present in India. This goes for any place where an outsider comes when the people are not used to his/her presence. A white skinned person goes to Goa, and he might as well feel at home. Let him go to the north-eastern states of India, and see the kind of discrimination and gawks does he have to face. Let him go to a small village where people have never seen a person with such a fair skin, and then see the kind of stares and whispers and comments he gets. It’s all about how “developed”, to use a word that everyone here can relate to, the country is, and India, sadly, despite its tries of pomp and show in the Commonwealth Games and buys of the best of their kind military fighter planes, and it’s ambitions of being a superpower – notwithstanding all that, India is still a developing country and, with the kind of burdens and problems of population, deforestation, lack of basic education, or mass poverty that it faces, India will continue to be in the “developing” bracket, according to me, for many years to come. And a change in attitudes and acceptance of people of all colours, creeds, castes and communities will come with time, no doubt about that. What I have said in defence of my countrymen, in no way lessens the anguish I felt when I read your article and continued to read all the comments on it, and my sincere heartfelt apologies for all that happened.

For other comments, refer to the link below:
http://www.outlookindia.com/feedbacks.aspx?typ=100&val=250317


Friends, what do you guys have to say about this? Do you believe this is a shameful act on the part of Indians, or do you think this is a part and parcel of everyday life everywhere in the world? What are your thoughts on it?