The question of equality in the Obama era is becoming more and more of a cliché, being racism still clearly exists in so many ways.
Even now, images of minorities being portrayed as unworthy and unacceptable, because of the color of their skin is a very huge issue across the globe.
Cosmetic advertisements in Asia are currently targeting men with blunt campaigns aimed at skin color that one lawmaker labels racist, CNN reports.
In one TV commercial, two men, one with dark skin, the other with light skin; stand on a balcony overlooking a neighborhood. The dark skin guy turns to his friend and says in Hindi, "I am unlucky because of my face." His light skin friend replies, "Not because of your face, because of the color of your face."
The light skin guy then throws his friend a whitening cream.
It's disturbing enough that so many people with dark skin tones are brainwashed to believe that white is right, and black is dirty. But, what's more disturbing is that product makers don't see anything wrong with the messages that they're sending, with claims they're only giving consumers what they want.
A marketing study found sales for skin whitening creams have jumped more than 100 percent in rural India and sales for male grooming products are increasing 20 percent annually.
Jawed Habib, owner of a chain of 140 salons located in India and across the world says, "we Indian people, we Asian people are more darker, so we want to look more fair."
But in a country where most people have brown skin, the message being sent to men and women has some people outraged.
"Basically if you need a job you have to have white skin. If you want a good partner, a companion you need white skin and you always seem to get it once you've used the fairness cream. Basically I think it's completely racist and highly objectionable," says Brinda Karat.
Karat is a member of India's Parliament who has made formal complaints about the advertisements to Indian authorities. She says the ads are simply playing on a social stigma that already exists in India.
Comments
I'm surprised that there are skin whitening creams that are intended to make one lighter. I'm more surprised that people are not as offended as they should be. I can't believe that a company would produce and market something so racist. Furthermore I can't believe there are people willing to buy it. I think unilever and all the other companies who produce such products should be ashamed.
I have tried to search the reason of political correctness in American History. Thought I must admit that I still don’t fully understand the evolution of American society, but I am starting to have a fair understanding of it. In this particular case, I think the problem is with American culture, not Indian culture. Saying that black is bad and white is good automatically gets associated with slavery and segregation. Pond’s advertisement is not racist, but American interpretation is racist. Americans are so preoccupied with their short history and race conflict that they try to interpret everything with that lens.
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