I don’t know why there is such a hue and cry about a certain ‘Prime Minister’ in waiting’s personal views about the people of Africa. His comments were reflective of the generally prevailing mindset of the society. Even his party’s spokesperson tried to spin it to the best of his ability and when his arguments were shot down, he resorted to, well at least his leader was not a hypocrite. He said what he meant and it should all be fine and acceptable.
The implication is that overall it is a common expression and the people believe and practice this racial discrimination towards dark skinned people. Now ‘profiling’ happens to be a newly pushed and repeated word. There is at least a bit of truth in this phenomenon after all. We are quite racist and inarguably quite vocal about it. The society overall has its liking towards thelighter skin. In short, the lighter skin defines beauty, and darker skin is labelled as asign of ugliness.
If you are a bit surprised, a very socially active Senator of another political party once described the scene at our neighbouring country’s Parliament, as “wall to wall ugliness.” Bear this in mind that generally, the neighbours are a tad bit darker than our folks at home. Being dark skinned is, of course, is a “no no”.
Children with dark complexion face ridicule at schools and neighbourhoods, and it follows them through their adulthood. The racial slurs that people use in their day to day discussion are such crass that I would not be able to list or citeat this forum. The irony is that as a nation we teach our children, we the people of South Asia drove out the evil, cunning and racially insensitive, “white people.” We criticise the discriminatory attitude of the Brits and their exploitation of the dark-skinned South Asians.
I have said it here in the past, and perhaps worth a mention here that we have assumed the role and attitude of our former masters, post-independence.The irony gets wider and deeper when in the same breath, we bring the religion in any such argument. Remember, there is no difference in a Black or a White Muslim in Islam. As far as Holy Scripture is concerned,yes, but in reality, the story is to the contrary. In most cases, the discrimination is quite blatant and in some cases, quite subtle yet obvious. The people, in general, have an unofficial unspokencaste system that they follow and practice.
The society puts immense pressure on women as well.The lighter skin is wrongly associated with beauty. This of course is quite expressly stated in matrimonial advertisement and on matchmaking websites. The cosmetic industry loves our region as skin bleaching, and whitening creams have a huge demand here. Not to mention, the hydrogen peroxide and shade of blonde, when it comes to female hair colour. It is always in vogue and will continue to be that way till perhaps eternity.
This make-believe beauty is reflected inthe conventional media and the idiot box as well. The soaps, if you call them soaps, to begin with, serve as a subliminal source to peddle such attitude. There is so much hype about our “very independent media.” It has empowered women a lot, and so on and so forth. True to some extent!However, turn on your tube and flip any channel of your liking.Try looking for any female anchor, any female talk show host and show me one dark skinned female just for the sake of diversity. It is so obvious that such people are discouraged or perhaps used behind the camera or for other administrative or technical roles. The conventional definition of beauty is promoted in most spheres of life.
I have touched on this in the past, but most domestic help and people tasked with menial labourcannot be categorised in the aforementioned beautyslot. So, with this disparity, the exploitation is natural and from our standards quite normal.
Here in the US, despite significant milestones being accomplished, there is still what you would call a somewhat segregated, Black and White America. The strides and achievements of African Americans, post-civil rights movement are remarkable. There are many, many millions of miles to go. Yet, if someone here utters a racial slur, the society and its reflection, the mass media does not treat that slip very kindly. This is not to say that there is no discrimination here. Of course, there is,as many societies. Subtle or unspoken discrimination exists. If people express any blatant discrimination, they are reminded of civil rights and anti-discrimination laws.
The fear and hype of more blatant discrimination in post-Trump America is real to some extent. Not that it is some sort ofdefence for such ugly behaviour. But what is quite amazing is, we do the same in our home countries, and cry foul when it happens to us in our host countries. It is dark yet an open secret after all.
The writer is a Pakistani-US mortgage banker. He can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter @dasghar