The prejudicial view of skin colour is one of the much-hated discriminatory practices in the world. It is a major type of discrimination, in which human beings are treated differently from each other.
Nelson Mandela's name comes to our mind first, when we raise our voice against colour-based discrimination.
In the context of Bangladesh, colour-discrimination plays a vital role in placing persons, especially females, in social perspectives. It speaks a lot about our mentality, which, undoubtedly, is stereotyped. This socially acknowledged type of discrimination is highly problematic. Particularly so when a person's 'fair complexion' is strongly associated with the elements of 'purity' and 'fairness', while 'dark complexion' with 'impurity' and something 'evil'.
As members of a civilised society, we expect a strong stance from the media against colour-based discriminations. Unfortunately, our media seems to be in favour of this discrimination. When we see advertisements in print, online and on television, we often come across prejudiced messages that advertising companies, or the owners of certain cosmetics products, are sending to people. They try to present dark-skinned persons as inferior, less beautiful, less competent, less intelligent and less accomplished than the lighter-skinned ones. Through these ads they try to promote their products by conveying the message of the idea of transformation of the skin colour. These advertisements attempt to convince people that they are 'incomplete' without a particular product. Thus it leaves an adverse impact on the psychology of the dark-skinned people, who begin to feel themselves as being deficient and marginalised in society. Isn't it a shame for us?
Another common phenomenon we have long been experiencing is majority of the media, such as television channels, movies, and advertisements, prefer fair-skinned people. Fair-skinned people, as they might view it, tend to have a higher social standing, and more opportunities to succeed than those with a dark complexion. Additionally, we witness that darkness of skin (generally termed black) is always associated with negative things like 'black money', 'black laws' etc. This kind of discrimination affects many, psychologically.
When it comes to marriage, we again find skin colour playing a prominent role. Sometimes proposals from the women's side are turned down or just ignored by the probable in-laws' family only because of the darkness of their skin. The dark-skinned girls endure discrimination within the family. Sometimes, elders and others are found telling a dark-skinned girl, "You will never have a bridegroom". In schools also they face discrimination.
Upon experiencing these hostile attitudes, they consider themselves as inferior and start thinking that they will never have success in anything --- neither in their personal life nor in any profession.
However, colour as a ground for discrimination is prohibited in the equality clause of our Constitution [Article 28(1)]. Although the Constitution talks about discrimination based on religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth, 'colour' is conventionally grouped with race when 'unfair discrimination' is interpreted [Article 1 in the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination]. Moreover, international instruments prohibit discrimination based on any specific colour, such as UDHR (Article 2), ICCPR (Article 2) and ECHR (Article 14).
Challenging colour-based discrimination, an Indian NGO, called Women of Worth, delivered a petition with 30,000 signatures to a cosmetics company, calling on them to withdraw a particularly discriminatory advertisement for a product. But the company ignored the petition.
The Advertising Standards Council of India (ASC), has proposed a new regulation to control such discriminations. The new rules propose that 'ads should not directly or implicitly show dark people as unattractive, unhappy, depressed or concerned', 'should not portray people with darker skin as at a disadvantage', 'should not associate skin colour with any particular socio-economic class, ethnicity or community', 'should not show gender based discrimination because of skin colour' [The Economic Times, June 11, 2014].
Bangladesh does not have any such specific regulation to control discriminatory ads.
Discrimination always dampens the spirit of the adolescents and the young in the nurturing of their inborn talent. In order to eliminate this menace, the discrimination based on skin colour should be regulated properly. The ill practice of skin colour discrimination calls for stringent legal surveillance in the country.
The writer is Student Coordinator of the Moot Court Society, School of Law, BRAC University. mhr25@student.london.ac.uk.
