Black, brown, white and yellow – the human rainbow

When I pulled my curtains early in the morning today, I saw an all-white landscape. Snow fell all night long on Friday. I could not sleep very well last night. Tathoi came back late from her debate tournament. It was the State tournament- her last one, and she was sad, as she had loved debate a lot. She enjoyed delivering her viewpoints for the motion, against the motion. She got to share her political convictions in a healthy, competitive way. Many a times she has told me that she wanted to be an activist. She is just in twelfth grade; her whole life is ahead of her. While growing up in Bangladesh, I could not become anything I wanted to become. I was a girl, I did not have my father, and I was from a Hindu family – a minority. 

But I am in America now. I could tell Tathoi my new-found wisdom, “The world is your oyster. You can become anything you want to become. You can become anything, anytime you want to become.” Tathoi showed me her plaque; and I drifted into my childhood dreams in dreams. Now looking through the windows, the outside world is making me happy. White snow has an incredible power of sinless beauty. Nobody has stepped outside yet - not even the squirrels and the birds. The pristine world is untouched. I know the footprints of the squirrels. I know the footprints of different birds. I knew the footprints of deer even when we used to live in our house in the country. There is this most wonderful book I own which tells me how to find out the footprints of the animals on snow. It is surreal. 

Schools, colleges, and all the educational institutes are closed today. Many offices are closed too. It is Martin Luther King Jr. (January 15, 1929 - April 4, 1968) day. Each year, on the third Monday in January, the Martin Luther King Jr. Day is observed in the USA. It is an American federal holiday marking the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr.

Google doodle on 1/20/2020 : https://g.co/doodle/bwgsf

Martin Luther King, Jr. was born in the Deep South - Atlanta, Georgia; during the racial turmoil. Martin Luther King Jr., a legendary figure, was the most visible activist, spokesperson, and the leader of the Civil Rights Movement from 1955 till his assassination in 1968. He is known for his contributions to the American civil rights movement in the 1960s; he used to dream of a United States that is void of segregation and racism.

I did not grow up in the USA. But I still remember how I used to cry after watching Alex Haley’s “Roots” on TV while growing up in Bangladesh. Alex Haley wrote the novel “Roots: The Saga of an American Family” in 1976. “It tells the story of Kunta Kinte, an 18th-century African, captured as an adolescent, sold into slavery in Africa, transported to North America; following his life and the lives of his descendants in the United States down to Haley. The release of the novel, combined with its hugely popular television adaptation, “Roots” (1977), led to a cultural sensation in the United States, and it is considered to be one of the most important U.S. works of the 20th century.” I remember how I used to shiver seeing Kunta Kinte tied up in chains. His neck was tied too, like an animal. His white master was slashing and whipping his black body: in those days I used to see Kunta Kinte’s sweat and blood soaked body in all my nightmares. Now thinking back, I think that was one great thing Bangladesh Television did – they showed the “Roots” to another part of the racial world.

(click here to see “I am Kunta Kinte ROOTS 2016 clip)  

I also remember crying uncontrollably for days after reading Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom's Cabin in sixth grade. I still remember these lines -

“The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.”

“The heart has no tears to give;--it drops only blood, bleeding itself away in silence.”

“Scenes of blood and cruelty are shocking to our ear and heart. What man has nerve to do, man has not nerve to hear.” 

"Children always have to be whipped," said Miss Ophelia; "I never heard of bringing them up without." 

“Whipping and abuse are like laudanum: you have to double the dose as the sensibilities decline.”

After immigrating to the USA, I listened to Billie Holiday’s song, “Strange Fruit”. The first time I heard it, my safe, snow covered castle of Wisconsin collapsed; I could not breathe.

“Southern trees bear a strange fruit

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root

Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees

Pastoral scene of the gallant South

The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth

Scent of magnolia, sweet and fresh

Then the sudden smell of burning flesh

Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck

For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck

For the sun to rot, for the tree to drop

Here is a strange and bitter crop.”

(Click here to listen to Strange Fruit - Billie Holiday)

So many years have passed by since then. In today’s America, human bodies do not hang like Billie Holiday’s “strange fruits” from the Poplar trees in the Deep South. They do not become target of lynching like before. Still, whenever there is a crime, the first thing people think is that a black person has done it. White people can’t even admit that “black lives matter.” 

In this game, the immigrant brown people of our country, of our sub-continents, are also not very far behind. They feel proud thinking that they did not buy a house in the black neighborhood.

I have spent the first eighteen years of my life in Bangladesh, the next twelve years in India, and the past twenty two years in the USA. In my fifty-two years of life, I have seen enough so-called educated Bangladeshi and Indian men, but I have never seen a Bangladeshi or Indian man marrying a black woman. I have seen them marrying white girls, I have seen them boasting about their milk-skinned wives, I have even seen their parents and relatives proud of the pale, ‘foreign’ bride – the ‘Memshaheb’.

In Bangladesh and in India, most of the people still refer to the black people as Negros; they do not even know that our civilization is trying very hard to eradicate this very word from the human dictionary.

The immigrant Indian and Bangladeshi people go around telling in their ‘desi’ circles, “Our kids do not have any black friends.”

The truth is that back home, these are the people who used to put advertisements in Bangladeshi and Indian newspapers asking for “fair skinned wives” for their arranged marriages. Their relatives are still doing it; knowingly, unknowingly. Women are a commodity in our country; the fairer, the better, just as they think the light skinned cabbages are better than the purple ones.

Even today, if they see a light skinned, beautiful girl in our country, they will always exclaim, “Oh, how pretty (“shundori”) she is!” But if they see a dark skinned, beautiful girl, they will say, “Well, she is sweet (“mishti”)!” She is never pretty in their eyes, she is never beautiful.

I still remember the day when I went to visit a so-called friend’s house in Kolkata after my marriage. That friend is a leftist, progressive person; at least he claimed that throughout his life. I did not have any reason to believe that from any of his actions though. That day, the friend’s brother-in-law was also present. He had heard that my husband had married a foreigner. He was expecting a white or yellow skinned girl from England, America or at least from Japan. Looking at my plain looking, black, Bangladeshi face, he got the shock of his life! That friend started laughing hysterically; he just stood there, and did not say a single word to his brother-in-law. He himself has told me this story many-a-times after that. He found it very funny, amusing, and entertaining. And I, even after some twenty-six years, still remember how all of them laughed. Well, technically I, a Bangladeshi girl, was a foreigner in Kolkata, India! But that wasn’t good enough for them. I know India was under the British rule for two hundred years. Love and respect for racial supremacy is ingrained in their genes, in their blood. But has not the world progressed after that? We, the Bangladeshi women, are born fighters and warriors. Bangladesh is a country of countless rivers; we know how to swim against the tide.

There is racism in Asia. There is racism in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei, Myanmar, Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Malaysia, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Pakistan, Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Though the rest of the world cannot differentiate between the Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese kids - they are all yellow in their eyes; an East Asian man knows the shades of yellows.

Likewise, though the people from India and Bangladesh are all brown colored people in the eyes of the American, British, and Australian, people from our part of the world can really see the differences in the many shades of browns. In their eyes, the lighter the better.

By that same measuring tape, my mother and my sister Shyama are always beautiful in our country and I am not. In fact, I grew up listening to this, “Oh Rama? She is black as a jet-black ink pot.” They even told my grandmother that Rama has come from a farm of black nigella seeds. But my sister “Shyama is as beautiful and fair as a Persian rose!” I bet none of them have ever seen a Persian rose (“Basrai golap”) in their lifetime.

In Bangladesh, they used to give certificates from a board office after the high-school exams. I went to the board office with my mom and my sister Shyama. In Bangladesh and in India, people’s colors and looks are everybody’s business. They have to always give their judgement on it, they have to comment. The clerk who was delivering my certificate was happy to see Shyama, as she is fair and beautiful like my mom. But after staring at my face for just a few seconds, he asked my mom “Is she your daughter? Your own daughter? Not adopted? Her skin color is so different from yours!” My mom is a very sharp-witted woman. Immediately she answered to the clerk, “Well, I used to eat lots of barbequed eggplants before her birth- that’s why she is so dark, totally charcoal black!” Needless to say, if I told all of these colorful stories, I would be able to write another ʾAlf layla wa-layla” (“One Thousand and One Nights” – the “Arabian Nights!")

I should not forget to mention that in their eyes, adoption is also looked down upon. It is almost like an unforgivable sin. They pretend to be progressive, moderate and ever forgiving, “Oh, that child is so lucky!” It never crosses their minds that it is actually the other way around, and it is in fact the parents' good luck that they get to raise a child!

Racial discrimination is our civilization’s untold, unpunished crime - it is a disgrace.

My work is done for today. I am going home now. I have switched on the radio in my car. On NPR (the National Public Radio), they are broadcasting Martin Luther King Jr’s famous speech, “I Have a Dream.” I am focused on that historical speech. Pictures from MLK’s life - lives of the black people, have started reeling before my eyes.

I remember how, as a child, Martin Luther King had to attend segregated public schools in Georgia. I remember how there was segregation on buses; the black and white were not allowed to ride the bus as equals. I remember how King was arrested, how his home was bombed, how he was subjected to personal abuse. I remember how “he led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that caught the attention of the entire world, providing what he called a coalition of conscience, and inspiring his ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail’, a manifesto of the Negro revolution; he planned the drives in Alabama for the registration of Negroes as voters; he directed the peaceful march on Washington, D.C., of 250,000 people to whom he delivered his address, “l Have a Dream”. (from: 

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1964/king/biographical/)”

I started whispering along with Martin Luther King Jr.-

“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!”

(Click here to listen to the “I Have a Dream” speech by Martin Luther King Jr.)

On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. He was standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee that evening. He was there to lead a protest march for the striking garbage workers of the city.

Today we are standing here in 2020; Martin Luther king Jr’s dream has not yet become true.

20 January, 2020

Madison,Wisconsin.

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Published in 200 words:
Wisconsin State Journal: Opinion: Letters to the editor: Jan 31, 2020
WSJ link: https://madison.com/wsj/opinion/letters/racism-festers-around-the-world----kalyani-rama/article_1e6964a0-28ec-5e89-af2f-40f6ebedc699.html

In newsbreak.com : https://www.newsbreak.com/news/0O0ondLQ/racism-festers-around-the-world-kalyani-rama