{"id":2810,"date":"2016-06-28T22:52:49","date_gmt":"2016-06-28T17:22:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=2810"},"modified":"2016-06-28T22:52:49","modified_gmt":"2016-06-28T17:22:49","slug":"dating-racism-upbringing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=2810","title":{"rendered":"\u201cTu Kala Hai!\u201d: What\u2019s Our Obsession with Fair Skin?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\nI<\/span>\n\n<\/div>\nt\u2019s been years, but I\u2019ll never forgive myself for something that happened in high school.\n\nChaitanya was one of my closest friends and we\u2019d been studying together since second grade. Chaitanya was exceptional at solving mathematical equations and had the best straight drive in the school. Also, Chaitanya\u2019s skin tone was <\/span>darker<\/span><\/a> than the rest of us. <\/span>\n\nThat last trait overshadowed every ball he\u2019d hit out of the park and every test in which he\u2019d score perfect marks \u2013 at least for me and a lot of my friends. When he was invited to a birthday party, some of us turned off the lights just before he arrived and pretended we couldn\u2019t see him. It was a hilarious prank. Hilarious to everyone except Chaitanya. He pretended to shrug it off, but eventually, he stopped hanging out with our group.<\/span>\n\nWhile these events were transpiring at school, a narrative with similar themes was unfolding in my <\/span>Punjabi household<\/span><\/a>. When my family was blessed with a younger brother, everyone was grateful that he was fair-skinned, unlike my mother. Her darkness was nothing short of a curse that everyone in the family was afraid would transfer to her offspring. My brother was kept out of the sun as much as possible to avoid getting tanned, and was made to go to sleep every night with the vague threat of \u201cKala Baba aake le jayega\u201d. These were the stereotypes that were handed down to us \u2013 by our mum. Instead of resisting familial structures that discriminated against her, she had become a polite, accepting, pliant part of it. Like an ideal daughter-in-law. <\/span>\n\nNow I\u2019ve grown up, occupy these super-woke circles, and work in a liberal-than-thou office where I\u2019m subject to virulent debates and periodic reminders to check my privilege. But years of higher education have not been able to entirely erase the prejudices and biases that I grew up with. <\/span>\n

Even if I met a girl with whom I shared chemistry, I could never consider her a dating prospect if she were dark-skinned.<\/blockquote>\nIt\u2019s with a grudging self-awareness that I admit that it\u2019s not uncommon for me to get worried if someone tells me that I have become a shade darker. I used to treat swiping on <\/span>Tinder<\/span><\/a> like a game of dark or fair. Even if I met a girl with whom I shared chemistry, I could never consider her a dating prospect if she were dark-skinned. \u00a0Horrendous, I agree, especially when I\u2019d periodically remind myself that I\u2019m not the smartest or fairest man myself \u2013 and certainly not worthy of being considered date-able for holding such hideous biases. <\/span>\n\nI no longer treat my dating life as a casting call for a Fair & Lovely commercial but I know I\u2019m a work in progress \u2013 a recovering racist \/ colourist of sorts. It\u2019s been a conscious effort in these last few years to ensure that such biases don\u2019t subconsciously colour my decisions.<\/span>\n\nBut my <\/span>family<\/span><\/a> is another matter. In my household, there\u2019s still little awareness about Gandhi\u2019s less-than-savoury actions in South Africa. The speeches of Martin Luther King are still unheard of. Would they be happy if I got married to a dark-skinned girl someday? Or would there be conversations around how I could\u2019ve \u201cdone better\u201d?<\/span>\n\nSadly, such ignorance isn\u2019t restricted to my household. In 2017, a tenth-standard student in West Bengal consumed poison and killed herself, because five prospective grooms rejected her for being dark skinned. Even foreigners have to pass the colour test. While <\/span>white tourists<\/span><\/a> are usually treated with great reverence, the experience of an <\/span>African-origin visitor<\/span><\/a> to India is greatly different. I am not sure we can continue to call it a colonial hangover \u2013 at this point, it seems like plain social stubbornness. But it\u2019s clear that the fairness of your skin determines how fairly you are treated. Obviously, it\u2019s not just India. According to <\/span>The Atlantic<\/span><\/i><\/a>, black people in the USA are less likely to get married overall, and when compared to other groups, a college-educated black woman is much less likely to marry a man with the same level of education.<\/span>\n\nIn a nation that battles issues like <\/span>communalism<\/span><\/a> and poverty, issues like <\/span>racism<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>sexism<\/span><\/a> are always tagged with the prefix \u201ccasual\u201d. It\u2019s brushed aside, often with the flimsy defence of \u201cHow can it be racist when we\u2019re the same race?\u201d No wonder, then, that we fail to see any fault in the fact that Indians spend more on fairness creams than Coca-Cola, simply because of the way they were born. We use the word \u201ccasual\u201d to soothe our consciences, pretending that because an issue is insignificant to us, it\u2019s insignificant to everybody. <\/span>\n\nExcept when the lights go out and we\u2019re making jokes about how we can\u2019t see people in the dark. For people like Chaitanya, this is anything but casual.<\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I occupy super-woke circles and work in a liberal office where I get periodic reminders to check my privilege. But years of higher education have not been able to entirely erase the prejudices and biases over fair and dark skin that I grew up with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":162,"featured_media":2811,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[332,333,5701,505,1254,224,343,5702],"class_list":["post-2810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pov","tag-black","tag-colour","tag-dark","tag-dating","tag-friendship","tag-love","tag-racism","tag-white"],"yoast_head":"\n\u201cTu Kala Hai!\u201d: What\u2019s Our Obsession with Fair Skin?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I occupy super-woke circles and work in a liberal office where I get periodic reminders to check my privilege. 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