Imagine, for a moment that you’re a five year old not really bothered about your skin colour; you hear a few comments around “ he’s dark” but don’t really take much from it.
Summer holiday comes around the corner and you get told “ don’t go out too much; you are going to get darker” or “ make sure you cover up so your arms and legs don’t get darker” something I struggled with as young child playing out in the sun ; something I enjoyed doing.
Colourism is a form of discrimination that favours light-skinned members of the same ethnic group.
Children are complimented by relatives and friends for being the ‘fairer one’, in teenage and this bias keeps growing with age. It can be blamed on peer pressure, societal prejudices or advertising and product manufacturing.
One of the leading stationery manufacturer have started a Colorama crayon series which has a peach-colored crayon labeled as ‘skin’, despite it not being the most prevalent skin colour of Indians. In a country with as many skin tones as India, labeling one particular shade as ‘skin’ color and that shade in turn being used to represent skin in all human caricatures unknowingly deepens the color bias against skin tone at a very tender age.
In a country such as India, with issues such as employment and relationships often resting on skin tone, people invest in skin-lightening creams in the hope of a better existence. Capitalizing on this inequality, hundreds of products are peddled by corporations, among them armpit lightener, genital lightener and fairness baby oil. Nearly all major cosmetic companies sell products that claim alter genes to suppress melanin.
Small reminder:
Colour does not define your worth
Colour does not make you “more or less attractive”
We all hold beauty in who we are
Let our inner light sparkle
Aspiring Boffin 