Opinion Kani Kusruti on colourism: Our prejudices are not just skin deep

White and pretty. I heard these words a lot, almost always paired with each other, during my childhood in Kerala. It is understood by everyone even today, but especially women and girls, that there is a hierarchy of colour, and therefore, of beauty. So deeply is this colourism embedded in our consciousness that upon entering any room, an automatic appraisal mechanism kicks in: Am I the darkest person in this room? Am I the fairest? Or am I somewhere in the middle? In school, my classmates and I would compare our skin tones, trying to determine who falls where on the scale of beauty. I would often be compared to my lighter-skinned cousins to my disadvantage, and my childhood friend bore similar comparisons to me. We were all assigned — or assigned ourselves — a place in the hierarchy, and if we were not beautiful, not “white”, we would be offered reassurances of another kind. At least you’re good at studies. You’ll be fine.

I can imagine that Muraleedharan heard similar comments when she was growing up as a child. Everyone hears them: The many girls I know, dark-skinned and stunning, whose portfolios keep getting rejected by the selection committee of the Miss Kerala beauty pageant. The journalist, Arathi P M, one of the most articulate people I know, was told that she was not “presentable” enough to read news live on television. The TV host who interviewed me last year, asking for minute adjustments in the lighting set-up for the show and then turning to me and joking, “You see, I wouldn’t show up on the camera otherwise.” The colour prejudice we have all internalised shows up in these myriad ways, from the desperate plea of a child, hoping to be given a second chance to be “fair and lovely”, to the defensive humour of a man who has perhaps heard one too many punchlines at his expense about the colour of his skin.

In her post, Muraleedharan calls for a change in attitude not just towards dark skin, but towards the colour black itself. She calls it, “…the most powerful pulse of energy known to humankind.” Black, as she says, “is the colour that works on everyone, the dress code for office, the lustre of evening wear, the essence of kajol, the promise of rain.” I understand where she is coming from, because I have been there.

Yet, there is more at work than simple colour prejudice. This is what struck me when I read the scholar Rekha Raj’s post, a response to Muraleedharan, where she writes, “…no one has made fun of me by saying that I am dark. Because everybody in my house and town is black!” Her words made me wonder about the many implications of colourism, the ways in which they manifest and how we respond. Because, let’s not forget, roiling under the surface of our colour prejudice are other deeper, more insidious prejudices. Take, for example, caste. In a society where everyone has the same skin tone, it might be harder for casteism to disguise itself as colourism.

There is an outward acknowledgement today of colourism in our society, and I do come across people who say that darker skin tones are beautiful. But is this mere political correctness or do they truly appreciate beauty in all its diversity? Because the hard fact is that despite some progress, the standard of beauty remains what it has always been. Look at our films, for example. To an extent, we have learnt how to use make-up and lighting to better showcase the different types of beauty that exist here, but does the vast diversity of our people actually find representation on the screen? And it’s about more than just the colour of a person’s skin. It’s about the shape of their nose, the size of their eyes. There is a certain template of sharp features and light skin which is, no doubt, attractive, but it does not reflect the diversity of beauty in this country. It conforms, instead, to an ideal we have drawn from our assumptions about what is beautiful and what is ugly.

How do we fight these prejudices that we have internalised? I wish I knew the answer. Perhaps, as with so many things, it is wisest to begin with children. Let’s not saddle them with biases that we continue to struggle with and teach them to embrace diversity of every kind — colour, yes, but also so much more. The ugliness of prejudice in our society is, after all, not just skin deep.

Kusruti is an actor. Her most recent film is All We Imagine As Light