Author: dilipmerala

I take a lot of pride in the friends I choose. I have always striven to surround myself with exceptional people I can look up to, have meaningful conversations with, and count on for guidance. Most of these people, as one might expect, are writers and artists. On an emotional farewell evening full of scintillating conversations with some people I love, one of the many gifts I received was the courage to post this.

When I watched the video of George Floyd’s ruthless murder, I was shocked and terrified. I have immense respect for police officials. I come from Mumbai where the police, simply put, is extraordinary. Mumbai is considered to be one of the safest cities in India, all thanks to the Mumbai Police. All my life, I have known cops to be exceptional, hard-working individuals who put country and duty ahead of race, religion, or even self and family. Add to it their uncanny sense of humour (just follow the Mumbai Police Twitter account) and what you have is an adorable force that always has your back. So, when I saw that a police officer could do something so horrifying, it was heartbreaking. However, what was worse and made me feel like a petty human being was the immediate next thought – “What do I care? It’s not my place to say anything. I don’t have any role to play in this Black vs White fight. Here I am trying to find a job in this foreign country where I do not belong. Let me just shut up and not post anything that might bother someone.”

I also believed that social media was an ineffective medium for any real change. In my opinion, it appeals to your short attention span (growing shorter by the day) and gives you the illusion of having played your part by simply posting a picture or a comment from the comfort of your home. You are followed by people who mostly think the same as you do, and already have the same beliefs as yours. So, there isn’t much opportunity to change minds of people who think differently. Your drive is limited by the satisfaction you get when someone validates your post. What I was missing, and what my friends rightly pointed out to me yesterday, was that it creates a ripple. It informs you, and gets you started, and what you do after that is up to you. And this was true in my own case. I have been reading posts by people I respect and therefore, follow. Just in the last two weeks, I have read more about racism than I have in my entire life.

Once I read a few articles, I started introspecting my own behaviour and prejudices. I come from a country of fairness creams. Women are expected to be “fair” to find a good boyfriend or husband. While most of the strong women I know in Mumbai are brilliantly destroying this stereotype, I am not so sure about the whole country – especially the men. Some metropolitan men may speak out against skin-color bias but I am not certain that they have rejected it organically. Look at Bollywood and you’ll see that the lead actors (male and female) are expected to be fair-skinned, if you want the movie to be a countrywide commercial success. The description for uptown men and women when you get casting requirements is often – tall, “fair”, well-groomed. I, a dark-skinned man, have had my own share of failed attempts to try various creams and diets to lighten the color of my skin. When I appeared in the movie ‘2 states’, one of the comments I got on my Twitter account was – “But you are very dark.”

In the non-Bollywood world, we Indians have our own lingo of offensive words to describe people based on their skin color – we refer to white people as “firangi” or “goras”, black people as “kallus”, Chinese people as “chinkis”. And it is not just a way of speaking. These words come with their own respective perceptions. I do not know where this bias comes from (perhaps the British rule – need to read more about this) but it’s clearly, undeniably there. Hand to God, in one of my conversations about racism with a friend a few years ago, he casually (in his honest opinion) expressed that “white is just the better looking skin color”. Even amongst close friends, it is quite common to make fun of dark-skinned boys and girls, men and women by calling them “black” or “andhera” (darkness) or “dambar” (black tar). The fact that it is meant to be funny or offensive, or the recipient takes offense when someone says this is part of the problem.

This bias, then translates to our behaviour with people in the United States. We have always been fascinated with the west. We ape almost everything the west does. So, if the west is racist, we inadvertently end up fueling our already existing biases. We mask it well, of course. We are well-behaved and nice to everyone but that’s not because we are not racists. It’s because we don’t want to bother anyone and mind our own business. In inner circles, we still ignorantly refer to black people as “kallus” and the Chinese as “chinkis”. So what role do I, an Indian student in the United States, play in this fight against racism? It’s the same as the role white people play. I am integrated in this society that needs change. Like everyone else, I need to be educated, informed, transformed. And if everything else I have mentioned above is not a good enough reason, here’s one –

Ask me today, in 2020, to imagine my dream woman and probably the first attribute that’ll come to my mind is that she is “fair-skinned”. May be in the past my ancestors were victims of racism but as of today, I have become a perpetrator.