Brown-on-black racism boggles my mind. On the surface, the notion that people who are discriminated against for the color of their skin in western countries should then turn around and push the same prejudice onto those of a darker pigmentation than themselves sounds farcical. Whither human empathy, compassion? Sadly, this is all too real and endemic in the self-described “world’s largest democracy,” India. Vineet Thakur, a researcher at the University of Johannesburg and an expert on India-Africa relations, shares “Generalizations are bad, but this one I’m happy to make. Indians are most certainly racist.”
The scariest thing about big media in the West is its ability to shape global narratives. It is the 800-pound gorilla gatekeeping information in the internet age. Moreover, when harnessed by a major power like the US as an instrument of foreign policy, big media becomes a potent weapon of psychological warfare able to irrevocably demonize countries that do not kowtow to its “national interests.”
India, it would be churlish to deny, is in the ascendant right now and therefore being wooed by Washington for greater trade and as a like-minded partner to contain China’s military ambitions in south and east Asia. This is why, barring the odd BBC expose, big media’s coverage of India’s negatives, …show more content…
Yet the majority of Indians today, even city-dwellers who should know better, view those of African ancestry around them as merely a cut above farm animals. Thakur adds: “Many of these attacks happen because of the assumed lifestyle of Africans–what they eat, how they party, etcetera – which is seen to be
The scariest thing about big media in the West is its ability to shape global narratives. It is the 800-pound gorilla gatekeeping information in the internet age. Moreover, when harnessed by a major power like the US as an instrument of foreign policy, big media becomes a potent weapon of psychological warfare able to irrevocably demonize countries that do not kowtow to its “national interests.”
India, it would be churlish to deny, is in the ascendant right now and therefore being wooed by Washington for greater trade and as a like-minded partner to contain China’s military ambitions in south and east Asia. This is why, barring the odd BBC expose, big media’s coverage of India’s negatives, …show more content…
Yet the majority of Indians today, even city-dwellers who should know better, view those of African ancestry around them as merely a cut above farm animals. Thakur adds: “Many of these attacks happen because of the assumed lifestyle of Africans–what they eat, how they party, etcetera – which is seen to be