Is Racial Discrimination still Prevalent?
We all are different in terms of skin color, race, country, city, and many more, that is, we all are unique. Racial discrimination is very common nowadays. Individuals are discriminating using ways like not working with someone, not helping someone, not touching someone, just on the basis of the parameters like skin color, nationality, country, many more. Let’s see how wrong it is.
India has a lot of diversity where people belonging to different caste, religion, traditions, races live together. You will observe that there are people with different levels of skin complexion like dark and fair. In ancient India, skin color was the factor that was considered important for determining a person’s wealth and value. Fair skin tone was considered superior to dark skin. Apart from this, Brahmins were considered to be upper caste people while Shudras were considered inferior. The people treated everyone differently.
Racial discrimination took its worst form in 1858-1947 when India was ruled by British Raj. The British, having fair complexion, considered them superior to Indians. In 1935, they even introduced untouchable groups on the basis of skin color. Later, freedom fighters did fight for this untouchability and won it. Also, for the longest time, India was ruled by fair complexion people. Even British people took advantage of the differences present to conquer India.
Due to many other things which happened with Indians in the past, there are some impacts left on the people. People developed their beliefs based on these horrible experiences. People are unknowingly doing a crime by racially discriminating against someone. The people who suffered developed low self-esteem, poor self-confidence, depression and often feel ashamed for why they are like this which is not acceptable by society. They feel the problem lies in them but it’s not.
Many men and women prefer fair complexion as an important quality to look at in their partners, especially women. Even when a woman is pregnant, she is told to eat good food which will promote the fair complexion of the child. When it comes to hiring women employers, HR does consider factors like whether she will get married, pregnant during the job. Women employers many times get paid less for the same work other men are doing.
Apart from this, the people who are Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender get undervalued in the society. How often do we see them in schools or in company? They lose their confidence to stand in front of these perfectionist people. The people who are disabled go through the same thing. Some schools don’t consider taking these children for admission. Hardly, you will see some fasciitis for disabled employees in the company. The HR gets shocked to see a transgender, disabled person in the interview. We get nervous around these or even they get nervous around us because we hardly see them in our day-to-day life. They get hidden.
Government has imposed various laws for having equality among people and we must rightly use it. Race are physical qualities that we all inherit biologically. Everyone will not be like you, there will be differences. We all need to accept us and the people around us. Everyone is equal and deserves equal treatment.
Written By-
Pranali Mahindrakar, Student of BSc. CS, Pune.
