A few days back I went to a shop to get some stuff and there I saw a couple of small girls who were not more than 6 years old. They started staring at me and one of them whispered into other’s ear, “dekh kitna chitta hai (see how fair he is)”. Suddenly it gave me a shock more than anything else. The obsession with fair color starts by the time we are born.
A kid who doesn’t even know what is right or wrong is injected with the idea that tells him ‘fair is beautiful’. Beauty never lies in color and had that been true, brains and personality, wit, humor and intellect would have become ‘archival’ words.
People in my office say I am smart not because of what I know or what I say but just because I am ‘fair’. We talk about racism, write about it and even hate it but it is we who actually promote it. See a matrimonial website, the first word they ask for is ‘fair’. And whether we do it deliberately or not, it definitely means ‘looking down’ at ‘not so fair’ color.
Let us first agree that we do believe in racism and then only, we can cure it. Charity begins at home and let ‘me’ start it right away by looking at you as ‘human’ and not ‘fair’ or ‘not fair’. Remember that I am a human being like you, born in the same way as you, live on the same earth; eat breath and drink exactly like you, and even I am going to die also like you.
I am one of you and you are one of me and we are one of ‘us’. This actually reminds me of a poem I read some time back:
When I was born I was BLACK,
When I'm sick I'm BLACK,
When I go in the sun I'm BLACK,
When I'm cold I'm BLACK,
When I die I'll be BLACK.
As for you
When you're born you're PINK,
When you're sick, you're GREEN,
When you go in the sun you turn RED,
When you're cold you turn BLUE,
And when you die you turn PURPLE.
And you still have the guts to call me colored.
According to Mamkol, “If we wake up one day and discover everybody has the same skin color, we will surely get some basis for discrimination by noontime.”
