Master actress Malavika Mohanan's statement on her real life racism experience!

Racism is the current burning issue all over the globe and the disturbing scenes from the USA, after the death of George Floyd, has indeed made everyone react even more strongly. All the celebrities around the world have been extending their support to the oppressed people and creating an awareness among the people with various hashtags on social media. Having said that, actress Malavika Mohanan, who is quite active on Instagram, recalled an incident when she encountered casual racial discrimination. This incident happened when Malavika was 14 years of age.

She posted, “When I was 14 yrs old, one of my closest friends at that point told me that his mother never let him drink tea because she had this weird belief that drinking tea darkened ones’ skin complexion, and when he asked for tea once she told him(referring to me) “If you drink tea, you will become dark like her”. He was a fair maharashtrian boy and I was a wheat-ish skinned malayalee girl. The complexion dissimilarity we had had never even occurred to me up until that point. This left me perplexed because it was the first time somebody had made a comment like that with a mean undertone about my skin colour. So much casual racism and colourism exists in our own society.

Calling a dark skinned person ‘kala’ is something we see on an everyday basis. The discriminatory behaviour against south-Indians and North-East Indians is also appalling. Dark skinned Indians are jokingly referred to as ‘madrasis’ because for some strange reason these ignorant people think all South Indians are only dark skinned. North-East Indians are almost exclusively only called ‘chinki’, all black people are casually referred to as ‘negros’ and fair people are equated as beautiful and dark skinned people are equated as ugly.

While we speak about global racism, we must also become aware about what’s happening around us, in our homes, our friend circles and our society, and do our part in thwarting the obvious as well as the subtle racism and colourism that exists all around us, in our everyday lives. What makes you beautiful is being a good and kind person, and not the colour of your skin. ✊🏻✊🏼✊🏽✊🏾”. This post from Malavika has been winning hearts and people are appreciating the Petta actress for bringing these incidents to the light.

On the professional front, Malavika is awaiting the release of Thalapathy Vijay’s Master, which is expected to give her the breakthrough in Tamil cinema. Check out her viral social media post below:

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I was 14 yrs old, one of my closest friends at that point told me that his mother never let him drink tea because she had this weird belief that drinking tea darkened ones’ skin complexion, and when he asked for tea once she told him(referring to me) “If you drink tea, you will become dark like her”. He was a fair maharashtrian boy and I was a wheat-ish skinned malayalee girl. The complexion dissimilarity we had had never even occurred to me up until that point. This left me perplexed because it was the first time somebody had made a comment like that with a mean undertone about my skin colour. So much casual racism and colourism exists in our own society. Calling a dark skinned person ‘kala’ is something we see on an everyday basis. The discriminatory behaviour against south-Indians and North-East Indians is also appalling. Dark skinned Indians are jokingly referred to as ‘madrasis’ because for some strange reason these ignorant people think all South Indians are only dark skinned. North-East Indians are almost exclusively only called ‘chinki’, all black people are casually referred to as ‘negros’ and fair people are equated as beautiful and dark skinned people are equated as ugly. While we speak about global racism, we must also become aware about what’s happening around us, in our homes, our friend circles and our society, and do our part in thwarting the obvious as well as the subtle racism and colourism that exists all around us, in our everyday lives. What makes you beautiful is being a good and kind person, and not the colour of your skin. ✊🏻✊🏼✊🏽✊🏾✊🏿

A post shared by Malavika Mohanan (@malavikamohanan_) on Jun 2, 2020 at 3:26am PDT