{"id":207,"date":"2016-06-10T21:08:45","date_gmt":"2016-06-10T21:08:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=207"},"modified":"2016-06-10T21:08:45","modified_gmt":"2016-06-10T21:08:45","slug":"delhi-india-greater-noida-rascism-nigerian-students-manish-khari","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=207","title":{"rendered":"The Truth in Black & White"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I<\/span><\/p><\/div>

f Masonda Ketanda Olivier\u2019s brutal murder<\/a> in June last year was not enough to hold up a mirror to ourselves and admit that we have a problem with \u201cblackness\u201d, it is high time we got the memo. Last evening, four Nigerian students were beaten up<\/a> near Ansal Plaza in Greater Noida\u2019s Pari Chowk by a mob protesting the death of a 17-year-old local boy.\u00a0It didn\u2019t matter that the\u00a0four students were in no way related to the death of the teen, who it is claimed, is a victim of a drug overdose. An entirely different bunch of Nigerians have been accused of the boy\u2019s murder, but I guess when you\u2019re a mob looking for someone to lynch, being black is crime enough.\n\nAnti-blackness has always been a problem in India, but in typical desi fashion, it\u2019s something we\u2019d rather sweep under the carpet. A similar incident happened in Bengaluru last year, where a mob stripped<\/a> a Tanzanian woman because she happened to be driving down a road where a Sudanese man had run down a local half an hour prior. It prompted one DailyO columnist to claim the attack wasn\u2019t racist because, basically, we\u2019re not white so we can\u2019t be racist. In fact, after Olivier\u2019s death, the\u00a0Minister of State for Culture and Tourism Mahesh Sharma dismissed the murder by saying \u201ceven Africa is not safe\u201d, a statement so blas\u00e9 that it makes me wonder if he\u2019s actually human.\n\nAnti-blackness is so pervasive in our society that even Gandhi in his early years was a proponent, separating the South African Indian community\u2019s struggle for freedom from that of the Zulus and writing that \u201cabout the mixing of the Kaffirs (blacks) with the Indians, I must confess I feel most strongly.\u201d Much of this relates to a historical identification with European \u2013 and later American \u2013 elites, as Indians dealt with the experience of colonisation by pretending that at least they\u2019re higher up the ladder than blacks. For Indians who continue to aspire to be counted alongside the largely white elites of the first world, internalising the racist attitudes of that elite is only natural. Combine this with our indigenous form of \u201ccolourism\u201d, inspired by the caste system and the association of fair skin with Brahmins and other upper-caste elites, and you\u2019ve got a country that treats darkness like a disease, at best. At its worst, it leads to dehumanisation and eventually, violence.\n\nMuch of the blame for this lies with Indian pop culture and media, which have consistently reinforced such toxic ideas in the Indian mainstream. Enough has been written about fairness cream ads and the colourism they promote, but I feel compelled to mention Pond\u2019s 2009 epic in five parts \u201cWhite Beauty\u201d<\/a>, which features an artificially \u201cdarkened\u201d Priyanka Chopra\u2019s struggle to win back her ex-beau Saif Ali Khan from a much fairer Neha Dhupia. Then there\u2019s the series of ads for Parle\u2019s LMN<\/a> drinks, which feature black men in loincloths in the desert trying their best to get a sip of water, a perfect example of egregious racism that didn\u2019t generate a tenth of the outrage the recent Coldplay video did. But these would all be outdone by Aishwarya Rai Bachchan\u2019s print ad<\/a> for a jewellery brand that featured her decked up as a white colonial aristocrat under a red parasol held up by an emaciated black child. Racism, colonial aspirations and an endorsement of child-slavery, all rolled up into one particularly offensive package. Well done, Ash.\n

It is perfectly acceptable to use Snoop Dogg to lend authenticity to Bollywood rap songs and shamelessly rip off black music for decades, even as we use black stereotypes for slapstick punchlines.<\/blockquote>\nTo be fair to our advertising industry, they\u2019ve been late-comers to the racism game. Bollywood, as ever, has been the pioneer. Whether it\u2019s the routine use of darker-skinned \u2013 and more recently, black \u2013 actors as nameless thugs, the ignorant stereotyping of Africans as primitive tribals, or the persistent use of \u201cblackface\u201d, our film industry pulls no punches. I\u2019m not sure how the racist American minstrel tradition of blackface made its way to Bollywood, but you can see it in songs like Mr India\u2019s<\/em> \u201cHawa Hawai<\/a>\u201d, and the incredibly offensive video for Vishwatma\u2019s<\/em> \u201cSaat Samundar Paar<\/a>\u201d.\n\nMore recently, there\u2019s the National Award-winning Fashion<\/em>, in which Priyanka Chopra plays a model whose descent into drugs and depravity finally hits rock bottom when she wakes up one morning next to *gasp* a black man!<\/em> (Co-incidentally, Priyanka would go on to star in Quantico<\/em> and complain about the racism she faced in the US. Of course.) And no discussion of racism in Indian cinema will be complete without this horrendous over-the-top scene<\/a> from 2000\u2019s Hadh Kar Di Aapne<\/em>, which is more racist than a KKK rally. I can\u2019t explain this one, you\u2019ll just have to watch and then fight the urge to hunt down and kill everyone involved with this scene.\n\nThis knee-jerk racism hasn\u2019t, of course, stopped us from appropriating black culture when convenient. It is perfectly acceptable to use Snoop Dogg to lend authenticity to Bollywood rap songs and shamelessly rip off black music for decades, even as we use black stereotypes for slapstick punchlines. Even in articles deploring such racism, our media uses the grossly inaccurate coinage \u201cAfrican nationals\u201d, reducing a racially and culturally diverse continent to one skin colour. And before you pat yourself on the back for being more enlightened than that, let me point out that your supposedly liberal social circle isn\u2019t much better.\n\nMy Facebook feed is full of people making fun of contemporary African American Vernacular English (AAVE) slang like \u201cbae\u201d or \u201con fleek\u201d, even as they happily use words like \u201ccool\u201d and \u201chip\u201d \u2013 which also come from black American culture, but have been sanitised by decades of white usage. Then there\u2019s the electronica producer I know from Delhi, who regularly used to bring hashish back to Bombay to sell to his fellow students. He was trying to defend the 2014 raids on Khirki Extension\u2019s black residents by AAP\u2019s Somnath Bharti, who accused them of running a drugs and prosecution racket. This supposedly “culturally literate” producer told me that the raids were warranted, because whenever he and his friends called for coke at their parties \u2013 usually playing techno, a style of music with origins that are decidedly black and political \u2013 it was always a black dealer who turned up. Bravo, my friend! I couldn\u2019t dream up a better example of Indian racism and hypocrisy if I tried.\n\nThe reason I\u2019m going on about this is that accepting our racism problem is the only way we will begin to think about solving it. Our unwillingness to acknowledge this racism (one of my cousins explained his attitude by resorting to that oldest of racist apologetics \u2013 genes) means that this violence is only likely to grow worse. But, as this online webcomic<\/a> points out, there is a bright side. As India grows increasingly intolerant, our treatment of black people increasingly aligns with the way we treat other India\u2019s disenfranchised minorities. Don\u2019t worry, black people in India! We\u2019re only treating you as we treat the rest of us. At least those that aren\u2019t privileged savarna males.\n\nThis is an updated version of an earlier published piece.<\/em>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Don\u2019t worry, black people! This is how we treat everyone who is not a savarna Indian male.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":208,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[326,327,328,329,330,62,63,64,65,66,67,331,332,141,333,334,335,336,19,337,338,339,340,341,342,343,344,345,346,347,71,72],"class_list":["post-207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pov","tag-aap","tag-africa","tag-african","tag-aishwarya-rai-bachchan","tag-anti-blackness","tag-arre","tag-arre-digital-platform","tag-arre-originals","tag-arre-reads","tag-arre-text-articles","tag-arre-website","tag-bengaluru","tag-black","tag-bollywood","tag-colour","tag-delhi","tag-fair","tag-greater-noida","tag-india","tag-ketanda-olivier","tag-manish-khari","tag-nigerian-students","tag-priyanka-chopra","tag-race","tag-racial-violence","tag-racism","tag-rascism","tag-snoop-dogg","tag-somnath-bharti","tag-violence","tag-web-series","tag-web-shows"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Truth in Black & White<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Don\u2019t worry, black people! 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