Thursday, March 06, 2014

We were all black. That is fair and lovely!

My only trip to Africa was when I spent three weeks in Tanzania, in December 2009. The English language newspapers at Dar es Salaam reported on the front pages about the anti-gay fervor in neighboring Uganda and the role of US-based missionaries in that brouhaha. I was so convinced that it was all a fleeting political issue that I threw away those pages; little did I know!  Instead, I brought with me a couple of pages that were news items on how beauty products were marketed targeting the women--because, among others, the products included "skin whiteners."

The anti-gay nastiness has become a law of the land in Uganda, and it seems like it might even spread to a few more countries in Africa. That will be a post for another day, I am sure.  The skin whiteners continue to fascinate me because I grew up in a culture, in a country, where the skin complexion was categorized in so many ways, like.
Coal black
Dark
Dark brown
Brown
Light brown
Wheatish
Fair
Very fair
And, yes, even white!
A graduate school friend, who was from Nigeria, used to joke that there isn't any black skin--it is all only various shades of brown.  A white American grad school colleague noted that there is no white skin and once held a blank sheet of white paper against his skin to prove his point.

In the old country, "Fair & Lovely" was a product that was sold as a skin whitener.  It still is. In a "liberalized" economy that India now is, there are, I bet, quite a few competing products as well.

"White," as I used to joke in graduate school, is nothing but a serious medical condition of pigment deficiency.  Lack of melanin.  My version of "brown pride," I suppose.

The Economist reports a study that confirms why we have melanin:
One suggestion often proferred is that the melanin in black skin, by absorbing ultraviolet light which might otherwise damage DNA and cause mutations, protects against skin cancer.
The confirmation came via:
a study by Mel Greaves, of the Institute of Cancer Research, in Britain, just published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, settles the question in favour of cancer being the driving force. Dr Greaves does so by reviewing the clinical data about those Africans who do not have black skin because they are albino.
As humans wandered into the northern latitudes, there was less of a danger of cancer from the way-less intense sunlight. On the other hand, a lighter skin tone facilitated synthesizing Vitamin D.  The cost-benefit analysis then yielded the "whites."

My favorite Tamil expression for the much adored skin tone is பால் நெரம் (milk color.)  Imagine a Tamil walking around with a skin color that matches the color of milk. If such a person existed, that will be one brief existence on the planet, in those uber-hot conditions!

Of course, this also means that the darker skinned Tamil folks like me living in northern latitudes that aren't our original home, and especially in this part of the Pacific Northwest where the sun rarely ever peeks through the cloud cover, well, we need Vitamin D supplements. But, hey, no worries about any skin cancer though ;)

I wonder if Wendy Doniger will have anything about the "fair" and "dark" skinned Hindu gods.  I will find out when I return to blogging about "The Hindus."

4 comments:

Ramesh said...

I was looking for a learned disposition as to why some women are redheads ...... and you disappointed me so badly :)

To each his own. If somebody is black and wants to be white or white and wants to be black or brown and wants to be milky ---- what the hell, who cares.

Come back to hotter climes Khé and stop taking Vitamin D supplements. That's an order :)

Sriram Khé said...

Will be there soon ... and get a darker tan ...
The sad thing is that with the grandmothers now gone, and with the seniors in the extended family also gone, there are fewer and fewer people anymore to ask me "how come after spending all these years in america you are still so skinny and dark?" ... While their focus on the skinny and dark was no fun, I miss them all :(

Rob and Sara said...

Waaiiit a minute… Fair and dark-skinned Hindu gods? But…but… Aren't they BLUE?

Sriram Khé said...

If you are referring to Krishna as the god with the blue tan, yes, there is that story. But, commonly he is described as black--the word krishna itself also meaning black.

Anyway, came cross an interesting observation from Doniger: there are no Shudra gods! "Agni is the Brahmin,... Indra the warrior, and the Ashvins the Vaishyas." ... no god is a Shudra ... and, of course, Shudras are darker-skinned ... ah well, I am sure I will rant about in a separate post ;)