By Krithi Sriram

The George Washington University ’23

Throughout my childhood, my family would spend a month of our summer vacations in India. My parents, who immigrated to the US from India, viewed these yearly trips as a chance for my brother and I to connect with our heritage and develop relationships with our extended relatives. During one of these visits, I accompanied my mother on a trip to see one of my grandmother’s close friends. It is customary for elders to hug youth and children when meeting them and provide them with blessings, so I was not surprised when one of the women motioned over for me to come and hold her hand. 

I was taken aback, however, when she took my hand and immediately began examining my skin tone. Upon inspection, she immediately began lamenting about how much my skin had darkened since the last time she had seen me. She then turned over to my mother and began prescribing a series of natural remedies for skin lightening, which included bleaching my skin with lemon juice and exfoliating it with chickpea flour.

The definition of colorism, according to Oxford, is prejudice or discrimination against individuals with a dark skin tone, typically among people of the same ethnic or racial group. The South Asian community, in particular, has gained notoriety for the widespread presence of colorism within daily life and societal structure. The origins of colorism in South Asian countries has been contested among experts for years. Specifically for India, many scholars believe that while colorism practices predate Britain’s colonization of the country, they were undoubtedly influenced by British colorphobia

Colorism is not limited to a particular faith or tradition within the Indian subcontinent, however women have been disproportionately impacted by these beliefs. A common example of this is the widespread preference for women with light skin tones in the arranged marriage process, which leads to almost 90% of marriages in India. Lighter skin has become synonymous with beauty and even professionality, with many industries such as sales, airlines, and media outlets hiring on the basis of skin tones. As a result, skin lightening products have experienced a spike in sales among South Asian women.

Colorism has also seeped into the South Asian entertainment industry, both local and abroad. Bollywood, in particular, has repeatedly come under fire for the usage of brownface, or the temporary darkening of the skin, on film performers that are portraying characters from disadvantaged backgrounds. The popular 2019 film, “Bala”, is a commonly used example of brownfacing within the film industry. The film features the story of a woman who suffered discrimination on the basis of her skin tone and actress Bhumi Pednaker, who played the titular character, had her skin darkened for the role. Bollywood stars, such as Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Shah Rukh Khan, have also come under fire for lending their names and faces to advertising campaigns for fairness creams.

One of the biggest consequences of colorism is its contribution to anti-black sentiments within the South Asian community. As more South Asian immigrate out of their home countries, they carry many of the local cultural beliefs about colorism with them, leading to many either unconsciously or consciously adopting biases against persons of African descent in their new home countries. Many South Asian immigrant families also continue to mingle within their own caste and regional associations within their home countries and even discourage their children from dating or marrying African-Americans, even ostracizing those who do, continuing to preserve these prejudices. 

These beliefs have resulted in two concerning developments in the face of the recent resurgence of the racial justice movement. As outsiders, many Indian Americans have felt “their status was so marginal in the first place that they barely got a toehold in the American society”, leading to decades of bystander syndrome within the community towards the movement. And many of the South Asians who are now expressing support for Black Lives Matter in the U.S. remain ignorant of the colorism, caste discrimination and violence within their own communities. 

These developments have indicated a clear requirement for self-examination and active participation within South Asian Americans. This is not to say that all South Asians in the US believe in colorism and racist beliefs, but that many of us may be unconsciously continuing to maintain some of the negative biases that have been brought over by older members of our community. 

The process that I learnt to do this is call “Ask, acknowledge, accept, address”

1. Ask yourself if you hold a particular bias to be true
2. Acknowledge this bias if it does exist within you without feeling ashamed or embarrassed
3. Accept that you hold this bias and do not beat yourself down for holding it
4. Address this bias by actively work towards reducing its impact on your thought process

Allyship is an uncomfortable process but an essential step that will contribute towards the greater good. Correcting one’s own inner workings is the most substantial action that a person can take in creating a more inclusive global community.

Sources:

https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1550&context=law_globalstudies

https://www.cnn.com/style/article/india-bollywood-brownface-hnk-intl/index.html

https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/anti-blackness-corrodes-south-asian-communities-37229