Growing up as a Punjabi girl in the UK, I have long heard comments from older relatives and friends that centred around how fair someone’s skin is. Passing comments such as “Look how fair she is…she is so pretty!” never used to mean anything to me, I would brush it off. But as I have grown up, I realised that it is comments such as this that highlight how deep-rooted this concept of anti-blackness is within the South Asian community that many of us have grown up in. Anti-blackness is defined as being opposed to or hostile toward black people. Being encouraged to stay out of the sun or wear total sun block is not out of the ordinary, but growing up, this is something I never understood and something that I still do not understand. Coming home from a summer holiday abroad rejoicing over the tan I had developed from the sun to sometimes be greeted with comments such as “I think you’re a bit too dark!” or “I don’t like it” was confusing to me. As far as I am concerned, the colour of a person’s skin does not alter their external beauty. This is a more explicit example of anti-blackness within the South Asian community, but there are further examples that are not necessarily seen at surface-level.
Since the huge wave of support on social media for the Black Lives Matter movement, many of you may have come across what is known as the Model Minority Myth in the USA, although I think it is present in the UK, too. In case you are not aware of what it is, it essentially implies that Asian Americans have worked hard and followed the laws of the USA since their arrival, which is why they have a higher median income than African Americans do (statistically speaking). The problem with the Model Minority Myth is that it means the ruling class can easily downplay the societal effects of racism, particularly towards African Americans, by using the Asian population as an example of an ethnic minority group that have managed to succeed in the USA, suggesting that African Americans have not been as successful as a result of their own work. This is problematic and dangerous because it means that one ethnic minority group then thinks they have the upper hand over another, thus attempting to align themselves more with the white man, who will ultimately never accept them as their equal, but will keep them on side as long as it benefits them (in this case allowing them to suggest that African Americans are not disadvantaged by racism). This of course is NOT the case. One simply cannot deny that African Americans are held back as a result of discrimination. According to psmag.com, ‘Non-white School Districts get $23 billion less funding’ than white School Districts. This means that African American children within these districts are disadvantaged from the minute they start school, and the opportunities they receive will be considerably less to children going to school in white districts. Education is the foundation for life, and if these children do not have access to an equal education, it is near enough impossible for them to be able to fully achieve their goals when they are against children who come from schools receiving so much more funding.
The third and final aspect of anti-blackness within the South-Asian community that I will be addressing is the disrespectful and unnecessary use of the N-word by people in the South Asian community. Growing up in the UK most of us are lucky enough to grow up in hugely diverse and multicultural areas, meaning we have the opportunity to learn to appreciate and enjoy other people’s cultures. Personally, I am friends with people from a variety of races and ethnicities, and I have been able to learn about and understand their identities and their cultures and I feel I have hugely benefitted from doing so. This diversity is reflected in the music we listen to, with the genre known as grime being hugely popular with people (myself included) in my age group. Some of the most successful grime artists in the UK are black, and they have millions of listeners. Often in their lyrics, there is use of the N-word, which in my opinion, no one other than a black person (should they choose to use it) has the right to say. However a large number of South Asian teenagers and young adults seem to think that simply because they themselves are people of colour, they have a right to sing this word when it comes up in song lyrics, without thinking of the true meaning behind this word, which I view to be hugely disrespectful.
If you are from the South Asian community reading this, and you feel as though any of these ways of being anti-black applies to you, I hope that reading this has made you aware of how these actions and beliefs are detrimental, and how we as people of colour should use the privilege that we have over black people (as a result of the Model Minority Myth) to help the fight to racial equality and to say that we stand with our black brothers and sisters. Having fairer skin does not make you more beautiful, so stop pushing this idea onto impressionable young people; this is not something that we want to be passed on to the generations to come! South Asians do have our own issues and we as a group have undeniably faced racism for generations, and sadly this may continue for generations to come and we should not be silent about this, just as we should not be silent about the racism that black people face. All people of colour have racial slurs that have been used to degrade and discriminate against us, but if we think about how offended we would be if someone used a racial slur against us, what gives us the right to then use a word that is outrightly racist towards another group of people? We are stronger when we support each other.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read this.
Black Lives Matter.
Below is a link that will direct you to a number of petitions and ways to donate to support the Black Lives Matter Movement: