Are you dark, lovely and South Asian?

While I’ve dealt with colorism all my life, it wasn’t until I spent more than just a few weeks in India that colorism became more painful than ever before. It’s incredibly intense to be surrounded by multiple forms of media images with light-skinned South Asians as the only representation of what is beautiful. The contrast between those images and the reality of whom I was surrounded by was as wide as the oceans that separated my ancestral land from my birthplace. I could find numerous articles confirming colorism/shadeism in South Asia, but I could not find spaces that celebrated positive images of dark-skinned South Asians. And damnit, we deserve to be celebrated. This is also a space to celebrate the South Asian diaspora and people of Indo-Caribbean descent who also face colorism. We all need your support by submitting your photos, voices and stories to cultivate this space of positive images of us and people like us.

Who is South Asian?

Typically, anyone who has ancestry that traces back to Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Maldives, Bhutan and India. As borders are all human-made and the area has a long history of forced migration, it’s up to you to figure out how you self-identify. This is also a space to celebrate folks of the South Asian diaspora and people of Indo-Caribbean descent who face similar issues of colorism. I invite those who are marginalized, dark-skinned and of South Asian ancestry - for instance: dark-skinned mixed raced folks of South Asian ancestry - to contribute your stories, photos, and voices

Who is dark-skinned?

For this, I borrow from http://fuckyeahdarkgirls.com/skintone: “The dark skin tone like every other skin tone has the tendency to appear as different shades of their tone. In the case of dark skinned people: dark brown, light brown, medium toned brown etc… depending on the lighting of the picture. So to those who constantly query the tone of the people on this blog please know that the people can appear to be many tones of dark brown in regards to photos.” There are photo examples you can see by going to the link. I edited fuckyeahdarkgirls’ description to be gender-neutral as dark-skinned South Asians of all genders are encouraged to contribute - including trans women, trans men, trans people, intersex people, gender non-conforming people, genderqueer people, cis women, and cis men. All of those inside and outside of the gender binary are invited to contribute their experiences as dark-skinned South Asians.

What to submit?

I truly think visuals are important to remind all of us that we do exist. That could be photos or video, in addition to words describing yourself in whatever way that means. You may also submit photos of dark-skinned South Asian celebrities/public figures. To submit via email, please send to darklovelyandsouthasian@gmail.com