Generally, “racism” represents people having a phobia or feelings of superiority towards another race or colour of people which results in discrimination and violence. But today in the 21st century, the primary definition of “racism” has been redefined as something only “white people” are capable of.
As a person born and raised in Sri Lanka—this is an important discussion simply because of the lack of accountability my people along with the rest of the South Asian community have when it comes to the issue of colour and race.
If racism is exclusive to white people—why did the Sinhalese slaughter hundreds of thousands of Tamils? Recently, Sri Lanka had an election where a Sinhalese supremacist by the name of Mahinda Rajapaksa [the now former president] who relied on a fairy-godfather to try and win the presidential election two years in advance and lost to Maithripala Sirisena, a man who has vowed to give Tamils justice—but words are wind when you have centuries of racial discrimination and systematic violence; only time will tell if Sirisena is a man of his word. Rajapaksa, however, could not accept the fact that he had lost and expressed his defeat was invalid because the Tamil vote was responsible for Sirisena’s success—so I guess Tamils are not equal citizens to the Sinhalese—but that isn’t racism—right?
Over 40,000 civilians were confirmed dead in May of 2009 after Rajapaksa led a full military offense against the Tamils in the name of destroying the LTTE. Countless number of Tamils also faced gang rape, mutilation and torture by the Lankan army while Rajapaksa banned international media from entering the country to prevent third-party testimony to validate his war crimes. You can witness the terror in the documentary called the No Fire Zone: The Killing Fields of Sri Lanka which almost perfectly highlights some of the grave human rights violations Tamils endured during the civil war.
Were the Tamils and other minorities ever able to live in harmony with the Buddhists and Sinhalese before the Dutch, Portuguese and English invasion of our lands? How many Kings and wars did the north and south create for religious and racial supremacy prior to the western invasion? I implore you to ask yourselves these questions before shrieking like banshees about western colonialism.
Tribalism is so painfully toxic that it’s willing to selectively erase the fact that we South Asians have had a history of racism prior to European colonialism—a form of racism that still exists today. The hatred among our people isn’t limited to just race—but also colour. South Asians love spinning the colour wheel of hate—the lighter you are, the more you will be deemed worthy of respect and appreciation and the darker you are—the more rejected and scorned you will be.
The most comical part about this colour wheel is the “beauty cream” literally called “Fair & Lovely”, which was proudly launched in India in 1975 as the first ever pigment abusing cream. It is used to “lighten” the skin to look appealing to the society that clearly shuns people who have visibly dark pigmentation. And then we unsightly dark women have to put up with Asian Caucasian pseudo feminists [online and in person] who complain about how white men are to blame for everything wrong in the world.
These fair-skinned pseudo feminists explained to me how “they”, the “brown people” are abused while keeping mum about the glory of colour and privilege they thrive on in the east. But don’t worry—Bollywood understands their struggles. They can always use “cultural appropriation” to dress in clothes their people never created and dance in front of the Eiffel Tower or the Pyramids as a creepy guy chases them around and all will be perfect again through songs that sound like American pop music—because I know how “culturally conscious” these bunch are.
And then came the case of an individual [whom I shall not name] who is visibly only two shades darker than the “white people” she condemns daily. She was very cross with the idea of black women being complimented as “beautiful” by western media. She argued about “white gaze” to invalidate the sincere compliments the actress Lupita Nyong’o [who is of Kenyan descent] had received. Apparently, it’s racist for white people to even look at African women and compliment their beauty at all. She believes the overall recognition of Nyong’o is expressive of “colonialism” which is a hyperbole of laughable stupidity. To have contempt for racial and cultural integration that women of visibly dark pigment finally achieved is preposterous. I guess we woman and girls with dark pigment just can’t be appreciated for our beauty, talent and intelligence—because who knew that was even possible?!
What’s next? Viola Davis has been achieving awards not because of her talent and intelligence but because of “white gaze”? And how did Nandita Das, a dark skinned South Asian actress even get past the wheel of colour in South Asian cinema—outrageous! Apparently, we women and girls with more melanin in our skin owe our success to the alleged bias of white people. It must be very exhausting for individuals to be simultaneously hateful of those darker and lighter than them—I bet they can use all that energy to even make the sun revolve around them one day!
We were long divided by caste, colour, religion and race—which made the conquering a great deal easier for foreigners. Only tool the Europeans required was a realm of people willing to kill each other for dominion and we gave it to them on a platter—and that’s how earth’s minority colonized us. This isn’t a defense for white people, in fact, it has nothing to do with them—but it is a demand for acknowledging our own racism and hatred and doing something about it instead of always pointing to the west and mumbling some excuse about “white men” and giving them artificial power just to fit your own convenience of lazy indignation.
It’s time we start inspecting our privilege and advise our own that it’s rather abusive to tell a pregnant mother-to-be to drink milk boiled in saffron so she may have a “fair skinned baby” or to even tolerate “Fair & Lovely” that shames our colour. South Asians still romanticize gender apartheid committed against our female population and call it “tradition”, “culture” and “religion”—because collectively abusing and oppressing females for a long period of time in the name of God is a good thing that should be respected, yah? Our people won’t even give up the caste system in 2015—yet we only condemn “white privilege” in the west—which ironically exists among the fair-skinned people in our own society in the east? Independence happened for a reason but somehow we still remain in the same cycle of classist, racist, religio-fascist bulls**t our invaders found us in.
Institutionalized racism exists literally in each and every country—but to burden only one race with all the wrongs while experiencing convenient amnesia over our own race’s abuse is an insult to the fight against racism and inequality. When your judgment is continually impaired by tribalism, expect the consequences to be catastrophic—because there isn’t a single shade of human you can be acquainted with in any manner to be absolved of such blatant bigotry.
The world already consists of interracial couples and children who represent multiple races and colour—so which part of their heritage must we expect them to feel tribal towards? It’s logically impossible. What the interracial people represent is a testament to the inevitable modernization of our species that are bound by no racial pride.
We are intelligent enough to acknowledge racism and privilege isn’t a “white man” thing but rather anybody with any skin colour is capable of such vile hatred. Efforts that continue to go into the civil rights and feminist movements will not be squandered by racists who believe their “of colour” status gives them the right to be racially hostile against others.
To have our identity defined by our pigment is indeed problematic. We are not “people of colour”—just as white people are not “people of less colour”. Why should they have the primary status of “person” or “people” while our personhood is emphasized by pigment? It’s dehumanizing and I wonder why we tolerate it at all. We are all people and there should be no preposition to describe our human status any further.
We can justly describe colour and race when we combat abuse, but in the composition of general speech and thought, the highlight of colour and race holds no significant value. Our collective human quality must prevail over humanity’s primitive pride in our pigment’s quantity.
