Personal Narrative: Moving To America

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This summer, I went to India to visit my relatives after nearly six years. I remember moving to America and thinking I will face so much discrimination, but currently, I feel the opposite when leaving for India. Of course, people in India would be the most accepting of their type right? Turns out I couldn’t be farther from the truth. In India, I stayed in my aunt’s house and one day, after I took a shower, and got ready for the day, I went and sat on the couch. My grandma walked out from the kitchen and noticed me. “When you shower, make sure to scrub really hard to get the germs off, okay?” she casually suggested. Then, looking at me, she said, “Oh, ha-ha I used to say that when you were younger, but now you are all grown up.” “Why do you worry? She is already fair,” my aunt commented. That comment made me pause for a second. What she meant was grandma shouldn’t worry about my skin being dirty because I don’t have a dark complexion (compared to other Indians). It suddenly struck me that this was normal here. …show more content…

Assuming that black means ugly and white means pretty is not uncommon in modern India; these prejudices still exist as a result of the media. For example, I’ve seen it on a billboard, where a light skinned Indian was advertising for a fairness cream, in a commercial, where a girl doesn’t get a job offer due to her dark skin, in several Indian movies where the antagonists are always darker than the protagonists.They would think that I am odd or too sensitive if I conveyed that this is racist, but this is a serious issue: it causes low self-esteem, low self-confidence, and depression in many youngsters in India. So, I decided to stand up for

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