Color Blindness:
Color - Plus?
John Dalton, if alive can be proven wrong for his theory of Color blindness. I would say “Hey, John! you are wrong, people are still looking at colors”. For those who understood, yes I am talking about the skin color discrimination, people are yet to over come that and people are no longer color blind, they do see colors and they live with it. Dark skinned people are still considered to be treated second. Well this is not the case with everyone, but the theory of First impression is the best impression holds very true for Dark skinned people, they are not considered THE BEST unless people recognize the talent in them. Before getting further into the post, I would like to pre-state and make clear that “THIS IS NOT A GENERALIZATION, BUT THIS IS COMMONLY FOUND EVERYWHERE.”
One brilliant move:
I aint a great fan of Aishwarya Rai, but I got impressed when I read that Ash denied a fairness cream ad, stating that it would keep the discrimination fed. That was a very sensible statement and hats off.
The Affected:
Girls are the major victims of this color discrimination, be it be in movies, career or marriage, they are the first affected. Take any fairness cream ad, they definitely revolve around one of these concepts. Any ad will fit into this frame.
A fair girl(with dark look make up) would have missed a chance fetching a career or would have lost a marriage proposal or would have been teased for her color, returns home disappointed and the goody goody friends/parents will suggest a fairness cream and after that all the lost chances will fall under feet.
It reinforces a false belief in people, right from 3 yr old to 80 yr old, no one can claim that they are 100% free from this false belief, somewhere a small fraction of this still exists in each and everyone of our minds.
And I still feel that we are not so far from the day Gandhiji was thrown out of the train compartment.
Where is the Root?
There is no point in analyzing the source or where it came from, there are so many factors that contribute to skin color racism – skin color stereotypes and prejudice. And all fingers point to THE SOCIETY which is no one else but US, we cant keep blaming our fore-fathers for setting up this trend, I agree they did it, they did it without knowing that it was a sin and we are doing it even after knowing it. So who is better? It is being popularized by many social outlets from the media to magazines.
How it branches?
White Skinned people are always given a first preference, this starts right from the school. Only a fair girl is preferred, be it giving a bouquet to the chief guest or receiving them from the dais. Beauty when it comes to Girls and Brain when it comes to boys, only fair boys are considered to brilliant (’padipps’) on first sight.
From root to branches
I would like to include something which I read in ABCnews
Colorism is especially prevalent in music videos. Kids we talked to on the street noticed that. And said they liked it.
“They all light skinned and they all look good,” one boy said.
“There’s a lot of dark-skinned girls that are pretty, with long hair, bad, but they’re not in the videos though, it’s just the light-skinned ones that’s in the videos,” another added.
“The darker the woman takes on what I refer to as a “Ho” complex. She is the prostitute,” said Karen a University of Maryland student. “The lighter a woman is, well, she’s the goddess. She’s the untouchable. She is the woman that all the men in the video aspire to have,” she said.
Very true isn’t? Take our cinema heroines for that matter, how many are dark skinned? leave heroines, even the dark skinned hero who claim that their color is their plus, are not ready to appear before cameras without color touch-ups. (Rajnikanth, Vijaykanth looks as lighter as their heroines in duets).
The myth then travels to college and then to workplace. Let me not get into the controversy, Survey results will stand for my point. I don’t want to discuss that here. Then comes marriage, most of the ads posted contains this word “Fair Looking or light skinned”. It holds good for both guys and girls, for girls it is a mandatory requirement, for guys at least if they are well settled, color takes the back seat. And it goes on, one simple example which we can see in day-to-day life, which even I faced being a dark-skinned vegetarian
Discrimination 2.0
Discrimination 2.0:
Of course now-a-days people don’t resist dark skinned people sitting next to them in bus, but discrimination is little aesthetic in this internet era, thou black is not discriminated, White is still kept above. Thou they don’t discriminate black obviously, they appreciate White. Even in a matured/educated crowd, it has just come down to teasing level, but no one can claim that it is completely eradicated. We cannot blame because we are soaked in it and it will take a very long time to get away, unless we take conscious effort it is not gonna die.
Obama’s Victory and American History:
Obama has won the election, that is just a news. A black has re-created history in America, it is a sensational news and who is creating this? MEDIA. What made them emphasize more on Obama’s color than his caliber? Isn’t time to shed those old theories and start working on new things? Should we still pursue the black dream?
Color Vs Caliber:
Color vs Caliber debate is still one and to my knowledge I feel that color is taking the driver seat and if at all caliber does, even that is proclaimed as a milestone. Obama’s victory as an eligible candidate is not as much celebrated as Obama’s victory as a black eligible candidate.
Lighter skin “began to be associated with privilege and it became associated with beauty,” said Marita Golden, author of “Don’t Play in the Sun: One Woman’s Journey Through the Color Complex”
This section would be incomplete if I don’t mention Micael Jackson, one question remains unanswered, if MJ wasn’t under knife, will he be MJ now? Be it a super-developed country like America or developing country like India or under-developed country like Nigeria one thing is common – it is the Colorism. No matter how much people grow, the venom of discrimination still runs in their blood and it keeps affecting others.
Color-plus?
Is being light colored a real plus? The society thinks so, we are still living with the white Supremacy. It is still imperative, it is not even high time, it is already late, if we don’t realize now then it is never gonna happen.
No one knows, the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice! Sue the White Supremacy.
people are on the go – Its always nice to know about people around you. People are having brilliant ideas for Facebook apps, lets wait for them to come up with their ideas.Intro round is done. Waiting for the first session to begin.
People who know me personally would be very sure on the point that I can never follow these lessons which my life keeps teaching me. Here is a list of lessons which life and people in my life taught me in a very hard way and which I would never follow,
