On Facebook, memes of this kind have been popping up on my feed and disrupting my blissful, procrastination-based scrolling experience. Are they supposed to be a new kind of matrimonial ad perhaps?
These memes largely target ‘black’ individuals. The basic idea is to embarrass Rahul/Priya/
Abhishek/*person with generic name*, because obviously being linked to such people is a matter of shame. Well, the taggers and meme-makers should know that Academy-award nominated actress Gabourey Sidibe, featured in the meme below, wouldn’t want to be associated with their bigoted selves anyway.
As a serial ‘tagger’ and ‘liker’, they make me halt and consider blocking friends and accounts. Why?
Because they are racist, sexist and homophobic to say the least. Still confused? Let me break it down for you. Greater Noida was recently shaken by attacks on African students. They were brutally beaten by a mob. This is not the first, neither the last, in a string of crimes against African students.
A political leader remarked that “If we were racist, why would we have the entire south, which is complete, you know, Tamil, you know Kerala, you know Karnataka and Andhra, why do we live with them? We have black people around us,” thus serving us with some good Indian logic.
Indians show rampant racist and colourist behaviour. Fairness creams dominate, as seen in Abhay Deol’s viral call out posts. We make a caricature of those we consider inferior.
Perhaps making an issue of memes may seem trivial. While such memes may seem harmless, their viral nature shows our prejudices. The incident in Greater Noida was an outcome of such prejudices.
So the next time you’re procrastinating on Facebook, and you come across such a post, please make use of the report feature, or, at least, angry react.
“Racism ruins lives” loved the content. Keep writing.