Here’s about 1:15 of a song called “Dil Dance Maare” from the new Hindi film, Tashan. The two male leads are the currently ubiquitous Askhay Kumar, and Saif Ali Khan. The female lead is Kareena Kapoor:
The lyrics are a little… well… I don’t really know how to describe them:
White white face dheke dil woh beating fast sasura [When I see a ‘white white’ face, my heart starts beating fast]
Jaan se maare reeee eehhheeee
Aare
White white face dheke dil woh beating fast sasura
Jaan se maare re
Ohhhooo
White white face dheke
Aahh…
White white face dheke dil woh beating fast sasura
Jaan se maare re
Oh very… oh very…
Oh very happy in my heart
Dil dance maare re
Very happy in my heart, dil dance maare re
Dil dance maare dance maare
Dil yeh dance maare
Oh very happy in my heart
Dil dance maare re
It’s not entirely an arbitrary expression of a self-hating colonial mentality (or, as Fela Kuti said, “colo-mentality”); in the context of the film, the characters apparently come across an American film crew while traveling around India, and join the production — hence the blond wigs and so on. (My wife was watching the DVD in the other room, and she called me in when this song came on: you have to see this.)
Still, am I the only one to find the song/video at once deeply embarrassing and oddly catchy? I’ve been finding myself singing it for comic effect for family and friends this week.
It is easy to blame the brits. being the occupiers they would try to propagate any theory that would fit them. It is the duty of the “natives” to see through the plans. Unfortunately that never happened. I think everyone (esp. the so called Aryans) pre-Independence swallowed the theory because that put them in a better light, being the conquering race. I guess only when the Dravidian Sudras used the same theory to get back at the Aryans that they realised that “Aryan theory” is not working anymore and tried to refute it. 🙂
Ambedkar and Jayalalitha, you can see the following photos to figure them out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambedkar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayalalitha
Excuse the following video as it is not the original, but the song is bril (IMO):
Click here
Hey Amardeep, Chill! You lefty ABCDs take things too seriously…of course Indians think that that white skin is better than dark. That is more prevalent in advertising (Fair and Loverly, Fairever, Fair and Handsome etc etc…are one of many whiteness products). But that is part of being Indian….there are m,any things wrong with being Indians this is one of them As far as the movie song…I think it is great. It warps Bhojpuri and mixes it into a great beat …it is big hit with all the autowalas… BTW I am a dark skinned Indian living in India
yikes… abcd speaking here – this song is definitely satire! those who don’t watch bollywood movies should just take our words for it. akshay kumar seems to have an amazing sense of humor and his characters are usually funny in both the american parody/satire way and the slap-stick indian way – which is what makes him fun to watch for an ‘ABCD’ (as opposed to, say, Govinda)
also, Bangladeshi actresses have never reflected the average Bangali woman either. the actresses are always rubenesque (read: porkers) and suprise, surprise, they’re really light-skinned. they do, however, uphold the Bengali trademark of beauty which is the round face with large eyes. in general, actresses aren’t chosen to portray the average woman, they’re chosen to portray what the audience perceives as the ideal beauty.
128 · LandBeyond7Zs said
<
blockquote>128 · LandBeyond7Zs on July 12, 2008 09:58 PM · Direct link · “Quoteâ€(?)
98 · boston_mahesh said
I am an egalitarian, who despise Indian race superiority talk(skin color, features – may be; intelligence- not a chance.). Human race did not have ample time to evolve to intellectual classes. However, there are assumed reasons for Kerala to have light and dark skinned people. Kerala had the country’s best natural ports. Lot of merchants from Middle East,Southeast China were trading with locals. Kerala’s history is recorded in travel notes of several travellers from middle east. The travel records of many Christian missionaries from 50-400 AD does not record the presence of Aryans or Brahmins in Kerala during that period. The latest agreements among historians is that Aryans(mostly Brahmins) reached Kerala around 800 AD. However there were recording of the presence of Jains, Jews in that period. The natives ( who can be called native?, there are no natives ) were dark skinned, the travellers have brought their light skin, the aryans brought the light skin too. There are not many written historical connections with south east chinese. But I have seen so many commonalities in custom, food, language etc. with Malays during my days in Malaysia. I do think there are some credence to the Malay-alam theory from my observations. Thanks Jyotsna!
First of all, you have misquoted me. That’s fine. Your article is confusing, and I’m not sure if you have mastery of your facts or the English language, for that matter. Here are some of my issues: 1. There are natives in Kerala, just like everywhere else. They’re Dravidian speakers. 2. You mentioned that “There are not many written historical connections with south east chinese.” My friend, Bodhi Dharma was from there, and he introduced martial arts to the South Eastern Chinese prior to 5th century AD. There were TONS of interactions between the two.
3. Prior to the 9th-15th century AD, the people of Kerala spoke Tamil. Malayalam started diverging from Tamil only during this phase.
4. There was also a big African component to India’s gene pool. “Siddis/Habshis” came from Eastern Africa to Western India a few hundred years ago.
Why is there no such thing called “Aryan” but something called “Dravidian”? Aren’t they both considered to be incorrect terms these days?
I thought they are used only as linguistic terms now…
eg Indo Aryan languages vs Dravidian languages.
Judging by sudden multiple references to ‘lefty ABCDs’, what’s up with the all these DBDs crawling out of the woodwork all of a sudden?
First of all, you have misquoted me. That’s fine. Your article is confusing, and I’m not sure if you have mastery of your facts or the English language, for that matter. Here are some of my issues: 1. There are natives in Kerala, just like everywhere else. They’re Dravidian speakers. 2. You mentioned that “There are not many written historical connections with south east chinese.” My friend, Bodhi Dharma was from there, and he introduced martial arts to the South Eastern Chinese prior to 5th century AD. There were TONS of interactions between the two. 3. Prior to the 9th-15th century AD, the people of Kerala spoke Tamil. Malayalam started diverging from Tamil only during this phase. 4. There was also a big African component to India’s gene pool. “Siddis/Habshis” came from Eastern Africa to Western India a few hundred years ago
Hasn’t Razib already given dna evidence that there was not much population change in India for 1000s of years? Razib if you’re around – any thoughts?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/14/business/media/14mag.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Some, like Maxim, seem to pride themselves on pushing the envelope of good taste even further than they do in their home markets. The magazine’s July issue includes the feature “48 Ways to Get a Gori†(gori is Hindi for fair-skinned woman, and is used in this context to mean a foreign white one). Some ideas the article offers: keep in mind most American women are extremely angry at Indians for stealing their jobs; don’t ask an Italian woman if her family is part of the mob; to approach an Israeli woman, try a suicide bomber joke.
155 · boston_mahesh said
Ouch! Calm down friend! boston_mahesh! Sorry, if I have not reflected or responded to your thoughts 100%. It was a comment bit. You were taking the tangent that skin color did not have anything to do with race ( in the quoted sentence from #98). I said, I believed the skin color has to do with race and migration. I stated my opinion with my belief that no race/skin color is superior to another.
Please see the clarifications below. 1. There are natives in Kerala(I am claiming my stake). In the context of historical migration, every race came from somewhere. That is why I used that satirical comment about ‘natives’, in parenthesis. 2. I did not say or mean there were NO historical interactions between Kerala and South East China. There were lot. But in my next sentence, I said, I observed racial, language and customs similarities with Malays. I read about the Malay-alam theory about Malays. I have not seen much supporting material about it. I also have not read about any migrations from China to Kerala. I have not seen much common physical chartecteristics with Chinese either. There were plenty of cultural connections with Chinese and Keralites in history ( Communism of late!) 3. I beleive so. I did not say otherwise. 4. That is exactly what I was saying. Human beings migrated from all over the globe all thru history. You and I are living examples. That supports my satirism about superior ‘Natives’ talk.The IBM DNA study put the origin of human race in Africa. So we have that component in the DNA.
This attitude to white/black/brown Indians, and all the misconceptions that go along with it will live on for a long time I am sure. Even in the US, I have white friends talk about the color differences between their Indian friends. Many people (including Indians, Afghans, and Latinos) think that I am Afghan or Latino, when in fact I am 100% Bengali Indian. My Tamil friend would explain this by saying I am from the north. A) I don’t really think of West Bengal as a northern state, and B)I know many Bengalis who are just as dark as my Tamil friend. I wish more people were educated in these manners, especially abroad, because we are providing incorrect information to people of all races.
Jimmy, you bring up an interesting angle… how Indians in the west misrepresent India to westerners.
This is touched upon a great deal by VS Naipaul in his work. Before him, India was represented by its upper class agents as ‘spiritually clean’… he came along and shattered that image by portraying the grinding poverty and unhygenic conditions.
He reserves a great deal of his venom for upper-class Indian women married to western scholars… people who he feels work in tandem (from different motivations) to misrepresent India.
A bengali passing for an afghan? LOL. These people are messing with your head jimmy.
I would take his word for it, it doesn’t look like he is taking some perverse pride in his deviation from Bong norms. I’ve seen tremendous diversity within Indian families(especially Eastern Indian from Bengal or Orissa)….maybe only the Brazilians compare in terms of stark contrasts among sibs
Haha Jon I know it may sound funny, but it is absolutely true. People think my mother is Afghan, and she absolutely hates it (you know how many Hindu Indians feel about Afghans) and my father has been mistaken for Chinese on a number of occasions, which he doesn’t really appreciate either. In fact this has lead me to a book called the History of Bengali Speaking People by Nitish Sengupta. In his research he finds that Bengalis, and I am sure many or most other Indians as well, have some unexpected ethnic/racial groups mixed in such as Turks, Afghans and a variety of Mongoloid peoples. South Asia is an interesting region to say the least.
Who are you kidding? Most all desis are extremely flattered to be “mistaken” for other races or nationalities (other than african). Many foreigners realize that and play along.
This pathological need among many desis to distance themselves from the “dark and ugly” look of the indigenous people of south asia is an expression of a deep-rooted racial inferiority complex born of defeat and enslavement by racially alien foreigners. The persistent poverty and backwardness of south asia relative to most of the world is also culpable. This pathology has outlasted muslim and british rule, because indians have internalized the racial contempt of their erstwhile foreign masters towards themselves. This is the reason why the Bollywood message thrives; and why the AIT stubbornly survives; with all kinds of indian communities from brahmins to sudras concocting crackpot theories of european or west-central asian origins for their communities. This is also the reason why so many desis keep telling anyone who will listen how they, or someone in their family, are sometimes mistaken for lighter-skinned ethnicities like afghans or latinos.
You are right. Ultimately it is the servility and stupidity of desis that has internalized and perpetuated the western-centric demeaning view of themselves. However it is not entirely correct to say that no one saw through the pernicious agenda of the colonial rulers. A century ago Vivekananda harshly ridiculed the aryan invasion theory in terms that should have been taught in indian schools after independence; but wasn’t because a much inferior breed of indians took over the reins of India when the british left:
“Our archaeologist dreams of India being full of dark-eyed aborigines and the bright Aryans came from the Lord knows where. According to some, they came from Central Tibet; others will have it that they came from Central Asia. There are patriotic Englishmen who think that the Aryans were all red-haired. Others, according to their idea, think that they were all black-haired. If the writer happens to be a black-haired man, the Aryans were all black-haired. Of late, there was an attempt made to prove that the Aryans lived on a Swiss lake. I should not be sorry if they had been all drowned there, theory and all. Some say now that they lived at the North Pole. Lord bless the Aryans and their habitations! As for the truth of these theories, there is not one word in our scriptures, not one, to prove that the Aryans came from anywhere outside of India” (The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Vol. III, 293 pp.)
Hmm, well, I’m too lazy to read through 166 comments, but just responding to the post itself and some of the first few comments…
Disclaimer: I love Hindi films (like love love). I have been learning Hindi over a year. I am white.
This song was a shocker when I saw it in Tashan. But my reaction was mixed – obviously, I dislike seeing race issues treated in blunt, one-dimensional ways (as in Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal, or most Karan Johar films), but I am also very interested in postcolonial culture. This song was a doozy, but I enjoyed it – it seemed like a mockery of both Hollywood, Hindi films, and Hollywood’s perceptions of Hindi films. It was fun and good-humored and intentionally over-the-top. Compare this to the mockery of Johnny Lever’s Anglophilia in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, or the caricatured snobbish British housewives in K3G – that’s cringe-worthy, in that it seems more mean-spirited to me.
I know English and I know some Hindi and both are nice languages, as far as languages go. So what’s even nicer? Hinglish! Why is it tacky to love Hinglish? It’s exciting to see new languages be created, and to see two languages interact and cross-fertilize. For the language puritans out there (esp. those who don’t know Hindi but think it “sounds beautiful”!), why ya gotta be hating on Hinglish? And for those who think the mingling of English and Hindi words is another recent sign of the End of Times vis-a-vis Hindi films, something that came in on the SRK NRI Yuppie wave, please watch Chori Chori (1956) for Johnny Walker’s song “All Line Clear”…
(Or one of my favorite lines from Amar Akbar Anthony (1977): “God promise, main saach bola huun!”)
Well said. I don’t wonder why I never heard my dark-skinned friends proudly proclaim they are mistaken as blacks, like some people claim they are mistaken for Afghans/latinos etc.. 🙂
Nice to know that. I think Vivekananda is a smart guy. I have also read he claimed looking at the caste ridden Hindus of Kerala that he has wandered into a “lunatic asylum” .
Who are you kidding? Most all desis are extremely flattered to be “mistaken” for other races or nationalities (other than african). Many foreigners realize that and play along.
I dont believe most white people can tell the difference between different shades of brown. Marginal color differences in brown which make us determine whether one is light skinned or dark skinned look uniformly dark to an average white person. Where is the Great Khan when we need him?
I don’t wonder why I never heard my dark-skinned friends proudly proclaim they are mistaken as blacks
I have seen ANNA mention that she was mistaken for Ethiopian.
Also I have to admit, I feel really embarassed when the topic of Indian obsession with light skin comes up when I am dating a white girl, especially in the beginning stages of the relationship.
Bollyhood:
Sometimes it’s better to take a person at face value unless you have reason to suspect that person as an individual. In this case, Jimmy@165 makes statements that his parents are mistaken for other nationalities, and that they don’t like it. The last thing he needs is some weird concept of political correctness policing that questions his statement and implies that his parents are secretly “extremely flattered” to be mistaken. And what evidence for this implication? A sweeping generalization that “most all desis are extremely flattered” to be so mistaken.
I agree that there have been commenters here, who at various times have either stated or implied that they are lighter-skinned than average. Some have been called out individually, which is good. What I object to is your painting everyone with the same brush and denying benefit of the doubt.
post punk cinema club: yes Bollywood has always liked pale skins but please recall that the top star of the 70s and the 80s, Amitabh, and of the 90s and 00s Sharukh are both nice and tanned.Currently Bwood is obsessed with white backup dancers.
171 · Pagal_Aadmi_for_debauchery said
I have stated on this blog in the past that I have been mistaken for African American. But then again, I am not your friend. Heh heh.
It is embarassing the whole color thing. I can range from average Indian color to dark skin. When I visited India recently, I was “praised” for becoming much lighter. Oh god, you get into a situation where you dont like such praise, but at the same time, it would be rude to lecture well meaning relatives. So you grin uncomfortably and bear it.
It’s not just white people. The majority of my non-brown friends don’t see the difference. It makes it difficult to explain the mentality of many desi families who want their children to marry someone who is from the same state, or speaks the same language, or from the same subcaste. Especially so with many Punjabi families. They say, “Aren’t you all just Indian? What’s the big deal?”
Also, an interesting note – I’m not sure about other states, but in New Jersey, cross-racial identification specifically holds less weight than someone id’ing another of the same race. For example, if a white person saw a crime and identified a black person in the lineup, the defense could argue that the cross-racial id is either weak or invalid.
Bollyhood:
Who are you kidding? Most all desis are extremely flattered to be “mistaken” for other races or nationalities (other than african). Many foreigners realize that and play along.
Sometimes it’s better to take a person at face value unless you have reason to suspect that person as an individual. In this case, Jimmy@165 makes statements that his parents are mistaken for other nationalities, and that they don’t like it. The last thing he needs is some weird concept of political correctness policing that questions his statement and implies that his parents are secretly “extremely flattered” to be mistaken. And what evidence for this implication? A sweeping generalization that “most all desis are extremely flattered” to be so mistaken.
Thank you for saying that! I have been reading bollyhood’s statements and there are plenty of the worst generalizations about india and their supposed obsession with light skin. We can argue all we want or observe that Indian version of beauty includes light skin…but at least imo also know that is not the only thing that identifies a women or man’s beauty or defines an Indian. I think Bollyhood is getting carried away with his generalizations – I mean do indians love to been seen as mexican, etc…please hardly..Just b/c Indians are on average darker than mexicans, I don’t think that that means that we want to be seen as them. And I’m very dark and never been asked if I was black but have been asked if I was many other things. Does this make me flattered? Am I trying to twist the truth b/c I can’t stand being seen as black? Or am I just expressing the truth? For me it’s the latter statement. I think it’s politically correct now to bash all indians as light skinned obsessed; Indians just chime in all the time…to say anything more nuanced just means someone is white-washed.
Louiecypher says – PS: But why should we be relegated to the back office? Theres a market for us in public facing roles in the US/UK, why not the country of our origin?
No I wasn’t saying this was right; and I think it’s unfortunate…I just know that Indian society doesn’t relegate all us darkies to cleaning the street. Hopefully Indians IN MASS MEDIA will appreciate the beauty of dark skinned indians more – so if I have a dark skinned kid, she will have choices in front of the camera in the entertainment industry,…but of course I would never want her to go into the entertainment industry and she should just study and become a doctor (J/K)
It’s somewhat comparable to Americans using above average good looking, weight and
While we discuss this, let us not forget that there are shade prejudices even among blacks and hispanics. I think the main difference is that they are probably not obsessed with fair skinned males as much as Indians. I think a lot of cultures seem to view lighter skinned females preferably. That is not a fact, but just an off the cuff observation of mine. it’s no accident that black stars are being paired up a lot with hispanic leading women in Hollywood to make the demographics more appealing to marketers.
I think with India, it is just so blatant and out in the open, it makes us uncomfortable. Plus, we are all indian, so we tend to look at our own group with more scrutiny.
“I dont believe most white people can tell the difference between different shades of brown.”
That is one of the sillier things I’ve read on this blog. Has anyone actually asked them? Any race who can see the difference between pale and not-pale among, say, the inhabitants of the Orkney Isles or Iceland, is certainly capable of distinguishing among shades of brown. This apparent obtuseness that is often attributed to whites concerning non-whites is what they consider pc politess. I have it through the grapevine that most whites who would voice any opinion on color are so saying the wrong thing (even we don’t know what the right thing is at times) that they must pretend not to notice.
Concerning those elusive “Aryans”, isn’t it really a language group, not necessarily affiliated with an ethnicity, at least not in recorded history? There was a funny movie out in the 70s or 80s starring Anthony Quinn. Quinn played a European who for some compelling reason I don’t recall, was recruited by nazi propagandists during the 1930s to be the poster-boy for the ancient, original “Aryan” who was–you gotta see it to believe it–dark! At least comparatively. You have to know what Quinn looked like, and how the Germans of that day envisioned Aryans, to get the joke of Quinn’s stunned expression on the poster.
bollyhood is vyasa. don’t feed it.
i’m not sure it’s all sarcasm. and even if the song was meant as sarcasm, it’s rather undeniable that many people in india would see it without getting that point – i.e., it would just emphasise certain ideas they already had. and – thanks to my ridiculous fascination with bollywood gossip – i know that kareena kapoor and her sister, back in the day, made a nasty remark about bipasha basu’s skin colour. speaking of bipasha basu’s skin colour – she’s not even that dark, considering the full range that is possible. and one of my (north indian) friends recently made a comment that malaika arora’s south indian roots “must explain why she’s so dark.†crazy. and annoying.
btw re srk – it’s true, he is prob. somewhat fairer than the average indian. and interestingly, in that f&h commercial, he’s darker than the guy he gives the cream to! does him being a superstar make up for it?
bollyhood is vyasa. don’t feed it.
I don’t know who vyasa is – but bollyhood sounds prema-like and ridiculously makes it seem that color is the only thing that guides desis. Which is far, far from reality imo.
I think it will be dishonest to say that the color thing is not a big deal in India, I have close family who is still hung up on the issue, although I must point out it is nothing compared to how it used to be even five years back. I think it is only going to get better the more the younger generation interacts with people from outside of India. The Shahrukh commercial was mercilessly mocked in India as well on all major news channels so it is not correct to generalize the phenomenon to the entire country.
185, umber desi: “I think it is only going to get better the more the younger generation interacts with people from outside of India.”
(Please don’t be take it too personally, umber desi). But, your statement really captures for me the condescending/patronising tone of many of the comments made here. Poor ignorant Indians, they need outsiders to show them the folly of their ways!!
I didn’t mean it condscendingly but I was expressing hope. I was born and raised in India and live there for 27 years of my life. I really didn’t mean to imply that people in India need outsiders to educate them and that is why I mentioned the coverage of the Shahrukh Khan commercial in Indian media. I can see that things are changing and what you quote was just a part of how I hope the attitude will change.
if indians were thoroughly obsessed with light skin to the exclusion of all other aesthetic merits, there should be countless dark skinned beauties unappreciated and single in the motherland. but alas, beauty is beauty and even the most prejudiced will be persuaded by it. maybe it was different in a previous generation, but the dark girls that i meet don’t seem to be running a deficit of confidence. nor are there a scarcity of light skinned boys, who could as easily be with lighter complexion girls, falling for dark girls.
160 · LandBeyond7Zs said
In 98, I only wrote what was said after “Linguistically…”. There’s something wrong with the quotation feature of this site. They need to call up tech-support in India, and that should solve the problem.
You have unusual honesty and self-confidence for a desi on the race and color issue. Like Swami Vivekananda:
http://www.hinduism.fsnet.co.uk/namoma/life_swamiji/life_swamiji_anecdotes.htm
” Swamiji became well-known in America. Once he was given a rousing reception at a railway station as he got down from the train. A Negro porter went forward to shake hands with him saying:
Congratualations! I am extremly delighted that a man of my race has attained such great honour! The entire Negro community in this country feels proud of you!' Swamiji eagerly shook hands with the porter and said warmly,Thank you, brother!’ He refused to deny he was a Negro.Swamiji was insulted, humiliated and refused entry into many hotels in the South an suspicion that he was a Negro. But he never protested or explained that he was an Indian. A Western disciple once asked him why he did not tell them he was from India in such situations.
What!', Swamiji replied,Rise at the expense of another! I did not come to earth for that!'”In contrast we have the obscene phenomenon of too many desis shamelessly putting down fellow desis with the hopes of rising at their expense in the eyes of racist foreigners.
I see, you are a very dark skinned desi yet have only been mistaken for lighter races and nationalities (latino? afghan? chinese?) but never for black. To ask everyone to take your claim at “face value” is to insult their intelligence.
By the way, wasn’t it you who once claimed that the highly prosperous Taiwanese people “looked up to Indians”, and then went nuts when that preposterous claim wasn’t taken at “face value”?
Too busy earning his keep: sucking up to white racists. Nothing “great” about that career….
Bollyhood i would take it easy on the guy you were quoting in your #191. Maybe the fools who made that comment actually think afghanis are dark. Plus a dark Indian’s hairstyle, if it look’s FOBish, people will not mistake that to be black. As far as chinese, you will be amazed at how ignorant some people are and have no clue what they look like. Probably confuse them with some dark southeast asian.
Latinos can be dark.Brazil and Puerto Rico are a lot like India in that aspect.
Many pashtuns are relatively dark and desi-looking. The overlap works both ways. The difference is that unlike desis the pashtuns do not glorify the dark desi look that is found among a minority of them at the expense of their own stereotypical look.
Latino is a broad term that does not denote any particular race or any particular racial mix. For example the majority of brazilians have some african ancestry while the majority of mexicans have some amerindian ancestry. You are more likely to find latinos who look a bit like desis (albeit usually lighter-skinned and more robust physically) in the countries where the mix is with africans, such as Brazil and Puerto Rico.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-race_Brazilian
The following famous brazilian in particular, Brazil’s greatest writer, who was of african and portuguese ancestry, looks like he could pass for a desi:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:MarcFerrez_MachadodeAssis.jpg
Actually I suspect that the “portuguese” part of Machado de Assis’s ancestry could have been gypsy. There are a lot of brazilians with gypsy ancestry as well.
184 · PS said
vyasa, prema, bollyhood, valmiki, dev…. all the same.
That is one of the sillier things I’ve read on this blog. Has anyone actually asked them? Any race who can see the difference between pale and not-pale among, say, the inhabitants of the Orkney Isles or Iceland, is certainly capable of distinguishing among shades of brown.
Its not silly. Most whites cant tell the difference between different shades of brown with the precision that an average desi is able to discern.
I see, you are a very dark skinned desi yet have only been mistaken for lighter races and nationalities (latino? afghan? chinese?) but never for black. To ask everyone to take your claim at “face value” is to insult their intelligence.
You can choose to believe that or not. Just like you can choose to believe the Bengali. You are ridiculous in your claims of Indians problems and they become more and more ridiculous b/c you cannot put anything in context.
By the way, wasn’t it you who once claimed that the highly prosperous Taiwanese people “looked up to Indians”, and then went nuts when that preposterous claim wasn’t taken at “face value”?
No I didn’t go “nuts”, in actuality it was you – haven’t you been banned several times from this blog? – you kept making your stupid generalizations and denying that people have different experiences. I can go on about those experiences; but it starts getting silly; And I can’t remember in what context what I said about Taiwan, but to deny the experience that I had there so that I can fit into the mold of your stupid overgeneralized statements about Indians is ridiculous.
You should have learned when you made that stupid statement about “korean men losing their women to white men” and it was picked up the general media, that sweeping generalizations without any context or nuances – your hatred for INdians is quite apparent – is just, well, dumb. Sorry your reality where you dump on Indians and Indian culture just isn’t my reality and that me being a dark-skinned indian is swooning over the fact that I’m mistaken as a latino (lol!) is absurd.
But then I probably shouldn’t feed the troll.
“…with the precision that an average desi is able to discern.”
That might be true. Constant practice and care does hone the tone sensor, I guess.
There you go being dishonest again. You are just not a very credible person. First you wrote that the taiwanese told you to your face (how rude) that they found your skin color repulsive, and then just a few posts later you wrote that the taiwanese “looked up to indians”! Of course I didnt take your irrational statement at “face value” and asked you to explain why they looked up to indians when they found indians physically repulsive and India was dirt poor compared to Taiwan. Since you didn’t have an answer your brain blew a fuse and you went nuts.
Now you are saying that despite being a very dark skinned desi you have “never been asked if I was black but have been asked if I was many other things”. So what are these “many other things” that you have been mistaken for? What races or nationalities look similar to very dark-skinned desis? Inquiring minds want to know 🙂
Gweneth Paltrow