Question

How do indians see blacks or what stereotype do we indians have of them ?​

Answer 1

Answer:

Any discussion of racism—in or about India or by Indians—inevitably moves on to issues of colour and caste. The impact of the intense protests in US and Europe after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis has been no different, with some thinking aloud why there hasn’t been copycat unrest in India too. That may indeed have happened had the pandemic not preoccupied most minds.

But for me, an important insight gained from all the accounts of racism, in its many subtle and crass forms, emanating from the US right now came from what my US-born niece wrote to her school district about the need to sensitize teachers and students about it. A recent Yale graduate, Sanoja is a typical American-desi kid but her description of the kind of racism she faced really made me sit up.

All too often we think of racism only in terms of what Floyd went through: racial profiling and a seemingly impossible chakravyuh of bias and negative stereotyping. But Sanoja’s account brought home the equally deleterious effects of so-called positive stereotyping. It has the same result of pigeon-holing and constricting, only Indians back home in India may not immediately realise quite how.