Tag: race

The Halo Effect

Is being attractive or likeable more important than being smart? 

Watching the US "veep" debates and the hours of analysis later, you might think so.  Apparently designer clothes, winks, kisses, and ‘shoutouts’ are what it takes to win the nation’s hearts and minds these days.

I’m tempted to wash my hands of the whole thing and say that they deserve what they get. But I (although with my campaign addicted husband) can’t look away from the TV. It’s like watching a train wreck or the reason why there is so much rubbernecking on the freeway. Bad news makes you stop, stare, and slow everyone else down.

Sure, I like perkiness. I like audacious claims. I even will use slang during important business meetings to show that I haven’t lost my connection to my ‘block.’ But lately I’m realizing how fallible these tenants of being ‘down to earth’ are. Sometimes it’s okay to be smart. It’s fine to use big words that I learned during graduate school.

Let me make this clear: we all want to see women advance in all fields, all over the world. But not just because they are women. I rejoice when people of color do well. But not just because they are people of color. What happened to liking someone because he or she was competent? Or, dare I say it, the best candidate for the job?

Psychology has proven that there is a ‘halo’ effect. That attractive people get more from life and from those around them. We are friendlier to those we consider attractive, give them more leeway, allow them more time.

Hopefully the American people are aware of this bias for the surface charm and will chose, not based on looks, or likeability, race or even gender, but on rationale, reasonable facts. Only 31 more nail biting days to go to see which wins out.

Why is this an "indian" problem?

I went to a very stimulating conference today, sponsored by Carnegie Mellon, Qatar, focused on research students had done on the issues facing immigrants living in Doha. I will leave aside my pleasure in undergraduate research, my congratulations to their faculty advisers, or my hope for their future as purposeful academics – all of which are true and any of which I could write a segment, and perhaps will later.

Instead, one remark has been ringing in my ears since I left the building.

A person from the audience interrogated one of the student panels, asking why the Indian Benevolence Fund did not intercede on behalf of a 63 year old Indian man whose restaurant enterprise had gone bankrupt, necessitating that he spend 7 years in Qatar working back a debt of 200,000 QR  (apx. 54,000 USD). The man was unable to see his daughter in this intervening period.

Why, the questioner prodded the student panel, didn’t this ‘fund’ do something about this deplorable situation?

Well, I have a different question.

Why is this an ‘indian’ problem? Why are only indians moved by pity for this man?

Does not the idea of 63 year old man, unable to see his daughter, burdened by debt, move any heart? Of any nationality?

This is the basic question facing Qatar: how much does nationality matter? And where does it stack against the fact of our shared humanity?

The case on the everyday Doha street appears to be that social class and status marks those points between human and some not quite sub human but not quite above dust category of species. 

In many countries in the world, you can be someone who works in plumbing, not a plumber, on Friday, Saturday, Sunday (or whatever days are your weekend). People can change their clothes, walk around with their families, be themselves.

But here, in such a small city, where we are all pressing up against each other, even on Friday, we see the small framed sub-continental men, shuffling their feet at the entrance of malls that they are baned from entering, regardless if they helped build them.

We in Qatar, and in the world, will only be able to progress in so much as we can move beyond race, class, even gender, to respond to the universal in those around us. We must do the good we can. Otherwise, all is lost. 

I felt good when I left that room this evening because I saw the stirrings of this generation, Qatar and the world’s hope, beginning to grapple with these larger questions of how to deal with rapid change in a just and equitable manner.

But the question plagues me. Why didn’t I, as an naturalized American national respond to the plight of this 63 year old man?

As the man from the Indian Benevelonce Fund stated, quite passionately, “The minute we knew about it, two business men stepped forward and helped.”

It is my promise that I will seek to know and to notice where I can help – whether Indian, Filipino, Qatari, or Australian.

After all, isn’t this why I’m blessed with discretionary income, employment flexibility, as much schooling as I want , even up to a Ph.D?

Aren’t you?

Is Fair REALLY Lovely?

When I was growing up, FAIR AND LOVELY face cream was kind of a joke. After all, the whitening properties of the face cream, targeted at a South Asian female demagraphic didn’t apply to me. I was living in the U.S. where during the summertime, you’d see rows and rows of white bodies baking under the Florida sun. Trying to get darker.

But after a recent visit to Malaysia, I see that FAIR AND LOVELY has bigger aims. Their ads now target Asian women of all stripes: there are even ads on channels shown in Qatar.

The story is the same: the hard working, well deserving woman – model, designer, whatever – can’t get ahead with her assignments because her bosses all find her ‘dark’ skin tone unattractive. Introduce the cream, and VIOLA!, she’s on her way to being the next mega mogul.

I’m puzzled by these opposing long existing trends – white is desireable, but all white people  try to tan – which sreams of double standards and contradictions.

Why all the spray tans and ‘fake bakes’ if white people dislike browness?

Is this what is holding Obama back – a man who everyone admits has poise, confidence, and the momentum for a historical moment in the making – only he may also have a little too much brown in the face of Clinton’s whiteness?

My friend at the pool today suggested the mideval idea that white was a sign of class status: the fairier your skin, the less hard you were working, particularly with your hands in the sun.

But I suspect that a more malicious lingering of colonial ideology is to behind skin bleaching.

As my friend Allison used to say, “Here’s Moha, my little brown friend.”

And proud of it!