Basu: The day I was reminded I was not white

Rekha Basu

rbasu@dmreg.com

Did I want my face bleached, the beautician asked.

I’d gone to a Delhi beauty parlor last month to get a facial and pedicure and have my hair done. It’s one of the annual indulgences of my return to my birthplace, where such pampering is routine for middle-class women, and costs a fraction of what it would here.

But bleach? On my face?

The attendant indicated this was common. A handful of women, young and old, were sitting around with their faces caked in masks of white paste. Another customer said ammonia and hydrogen peroxide — caustic agents that can burn or turn skin greenish — are used.

But when you consider the insults, indignities and psychological consequences people endure for being brown or black-skinned, you tend to suspend judgment against those trying to be whiter.

“I wake up every day and think, ‘Mel, you’re black,’ ” University of Northern Iowa sophomore Melanie Majeed tells The Register in a stirring series, “Black Iowa, Still Unequal?” It chronicles a litany of daily insults known as microaggressions against minorities in Iowa universities: Having the seats next to you go unoccupied. Being the only one in a work group whose input is ignored. Being told by a prospective roommate that she doesn’t want to room with a black person.

Sophomore Melanie Majeed is a business student at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls.

BLACK IOWA SERIES:

On the plane ride to India, I had ranted in a notebook, “This is the day I had to be reminded I’m not white.” An incident at the Chicago airport had punctured my headiness over having just done national and international TV and newspaper commentaries on the Iowa caucuses.

On my way between terminals, I'd noticed a blond man in his 30s or 40s taking pictures of a woman and two probably preteen girls in front of a departure gate. It was an endearing family scene. The girls reminded me of myself as a kid, trying to smile for the camera without looking geeky. So when the man and woman switched places so he could pose with the girls, I stepped up and did what kindly passers-by often do for my family. I offered to take their picture together.

The woman sounded pleased, but the smile faded from the man’s face as he eyed me. “No, that’s OK,” he said abruptly. When she prodded him, he turned to one of the girls and asked her if she was carrying a cellphone. She gave him an odd look, as if he already knew she wasn’t, and said no.

I still wasn’t getting it. I was wondering if maybe he was with someone else’s family and didn’t want incriminating evidence of that. Finally, he blurted out, “You’re not going to run off with my cellphone, are you?”

“No,” I muttered back, stunned.

Maybe the best way to explain how this felt is in the context of a discussion I moderated during the lead-up to the caucuses. Called the Define American Film Festival, it grew out of an organization founded by Jose Antonio Vargas, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist of Filipino origin, who is undocumented. A central theme of the films was what it takes to be considered legitimately American if you are a new immigrant, Muslim, brown-skinned or speak another language at home.

I took the picture, returned the man's phone and sped away. He called after me with thanks, either regretting his offense or prompted by the woman. But even at my age, level of confidence and prior run-ins with racism, the incident had unsettled me viscerally. I get calls to return to where I came from when my column rankles readers. But this reminder of my otherness was served up when I tried to do something nice for strangers.

In an airport restroom, I stared into the mirror and snapped a picture with my (not stolen) iPhone. I was hoping his response was due to a scruffy, wild-haired, sleep-deprived appearance, and not just my ethnicity. But I just looked as scruffy or kempt as I usually do.

“If you ain’t white, you ain’t right,” said a post on a UNI social-network site. On a University of Iowa one, the targets were Asian students. At a high school basketball playoff, some students from Dallas Center-Grimes chanted “Trump! Trump! Trump!” to taunt students from heavily Hispanic Perry.

In his presidential campaign, Donald Trump has depicted undocumented immigrants as rapists and called for keeping Muslims out of the country. These appeals to fear and prejudice are being heard. Researchers at Iowa State University recently published a piece in the journal Communication Research about finding a link between negative media stories about Muslims and public support for restrictions on the freedoms of even American Muslims.

In September, ISU students protesting Trump’s appearance were subjected to racist remarks. So far, Trump hasn't condemned support from former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, or the Klan itself.

Racism is becoming “more insidious and complicated over time,” Central Connecticut State University Sociology Professor Charisse Levchak says in the Register series. Maybe that means it’s out of hooded robes and overt in presidential campaigns.

It goes beyond skin color, of course, wrapping itself in historical or cultural justifications or warnings on terrorism. But if we continue to savage one another this way, with politicians' approval, or universities' inaction, no amount of hydrogen peroxide or ammonia can erase the stains it will leave on Americans' souls.

Clashmates: Race in Schools

A year after racial tensions led to fights in the hallways at Valley High School in West Des Moines, the Register's Unite Iowa takes its series to the western suburb to see what the school community has learned from a prolonged self-examination (with help from Iowa State University and others). Educators and students from across the metro area will join us for a discussion on racial issues in education and solutions being developed to address them.

When: 6:30 to 9 p.m. Thursday

Location: Valley High School Multimedia Resource Center, West Des Moines.

For tickets, click here.