A national debate is raging over a comedy show, Roast, apparently making comments on actor Tannishtha’s skin colour, resulting in the actor’s walking out brusquely midway from a show.
To me, while world over the dark-skinned are discriminated against, it is even more blatant in countries like India, where the citizens’ skin colour hang between mostly brown to dark. In most cases the affluent families opt for fairer women as their daughter-in-laws, while willing to go an extra mile to give away their own daughters in marriage with more cash or kind, in compensation.
We see in alarming regularity, white cops in the US shooting to kill unarmed African Americans causing severe prejudices and deep divisions within the American society, ironically, which is led by President Barak Obama, himself having African roots.
The world had viewed Africa and their dark skinned people as sub-optimal human species, and the master-slave mentality, which ruled for centuries still apparently lingers. A world, which claimed to be inclusive and tolerant, and which seemed matured, looked away at the many decades of apartheid in South Africa afraid to lose their control over the steady supplies of gold and diamonds from the country.
The MNCs sell dreams of bestowing fairness like film stars and dish out fairness creams by tons, many containing harmful steroids and Nano titanium dioxide that settles inside the pores of the skins. This give a false sense of fairness to cause serious health issues later. My take is not on the fairness creams, or the wily corporates that exploit and cash on the craze of becoming fair. My take is on the idiocy and the prejudice that we have for the dark skinned. Secretly, we shun them, we discriminate against them, we despise them, we taunt them, and we avoid them whenever we have a scope and an option. It is only the women who are largely the victims of such discrimination. Outwardly we pretend to be equal, inclusive and non-racial.
The comedy show Roast is merely a reflection of our nation’s bigoted notion of fairness being superior. This has to change by according the right opportunities to the dark skinned in every sphere of our life.
Sampath Kumar
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