View from India: 700 Shades of Brown

by Parvathi

M looked at herself in the mirror. All she saw was her dark skin. She did not see the enormous eyes and winged eyebrows. She wanted to be fair like the others in the family---"Why am I so dark?" she agonized looking at her darkness thrown up in relief by the light blue cotton dress. She tore at the sleeve in a rage and then froze thinking of the explanations she would have to offer. Anger welled up in the small chest and she planted a few punches on the window grill, her mouth open in a silent scream.

Everyone remarked on the color of her skin--- just everyone! Even the house helps: "What a pity this one is dark," they clucked in sympathy, chucking her under her chin. "How are we going to find you a husband, little one?" they would ask as she tagged along behind them for want of company.

She was the youngest, and she was dreadfully lonely. Her nieces and nephews were almost her age. They were all very light skinned---M saw only that. Oh the unfairness of it all! Once her niece tripped up to her in a black dress with butterfies printedon it. M loved that dress1 "What a lovely dress,P!" she said feeling the silky texture with her fingers, "where did you buy it?"

"My father's present when he came back from his tour!" sang P skipping around M. "Do you want to borrow it?"

M was in heaven. "Can I?" she asked thrilled. "Of course!" said P and promptly peeled off the dress standing there in her slip. M ran behind the mango tree and tried on the dress.

"How does it look on me P?" she asked excitedly. P burst into peals of laughter and ran around her pointing her finger at M.

"Look at M! Look at M!" she said loudly in her high pitched voice. People came out of the house and were aghast at what they saw: M standing there wearing P's dress, all askew, and P hysterically dancing around her.

"She wanted to wear my dress! Look how it looks against her dark skin! She looks like the maid's daughter!" P's cheeks were flushed pink and she ran up to M and stood with her rosy cheeks against M's nut brown one. "Don't I look better than her?" she asked with the cruel vanity of a child.

M's eyes filled with tears," I hate you!" she hurled at P and pushed her down, and ran sobbing inside tugging and tearing at the dress.

What a fuss they made over P! "Why did you allow M to take your nice new dress?" "Against her dark skin, why she looked clownish!"

"Come little one, let me wash you and get you another dress to wear."

M sat huddled under the cot in her room and sobbed miserably. Her mother came looking for her. "M! where are you, child?" she heard the tiny sob come from under the cot. she bent down and saw the little form all bunched up, sobbing her heart out,wearing that dress with the butterfly print. "Come my little one," her mother said gathering her in her arms, "It will all pass. Everything will be alright."

"Never!" said M choking on her words. "No one will ever love me because I am so dark!"

"Hush", said mother. "That is nonsense. You will know that in time."

But M , looking past her mother 's shoulder with teary eyes, saw nothing but shame and sadness.

"No one will ever love me!" she repeated to herself.

In India, I read somewhere, they recognize seven hundred shades of brown ----in skin color.

Degrees Of Brutality

So, at last we’ve come full circle. We’re back to practicing the absurd - yet irresistible - game of racial politics. If the election of Barack Hussein Obama was to have fixed anything, it was precisely this. Instead the racial divide within our country has widened since Obama’s been in office. Anyone who disagrees with his radical policies is now automatically labeled ‘racist‘. That would include upwards of 70% of us.

There is a solution. The President could make use of his bully pulpit and tell everybody to just cool it. In the area of race, no white chief executive could have made much of an impact; it‘s an opportunity that is open only to blacks. Instead Obama remains silent. He is the dog who doesn’t bark, which leads to the inescapable conclusion that he actually wants it this way.

The first thing we have to realize about this is that it’s not about color. It’s about class. If it were about a hierarchy based on color, we would all be growing the same color flowers in our gardens. There’s nothing magical about skin color. In Hinduism, the god Krishna is depicted as (random) blue, simply to set him above the rest.

The world over, it has long been apparent that the white race as a group has enjoyed greater comfort and success - albeit, by it’s own definition of that success - than others. Now conditions have become ripe for the rest of the world to challenge the whole notion of ‘success‘. Within our own nation, meritocracy has been largely supplanted by the notion of entitlement. This is why the answer to 2+2 no longer matters.

Similarly, commonly used terms have been modified. ‘Success‘, for instance, no longer means success. It means ‘oppression‘; or, if you wish, ‘slavery‘. This is why blacks in our public schools are encouraged by peers to fail and not to be seen as playing by the rules of the ‘oppressor‘. As such, all knowledge that had been traditionally taught in our schools has now been downgraded to rank propaganda, promoting a largely leftist, egalitarian agenda.

The reason Obama cannot produce his school records is because there are none. He is the product of affirmative action which eschews merit as a standard for achievement. It was telling early on when he seemed not to know the precise number of states that make up our union. To him such lapses are of no consequence. Any number - even one that happens to coincide with the exact number of Arab states - would have earned him a passing grade.

What matters most is ideology. Ideology easily flows into the vacuum that typifies ignorance. Racial politics is retrograde. Yet we can expect more - not less - of it as the 44th presidential term progresses. It has always been an convenient political tool for dividing people up into groups, sowing suspicion, and setting them against each other. If the white race were to disappear overnight, it would not solve the problem.

On a local New York radio talk show this morning I heard about a school out on Long Island, where the students of one school had to be moved lock stock and barrel to another, a mile and a half away. It seems the original area is no longer safe. Gang activity has become so rampant as to render local authorities helpless. Gangs mentioned in the report were the ‘bloods‘, the ‘crips‘, and ‘MS-13‘. Whites were not known to be involved.

When affirmative action supplants success, new hierarchies begin to proliferate like weeds in a garden. Hierarchical behavior is sewn seamlessly into the human condition - like language and having to breathe. In Wyandanch the new hierarchy is apparently based on degrees of brutality.