Blogger Sultanah Parvin explains how racism and skin colour resonates in a coloured Muslim woman like herself.
Earlier in the week, I saw another image as I trawled through news clippings looking out for something important enough to read. The image was of a black woman sobbing, handcuffed, and being spoken to by an American policemen. I automatically assumed it was a clip from a film. That irony was not lost on me when I discovered what it actually was. I’ll get to that. Suffice to say it was real.
Weeks after Ferguson, a young black female handcuffed because she refused to show police her ID. They had assumed she was a prostitute as she had been kissing a white man minutes before…ready for the cinematic irony? She is an actress by the name of Daniele Watts who starred in the famous Tarantino remake, Django Unchained. An awful irony you may think – I disagree. As it would only warrant painful irony, if it were a one off incident. As it isn’t, as it doesn’t stand anywhere near alone in terms of incidents – it’s just in a long line of vile faces of Obama’s America, and its suffocating racism.
One of the first things it made me think of, was the film “Pretty woman”, which I inappropriately watched as a young teen along with a million other girls my age, I’m sure. Aside from the appallingly shameless, crass misogyny; I remember one main feature of that film. At the beginning and end of that “masterpiece”, there is a black man, a homeless hobo type figure, walking the streets shouting out “Do you have a dream? What’s your dream?” He is the equivalent of the storyteller smiling and telling us that even a prostitute can make it in the US. – look how well she did. And it made me think – yes, that “dream”, the American one which we are drip fed with regular consistency no matter how much we are gagging on it, can make a white Julia Roberts stop being a prostitute to become a princess; but cannot stop a black actress from ever being a prostitute, even when she isn’t acting.
Historical memories of racism
But this is what I also learnt… Like any person who has experienced racism in their lifetime, when you are the minority, it leaves you feeling debilitated to see Daniele’s face in that image. It sets you back to a place where nothing seems to have moved on. It takes you back to Ferguson even though you were not there in person.
It takes some back to civil rights, it takes you back to Ruby Bridges so many decades on, it takes you further back. It takes me back to coloured men, Asian black or any other, dying in police custody, Stephen Lawrence, Brixton riots even though I was a child, and then also it takes me back to stop and search and even further. To the cries of Palestinians who are treated like the sand niggers of the Middle East. It takes you right back to a feeling of the history and culture you carry as a person of colour. Some of your own experiences. But mostly the shared one.
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This is the other thing it took me back to. As a brown woman, seeing another woman of colour be treated like a prostitute because she had the audacity to kiss her white husband in public; made me remember how we as women of colour understand our experiences. I have many black and Asian friends who also have white husbands. They saw this same image and it triggered in them the same sick feeling that that would have been them if they had been where Daniele had been.
They are her in so many ways. We all are.
Muslim woman of colour
As a Muslim woman of colour, it made me also contemplate a deeper truth. Islam teaches me that it was God who chose the skin I was born into. It is also God who knows the failing of man to use this colour to destroy humanity one person at a time. The original misery of Iblis (Lucifer/Satan) to defy bowing to Adam (as) because of his sense of entitlement to be superior because of his essence; paving the way for fear, arrogance and hatred for those we deem lesser than ourselves.
So when Allah swt tells me that colour is not created by us, it truly resonates now because it reminds me that while I did not choose it, Allah (swt) chose it for me. Like He (swt) chose womanhood for me, and for Daniele Watts. The experience of that pain in her face also chose her. And so many of us when we grew up in dominant cultures, traditions running counter to our skin tone and our own experience, telling us all the while, we are ugly, less, and inferior; it stirred our femininity in ways which are sometimes inexplicable. But and this is the but – my trust that this was chosen for me, by the Divine, empowered me to see the grace and beauty that goes along with a soul who can defy all of this. For many women of colour, she defies this every single day . For many women of colour who have belief in a Creator- we see the world in such a way that makes us feel that this place was God given.
This place should make us realise that we have been given a gift. A way to see the world through some deep rooted injustice. Isn’t this what pain and injustice is there to teach us all? I pray it has taught me well. That we in fact, have something incredible, beautiful and important from carrying this colour in our DNA.
This colour it is also laden with responsibility. To teach the world, we will continue to defy these man made discriminatory power structures. That we haven’t forgotten nor will we, just because our skin is now allowed to kiss a white mans face as his wife, sometimes. Nor because cosmetics have been made for us because we are now acceptable, sometimes. When in fact, we were actually always beautiful and were always acceptable. That Beyonce is your palatable objectified creation and has nothing to do with us. All the time. That we reject these imposed notions of womanhood upon us. We are not all angry or passive. That we never accepted these set parameters for our existence from anyone but the One who created us. Because it was never you that gave us this power, nor took it away when you handcuff our innocent wrists.
This is a truth. Every time. And we will be heard.
You can follow Sultanah on Twitter @SulParvin
