Casual racism and colorism exists in our own society: Malavika Mohanan

Condemning the death of 46-year-old African American, George Floyd, who succumbed to racial discrimination, Malavika Mohanan took to her Instagram page to talk about an incident from her lifet in the past.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CA7eYIygCoR/

She wrote, “When I was 14 yrs old, one of my closest friends at that point told me that his mother never let him drink tea because she had this weird belief that drinking tea darkened ones’ skin complexion, and when he asked for tea once she told him(referring to me) “If you drink tea, you will become dark like her”. He was a fair maharashtrian boy and I was a wheat-ish skinned malayalee girl. The complexion dissimilarity we had had never even occurred to me up until that point. This left me perplexed because it was the first time somebody had made a comment like that with a mean undertone about my skin colour. So much casual racism and colourism exists in our own society. Calling a dark skinned person ‘kala’ is something we see on an everyday basis (sic).”