I walk into the washroom of my mom's friends house to see a bottle of Fair and Lovely on the counter. "These whites never have to worry about getting their skin darkened in the summer!" I hear her say to my mother. When I'm driven through the roads of Pakistan I see billboards advertising this skin bleaching cream with the phrase "I would rather die than be black!" Patches of discolored skin on my friend's face is the first thing I notice when she enters my house, when I question her about it she replies "It's Fair and Lovely, I'm trying not to get any darker in the summer!" with a laugh. I simply scroll through my dash and see gifs of Bajirao Mastani and I can't help but wonder why Deepika looks like a pale sick woman; what happened to her beautiful honey skin? Forget Deepika, I wonder why I have yet to see a woman darker than Deepika play the role of a heroine in a Bollywood movie. Why are Meenama's kidnappers all dark skinned in Chennai Express?..

In Muslim communities filled with Desis, irony runs like water from a tap. If you dare make a white people joke, Aunties look at you like you've killed someone stating "Allah created them, Allah created everyone perfect!", then 5 minutes later I hear "Her hair looks like the blacks who don't brush their hair!" 

Allah made everyone beautiful, Allah is the Al-Mussawir, The Best Fashioner ...until it comes to black people. Then something must've definitely went wrong along the way. Bilal (RA) is only ever mentioned to combat anti-blackness in Muslim communities.

It's evident colorsim and anti-blackness is the blind disease in South Asia, everyone thinks they're doing you a favor by whitening your skin to the point where you look unrecognizable. My mother thinks I get my attitude from my "kali friends" yet she will scream that she is not racist and she just doesn't like black people because they are criminals. When we live in a world where a white man shoots up a school every other day and black people are arrested, even killed for daring to walk the streets, Desi parents still pull their kids a little closer when a black person walks in the same direction as them.

Being dark skinned is an unforgiving sin in Desi communities, especially if you're a woman AND dark. Girls who feel alien in their dark skin seek any form of acceptance, when they turn into women they've engulfed these European standards of beauty. Aunties crowd them, saying that "No one will marry a woman who's so dark!" Skin whitening creams are smoothed on their skin from the day they're born, parents who's heart sink with disappointment upon realizing how dark their daughter is. This amount of pressure is never put on men; men are not taught to be repulsed by their skin and bodies to such an extend. Instead they want wives who are fair skinned, they date white women like they are status symbols as if to say "Yes, I am dark skinned but look! A white woman loves me!" The combination of internalized racism and sexism results in these men to look down on women of their race; women of their exact skin tone as undesirable and unworthy.
South Asia in general still continues to suffer the consequences of colonization. The effects linger hundreds of years later, reminding us that we once used to love ourselves, embrace Hinduism and Islam and allow the members to coexist until enmity brewed between the groups. The Raj resulted in the raping of countless women, killings of countless children and disappearance of countless men. The West alienates us, calls us backwards forgetting that they were the ones who tore every spare corner of our land apart. They gained off of us only to leave us burnt. They taught us to hate the skin we were born into. South Asia was full of honey to gorgeous dark skinned people, now we watch as the biggest leads of Bollywood get surgery to whiten their skin and endorse skin bleaching creams. First Deepika Padukoune and Priyanka Chopra, now all of South Asia has learnt the art of hatred; how to scrub your beautiful dark skin til it turns red, and one day we pray that it will turn white. We pray that we are loved and accepted in our own communities and outside them one day..
The cure starts with acceptance. Taking the hatred we have for dark skin out of the shadows and really asking ourselves, "Why do we hate what we're born with." If you're Muslim and you truly believe Allah made no mistakes creating mankind, ask yourself why do you see dark people as an exception? Then, you will realize that it's what you were taught. All the magazines you've flipped through, every Bollywood star and ever member in your community displays that white is perfection, the way that they are talked about, praised for lacking melanin in their skin.
Then I want you to read this
"Indeed, We have created the human being upon the best of forms..[95:4-8]"
and ask yourself "If the Lord of the heavens and the earth has created me in the best of forms, then who is anyone else to question that and tell me otherwise?"
No one. Not a single soul on this earth can make you believe that you aren't beautiful, you were molded by the hands of the Highest, perfection lies in every inch of your body.
As a society it's our job to undo the internalized racism and colorism that is hardwired in our brains. Yes, you didn't choose to think like this however it is your job to unlearn it. Yes, you can consume but you must consume intelligently, you must be critical of the media you take in, the voices of the people in your lives and the people you love, ask- does this sound right to me?
Finding the root to our toxic thinking is the ultimate way to change it, by doing this we can move forward with time and one day I pray-