Racial politics are woven into the fabric of every social structure. The main distinction between varying racial interactions is the chain of historical events that build particular racial dynamics. In more homogenous societies like Karachi for example, racial politics are a constant undertone rather than an overt conversation – an undertone established by years of colonization, and a culture of elitism built with pride around that colonization.
The interesting interaction here is how these racial politics play out in the children of immigrants – immigrants from countries once colonized, giving birth in the country of their colonizers. In this case, how the “colonized mentality” manifests itself once lifted out of Pakistan and dropped into the United States.
I remember speaking to an acquaintance of mine once – one with an identity similar to mine yet fully raised in the United States. I remember her telling me about her sexual escapades with a variety of different men from all over the racial and ethnic spectrum. As the conversation moved into topics of permanence, she told me quite innocently that she wanted to find a light skinned man to compliment her fair genes and ultimately, bring out her future child’s fair skin. I paused, slightly taken aback. How is it that you can fuck dark men but be averse to a dark-skinned child? That you can be attracted to a dark-skinned man, but think that dark children are less physically desirable?
As two brown women, I noticed our arms laying side by side during this conversation and couldn’t help but think about our two shades of brown – one more caramel and one slightly more bronze. I think about what would happen if we mixed our two shades together. If we threw in the color of milk chocolate, added a sprinkle of the way desert sand looks during sunset. I pictured the merging of browns from every corner of the world and noticed that it would do little to change aesthetic categorization. Regardless of how dark or light, we end exactly where we started: with the color brown.
But the same cannot be said for white. White does not absorb color, it repels it. With the pure white, even the smallest dots of pigment would change the basic physical properties of the color. If we were to mix the lightest of desert sand with A4 paper white, the white would get lost in a depth of brown – almost inconceivable, and barely living. Any splash of inclusivity is a stain on a white canvas, because white by nature is tailored to be exclusionary.
These properties of the color white are not unknown. Quite the opposite. They’re the foundations upon which many of the colonized attempt to find partners and ultimately reproduce. They’re the distinction between a good proposal and an unsuitable partner, of a desirable person and an unwelcome suitor. Parents and children alike will go out of their way to find light-skinned partners to wash out the “stain” of brown skin, to drown out the centuries of history in our pigment. And these mentalities filter down from generation to generation, from country to country, first settling in minds too closed to question, and then unconsciously guiding life decisions. This makes me wonder – if we were somehow able to genetically engineer the appearance of our own children, how many brown babies would our world have? Has our oppressor settled so deep within us that we would wipe ourselves out to feel more at ease?
Shades of brown, no matter how light, stand stark on a backdrop of white. No matter how hard the colonized fight to be like the colonizer, no matter how light-skinned our partners are, our children will have bronze painted on their skin and coursing through their veins. And that to me, is the overwhelming resilience of our identity.
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