Racism redux: Race in the mirror

Tehelka's latest edition has a series of stories/pieces on how racism is not something new to Indians - they are indeed old experienced hands at practicing it themselves.

These pieces are for the most part short in nature and are personal experiences and opinions expressed by individuals. For instance, in How to Draw Within the Margins, Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih talks about how people, particularly women, from the North Eastern Indian states are treated.

In another story, Navdeep Singh talks about how Indians in general perceive blacks, or being black or dark-skinned people. In particular, her generalization that:

"Most middle class Indians grow up with a sense that White > Indian > Black. (For some reason, East Asians aren’t competing)"

and

"...We often nominate ourselves as honorary white."

are quite telling summarizations.

Stories like these help construct a much broader picture of how prevalent racism is in Indian society and how there is very little done to address it.

(Older post on racism with an Indian twist.)