India Debates Skin-Tone Bias as Beauty Companies Alter Ads
29th June 2020
Colorism, the bias against people of darker skin tones, has vexed India for a long time. It is partly a product of colonial prejudices, and it has been exacerbated by caste, regional differences and Bollywood, the nation’s film industry, which has long promoted lighter-skinned heroes.
Oh, it’s olde than that. Varna, the term used in India for the complicated hereditary caste system, literally means ‘color’, and the lighter your skin color the higher in status you are. I suspect that it’s a relic of the Aryan invasion of India staring around 2000 BC.