Let Us Abort all Kinds of Skin Discrimination
An Essay by M.A.Rathore
If God has made difference between organisms, he aimed to meet their counterparts. He aimed to provide the opposite qualities in the person of different sex and vice-versa. The person who has a fair complexion has equated it with beauty, racial superiority, and power whereas a person with a dark complexion has his attributes in the form of wit and wisdom; a sense of honesty and dedication yet is infested with an inferiority complex.
Geographically human beings get their complexion from the atmosphere and climate where they live mostly. People who live around the equator get direct and more sunlight in the form of ultraviolet rays throughout the year. These UV rays are known as mutagens and can change the DNA of a species over time. The mutagens trigger the DNA to produce melanin, a dark colour pigment that helps block UV which also causes burns to the skin. There is no difference between people having fair complexion with that of the dark ones. Most of the white people in the Polar Regions get less sunlight and diagonal rays which do not pierce the body directly hence skin remains white. They have their attributes. They get proper dietary supplement foods rich in vitamins and minerals whereas people who live in and around the equator get fewer opportunities of having proper food and nutritional diets due to less vegetation.
In the colonial period, it was a trend to send the people who used to break the social laws and try to raise any public issue which would create a deadly effect on the governing powers to the farthest lands which were unknown and unfamiliar to the known world. They were given life imprisonment by sending them far from their motherland so that they might not disturb the governments, especially the colonial rules powered by Britain and other dominating countries of that time. No doubt, the people who were convicted were talented; among them were so many scientists and authors of high rank. With subsequent Acts, they freed themselves from the British yoke and claimed their freedom from their clutches. People of different colours and races were united then.
Though the USA is regarded as the best-civilized society in the world based on education and developments in all fields from industries to the cultivation of land yet it has a blight of creating human disaster in the form of racial and colour-based discrimination. The civilization which has many wonderful contributions to the development of humanity and its freedom is the originator of so many differences only based on shallow consideration of outward appearance. Is this outward appearance as the only form of beauty?
In the USA discrimination based on skin complexion has its deep roots in slavery. That is because slave owners typically gave preferential treatment to slaves with fair complexions while the slave owners did not officially recognize their mixed-race children as their blood; they were given privileges that dark-skinned slaves did not enjoy. Accordingly, light skin came to be viewed as assertive among the slave community. The dark-skinned slaves toiled outdoors in and day out in the fields; became sun-tanned while their light-skinned counterparts have usually privileges; used to work indoors completing domestic tasks that were far less complained.
Thus dark skin came to be associated with the lower classes and light skinned with the elite. Slave owners were partial to light-skinned because they were often family members. Slave owners frequently forced slave women into sexual intercourse and light-skinned offspring were telltale signs of their sexual assaults.
Though slavery has ended in the USA it is still lingering and has an enduring legacy. In black America, those with light skin have received employment opportunities off limits to dark-skinned African Americans. Colourism yields real-world advantages for an individual with light skin. Light skinned receive a large amount of salary than dark-skinned people; get shorter imprisonment than light ones. Research has found extensive evidence of discrimination based on skin colour in criminal justice, business, labour market, housing, health care, media, and politics in the United States and Europe. Lighter skin tones are seen as preferable in many countries in Africa and Asia. Many studies report lower private sector earnings for racial minorities, although it is often difficult to determine the extent to which this is the result of racial discrimination. According to Stanford psychologist Jennifer Eberhardt’s research study, dark-skinned black defendants were two times more likely than lighter-skinned black defendants to get the death penalty for crimes involving white victims.
Colourism is not just played out in the workforce or the criminal justice system but also the romantic realm. Because fair skin is associated with beauty and status; light-skinned women are more likely to be married than darker-skinned black women. Light skin is so coveted that whitening creams continue to be the best sellers not only in the USA but most countries including Asia and other continents.
Moreover, racism which is different from colourism doesn’t just concern a dominant racial group overtly oppressing minorities. There is subtle racism-slight snub or racial microaggressions based on race. There is also colourism within minority groups in which lighter-skinned people discriminate against their darker-skinned counterparts.
Internalized racism is an issue as well. It occurs when minorities experience self-hatred because they have taken to heart the ideology that dubs them as inferior. And in the 21st century, claims of reverse racism are growing, whether or not they are valid. Reverse racism is arguably the hottest form of racism in the 21st century. It is not that reverse racism is a huge problem in the U.S., it is that people keep claiming they have been victims of this form of racism in which whites fall prey to discrimination. In the face of racism, people of colour can turn to the support of their communities, but that is not necessarily the case with colourism, where members of a person’s racial group may reject or resent them due to skin colour biases rooted in the nation’s white supremacist framework.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, blacks in the U.S. were largely barred from home ownership in white communities or enrolling in white academic or cultural institutions. Colourism in the African-American community led to light-skinned blacks denying their darker counterparts access to join certain civic groups, sororities, etc. This led to these blacks being doubly discriminated against--by whites and the African-American elite, alike. Colour turns intensely personal when it shows up in families. It can lead to parents favoring one child over another because of their skin colour, eroding the rejected child’s self-worth, breaking the trust between parent and child, and fostering sibling rivalry.
Colourism in Indonesia pre-dates European colonization: pre-colonial Indonesian women used plant-based treatments to lighten their skin. With the invasion of Europeans in the 16th Century, the various kingdoms and empires of the archipelago were united under a common identity. In the 19th and 20th centuries, these old caste and class systems crystallized and were further sub-classified under Dutch rule, with the colonizers occupying the top of the hierarchy and pale-skinned Chinese merchants and business people holding middle-class status.
Traditional colourism combined with racism, congealed into a toxic mix of ideas that associated European features with power, wealth, and beauty. Centuries later, these ideas still plague Indonesian society and media. Anti-blackness is rampant. You only have to look at the treatment of the East Timorese, and the genocide and occupation that continues unnoticed in West Papua.
The problem of colourism is not specific to any nation, but is prevalent throughout Indonesia, South and East Asia, particularly in India, where British-stoked caste systems, Dalit racism, anti-blackness, and Bollywood meet in a deadly web of violence, slavery, and discrimination. It happens everywhere from Thailand to Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, South Africa, England, and the US. In places like Angola and Haiti, it has taken on an intensely political form. There lighter-skinned people have privileged access to some forms of political and material power.
In South Africa, light-skinned African women sometimes find themselves referred to as “yellow bones”. These women have often reported their experiences as being double-edged. On one hand, they are praised as beautiful but at the same time, they are also subject to stereotypes and derogatory remarks. But in the main, colourism means that light skin is seen as desirable and dark skin as undesirable.
Colourism is a complex phenomenon. In India, it is often argued that the preference for light skin predates British colonialism and is evident as far back as the Vedas, a collection of hymns and other religious texts composed in India centuries before the birth of Christ. But at the same time, the desire for light skin in India cannot also be divorced from the caste system, the country’s north-south divide, the impact of colonialism, and how capitalism has exploited these prejudices via the beauty industry.
In places like England or the US, South Asian communities often still retain strong ties with India. As a result, their issues around colourism are frequently similar to those in the Indian context, although local forms of colourism and racism are also shaped by understandings of the significance accorded to skin tone in other communities. The majority of South African Indians, mainly descendants of indentured workers, have very little direct connection with India. In South Africa, the matter of skin colour is often classed and shot through with much-localized understandings of differences between north and south Indians. But there are also South African Indian families in which colourism is intensely felt. In some cases it can even result in discrimination within the intimate space of the family and, as a result, significant personal trauma.
Colourism is also sometimes evident among the coloured community in South Africa. It predates apartheid, has endured after the end of apartheid, and extends beyond a concern with skin tone to include hair texture and the shape of facial features. In Durban, where some historically Indian and coloured communities are nearby, ideas about skin tone have taken on multiple influences. Because different black communities have shaped each other’s ideas about beauty and colour in South Africa our experience cannot be reduced to an offshoot of the Indian or American experiences.
The question remains how to eradicate such types of discrimination which are not just in any form. In the words of Jen Walls from Minnesota, USA, “The soul knows no color wheel to begin and feels to ditch disparate delusional demarcation of skin.” First of all, we have to understand that we all are equal human beings. We are many but not different. We have got birth with the same process each man gets birth. We should, first of all, feel confident that we are something; that we have taken birth to do something great. We should think that nobody is so powerful to govern the other man except for the circumstances God has provided for him. We should not perpetuate any kind of discrimination. Privileges in the name of white skin must be averted keeping in view that all men are talented and can perform well if they are given proper opportunities to show their latent powers; talents and more they can serve. We should keep in mind that the world is governed by the mind, not beauty. We need to develop so many infrastructures to make man happy and prosperous. I am unable to understand that we have no time to love however from where we deduce time to show all ill-mind politics and any racial thoughts which is inhumane in every condition. Let’s hope we will abort all that belittle humanity, love, harmony, and peace. Amen. ©
