Why I cringe at the word browntown

 Browntown - adj., noun, All South Asian everything
(No, you’re not smart and this isn’t a Lupe reference)

“… browntown. Yeah, it’s easy to get sucked into that.”

At this point in my life, a majority of my friends are South Asian, and I’m still trying to piece together how it became this way.  It doesn’t take long to stalk me on Facebook and realize that there is a large South Asian community presence on my profile.  Almost instantly this makes me browntown.  But, what’s wrong with that? After all, I did choose my own friends.  I made conscious decisions to involve myself in a community and prioritize certain relationships.  Do I regret it? No. Do I wish I wasn’t considered browntown? Yes.

“Before I met you, I thought you were so browntown!” -XX

Jackpot.  Before he met me, he thought I was so browntown. Here’s what I think he believed was true about me:

• I hang out with many South Asians
• I usually only talk about South Asian people, places and things
• I only hook up with South Asians
• I only date South Asians
• I only want to make new friends if they are South Asian
• I watch Hindi movies and talk about my immigrant family all the time
• I’m probably a bio or econ major

Well, only one of those statements really applies to me.  And even if they all applied to me, I don’t need the label.  The second you’re defined by the word browntown is the second that people think they know you.  Just another browntown person.  “The brown kids who hang out with each other are all the same!” Well we’re not all alike, and we’re not all friends.

But my main problem with this word goes beyond your average don’t-label-me lecture. For society, the negative contexts with this word are endless.  To the student masses, being associated with Browntown could mean that you’re boring, socially awkward, or fobby. I’ve witnessed fellow South Asians making active efforts to stay away from “browntown” and mocking it instead. I’ve witnessed South Asians deciding whether they want to “go Greek” or “go browntown” (because God forbid these groups be a little less institutionalized). And, it’s not just the college scene I’m worried about.  I’ve witnessed groups of South Asians getting rejected at bars. If a bar has met its diversity quota for the night, browntown ain’t gonna be allowed in. Why does this concept carry such a stigma?  What is it about a group of South Asian friends that screams: WE LOVE ONLY ASSOCIATING WITH PEOPLE OF THE SAME SKIN COLOR!

But that’s just it— a group of South Asian friends is nothing more than a group of South Asian friends. How and why their friendships were formed is unknown.  Who and what they associate with is unspecified. It doesn’t matter that a South Asian arrived at your party with other South Asian friends.  They’re not “the brown girls crew.” They are not looking to keep to themselves, and they are not trying to exclusively capitalize on their 'exotic' brownness.  They have opinions, they are funny, they are cultured, and they are Americans.

Years ago, Americans learned to look beyond a person’s skin color when creating friendships. If we’re not following the same logic for a larger group, then we’re taking two steps backward. It’s time to look past the fact that some friends share the same skin color and stop writing them off as unapproachable. So don’t tell me I’m browntown because of my friends.  Call us by our names.  Call us your friends.

Note: I cringed all 16 times I typed the word browntown here.

How I learned to hate

I was 15 when I learned how to be racist. That's not to say I had never thought, said, or did ignorant shit before. I probably had, but it wasn't until my freshman year of high school that I experienced the kind of  reaffirming conversation that cements bigoted attitudes in otherwise rational minds. 

The context was Hurricane Katrina. The storm had hit New Orleans, broken through the levees, and washed homes and lives away. As a result, floods of refugees made the six-hour voyage to my hometown of Houston, TX. The news-coverage was wall-to-wall, but being a kid that didn't pay attention to the world around me, the devastation flew right over my head.

The day I learned to hate was unremarkable except for two events. The first was my morning gym class. It was the only class I had with any refugees in it, and they sat near the back and had avoided changing into gym clothes like the rest of us. As best I can recall, the coach went over to them and told them they had to change into workout clothes for class. The next thing I remember, they moved to the back of the gym -- instead of the locker rooms -- and began changing. 

The second event, fueled by the first,  was a conversation I had walking home that day with a good friend. It was short and brutal. I told her that I realized that I "really did not like black people," and she affirmed my ill will and seconded that they were "so lazy." 

There's a laundry list of excuses I can throw out now. I was young. It was extreme circumstances. I was a byproduct of the South. It was before I knew anything about the world, about prejudice. But looking back, that's all bullshit. Racism is racism, regardless of context. The scary thing about this story is that it didn't seem malicious, but enlightening. We were just two good friends, bantering, happy to have found someone who could justify our beliefs.

I think that for most people the typical Asshole Racist is a wrinkled old redneck riding a motorboat with the Confederate flag waving behind, and because of this caricature we look over the insidious creeping of societal prejudices that seep into our own daily conversations.   

This, I think, is dramatized in South Asian culture. It's funny how the luxury of not-being-white can make a person feel they are immune to traditional norms of racial awareness. I have heard multiple South Asian friends claim, sometimes jokingly, sometimes scarily seriously, about being racist against East Asians. The height of this was when I got in an pseudo-argument with a friend about her marrying outside the South Asian community but staying within the Asian continent. Her response: "Oh God, I would never touch a Yellow Man!" This laughable statement from someone I consider pretty smart, if a bit classically suburban. 

What I wonder is: How can I, and how can we as a community, speak out against racial profiling or everyday prejudice we see in society when we're so poor at policing ourselves?   

I don't view this post as any sort of confessional to make me feel better about my instances of irrational bigotry. What I do think is that we, as individuals and as a community, need to be more self-aware. We need to constantly question our assumptions and our friends’ jokes. We need to avoid reflexive stereotyping simply due to the fact that a particular belief is so widespread. Cause hey, eventually someone will cross the line, and we'll all look like jackasses. 

(Un)Fair Skin: Preference as a Colonial Legacy

"Oh god... the sun is so bright today! I'm gonna get so dark!"

If you've had even a fraction of the experience that I've had as a South Asian-American with lots of desi friends of the female variety, then you've heard this before. You might have even exclaimed something similar yourself.

But when does the fear of getting a couple of shades darker in the sun turn into a serious societal disadvantage? During the summer season, I've heard some friends discuss the consequences of having darker skin in both serious and humorous contexts--everything from how your marriage prospects are limited if you have darker skin or how disappointed your parents will be when they see your new shade after a day under the sun. I don't believe in any of it, but it's remarkable how many intelligent, bright, and capable women do.

Some women I know call the fair skin obsession complete bullshit and recognize it as remnants of a colonial legacy that the British instilled in South Asians for two centuries: White is beautiful and powerful, Dark is native, uncivilized, ugly.

Two South Asian women sit in front of two different beauty advertisements in India.

Far too many, however, live by the rule of fair skin as a standard of beauty--by photoshopping their profile pictures, choosing favorable Instagram filters to make themselves appear lighter, using skin creams that could have detrimental effects on their skin, or "casually" sliding comments into conversations that establish that their skin tone is fair, in case anyone was thinking otherwise:

"This polish is pretty--but my skin is so pale that it just wouldn't have the same effect...but Afsheen, you should try it!"

South Asian women using fair skin as leverage over other South Asian women in social situations has got to be the worst of it all.

We might even participate in the fair skin obsession without realizing it; I know I've had those moments myself--choosing an outfit that brings out a lighter complexion or buying a foundation that's just a bit lighter than it should be...

So what should we do about it? 

First things first, recognize that your "preference" stems from a philosophy ingrained in South Asians for over two hundred years. To put it simply, white ain't all that.

Second, the woman-on-woman hate and passive aggressive commentary on skin has got to stop. I've had enough of attending halaqas or other sisterly gatherings where the conversation is pretty much guranteed to swerve towards two topics: Shahrukh Khan's latest movie and skin tone.

The whole fair skin obsession is particularly surprising in a South Asian Muslim context. When I hear desi Muslim women participating in the conversations or arguments on fair skin--we all seem to collectively avoid the elephant in the Ummah--as an insanely diverse community, we have Arab, Arab-American, African and African-American sisters that we interact with--of course we are all going to have drastically different skin tones. To establish that one type is superior over another (or more beautiful, or clean, or whatever "synonym" of superior you use), is insensitive, unnecessary, and ultimately, just a gross leftover of colonialist thought that we should all abandon.

Third, the brothers who "prefer" fair skin and their similarly thirsty mothers need to be called out and educated--or kicked to the curb. A bride or girlfriend with a fair complexion is not guaranteed to have a certain level of spirituality, piety, innocence, or higher chance of getting into medical school. The sooner that the men in our communities stop erroneously justifying these preferences, the better off we'll be.

Moral of the story? Light girls, medium girls, dark girls, and everyone in between: your skin tone is about as socially relevant as your Neopets username (so, not at all). Anyone who tells you otherwise is not worth your time.

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Selena Gomez, Iggy Azalea, and Cultural Appropriation

Selena Gomez caught some minor flak about wearing a bindi during her performance at the Billboard Awards. Look at it, or don't:

I've talked to people about the song in general, which peaked at #6 on the charts, and their attitude is summed up pretty well by this Jus Reign vine.  I had a similar conversation with some friends about Iggy Azalea's "Bounce" video. Look at it, or don't:

Her inherent defense is that she's not doing anything already done here or here. What's troubling is that she's using the colors, the dress, and most obviously the people as a cultural costume to be worn and discarded like any other trend.

Here was Selena Gomez's defense to the mild criticism she faced for donning a bindi (from here):

 “The song kind of has that almost Hindu feel, that tribal feel. I kind of wanted to translate that. Plus, I’ve been learning a lot about my seven chakras and bindis and stuff. I’ve learned a lot about the culture, and I think it’s beautiful. I think it’s fun to incorporate that into the performance."

Look past the cringeworthy conflation of "Hindu" and "tribal" and you can see that the same attitude is at play.  This image is available and I can sell it, so let me rock my seven chakras for a minute.

The central lesson from this is that none of us really care.  In fact, with Priyanka Chopra and Pitbull peddling a case study in Orientalism that's racking up 5 million+ views, we're looking more and more like co-conspirators.  The most realistic conclusion is that after this wave of interest in the exotic ends, another will come, and the same people will make the same noises and go on with their lives. Maybe it's a fact of life - after all, Jay Z issued Miley Cyrus a twerking license.

PS: It's not all bad - check out Jai Paul's incredible instrumental, Str8 Outta Mumbai.

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4 Brown Faces Relevant in Hip-Hop Today

Barring some weird cross-cultural mashups, South Asians are criminally underrepresented in the world of hip-hop.  There isn't any affirmative action out on these streets, though - here are some people with roots in the subcontinent creating hip-hop:

Heems

Himanshu Suri, of Das Racist fame, has been doing some pretty rad solo stuff since the group's breakup at the end of 2012. Heems trades some of DR's out-of-left-field references over dance beats for a more purposeful flow on his two mixtapes.  Look out for the Greedhead honcho's solo debut album coming later this year. In the meantime, hear him spit something conscious over a Kolaveri Di sample - yeah, really.

Chippy Nonstop

This energetic, Kreayshawn-affiliated hyphy princess from Oakland is putting out some of the weirder sounds found on the Internet lately. Peep her infectious new EP, #finallyverified, or let her destroy your Twitter feed for a few days.

Shomi Patwary

This graphically-oriented creative has put together visuals for A$AP Rocky, Lupe Fiasco, and a host of others. He's the creative director for Karmaloop TV and co-founder of creative collective Illusive Media, but has been doing his thing in Virginia for over a decade now. 

Big Baby Gandhi

BBG is my favorite rapper right now. Download his first mixtape, his second mixtape, check out his Bandcamp page, download his EP, wait for his debut album, and pray to God he stops caring about becoming a pharmacist.

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