Indonesians and the color of skin
Posted on May 2, 2010
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By Sri Purna Widari
I did not know exactly when it started but I thought about it lately when I realized that I took black or coloured people for granted. I remember being in St.Maarten and quite shocked to see so many black people and unfortunately those I met at the beginning were very big, sweating, intimidating, and aggressive. I think I have been affected a lot by the stereotype in my country that when you have darker skin, you are less beautiful than when you have whiter complexion. In Indonesia almost every women adore white complexion. A standard of beautiful is when you have smooth white skin and when you are suntan, people only call you a sweet girl. Advertisements are competing so hard to promote whitening products and one of them even stated that guy will likely to fall for you because you have lighter skin.
I am coloured or a suntan and my father does not seem proud of it. When I was younger my skin was even darker and every time my friends in senior high school tried to remember me they will mention, “Purna that dark girl..don’t you remember?” And in this case dark does not sound as adorable as white.
I did not really have a lot of black people around me in Bali and started to make friends with them when I was in St.Maarten. I also discriminated Spanish colonialization because they are not that popular and most of my role model are in the USA, the black and the white ones. I did not really care to those black people and those Spanish girls because I have a very bad stereotype about them.
I start to realize that i was mean. I was narrow minded and I have to learn to see them in better perspective. I generalized that all Americans are as cool as Angelina Jolie while it was not. There are a lot of white people who are greedy, arrogant, and even not smart and afraid to travel outside their country and I can find it too in Black or even in Indonesian community. There must be a lot of good white people, black people, and Indonesian people and the rests have the possibilities to be aggressive, arrogant, greedy, and narrow minded. So..actually I am not better than anybody else in this world.
I am proud to see Black intelligent women like Oprah Winfrey and Michelle Obama. They both bring class and even Tiger Woods who has his scandals is considered a great accomplishment for the Black people. If I were to judge him as a womanizer, I have a lot of Indonesian and even white people who do the same thing, but those people I have mentioned have been the best in what they are doing.
I am often upset why Indonesian people have not proved anything yet and sometimes I like it to wear my make up in order to confuse other foreign people so that they will not immediately guess that I am Indonesian. I am lack of confident of my own country because i am frightened that other people generalized most women in my country are stupid and not as intelligent as the others and I am upset about it.
Maybe it is just my fear but I heard some black women in St.Maarten said to me that they heard Indonesian women are very familiar for prostitution and human trafficking while we can see a lot of prostitution in the US as well or look at Holland with its famous Red District. I am upset that i cannot have the chance to show the intelligent part of Indonesian woman.
It is not that I am not proud of being Indonesian because Indonesian women have a lot of sides which surely are positive as well and I want to stick to those positive sides, but seeing Michelle Obama with her passion and power to make change in the US, or Oprah Winfrey who is open about her past, or Angelina Jolie with her adventurous sides make me jealous. I realize that i do not know how happy they are with their life or do I really want to be in that position because I am sure it will take a lot of risks to be there and be equal to them and that is why I am learning to appreciate more Spanish people.
Some of them are probably not educated, but they seem to be able to enjoy their life much better than the people in developed country. They that I saw are not good in saving money and show off more their physical beauty than the inner beauty but I think this world will be very boring if we only see white skin. And some traditional Spanish woman from the Republic of Dominican that I know are very warm and welcome to the guests and I feel secure with that. I have heard that a lot of Dominican’s women are gold digger but I was there petting with married man for money so I am not better than them.
I am learning to not to be superficial because at the end of the day I will define my own life and decide which position where I will be happy and I have learnt two sides of developed and developing countries and will take the best for me. Those great women that I have admired must have been in a rough path to be in their position and I am hoping that they are truly happy being who they are now.
I remember as well watching porn movies of Kim Kadarshian with her black boyfriend whom I forgot the name, Reggie Bush if I am not mistaken. A friend of mine refused to see it only because he is black and inside my heart I said that probably those black man also will refuse to see Indonesian guy making love due to their smaller size of their penis while black guys are very proud of their big penis and I can imagine how boring they think to see Indonesian guy making love. There are really a bad stereotype about black people it seems but I am sure there are some black people who do not even know Indonesia or Bali because there are no such a thing to be that popular compared to your people’s accomplishment.
And there is one thing that i do not really like to hear is how the Black people speak English, not all of them, I love Tyra Banks for her accent but I have to confess that I do not like to hear Balinese speak English neither because they make it sound so Balinese. So before judging, I can say to you and to myself that I prefer to hear British accent instead of local English. And I can understand that not all people are gifted with good accent, so do not take it as an offense, it is really a personal taste.
I now can be better in seeing things in life. I honestly have weakness in which i often feel superior than others. I must do self reflection to put my feet on the ground and I do not see myself worse than anybody else but I am not better neither. Everybody has its own imperfection and likely to have the possibilities to be good and bad, so it does not matter if you are black, white, or colour, we should respect one another. And by admitting what i have done wrong, it made me realize that I am just the same human being who is imperfect and do mistakes. Everybody has the chance to be racist and not only the white people but some Black people can be racist to white people as well. But I decided to confess this discrimination because I want to be peaceful with who I am now that in the past I was narrow minded.
I must admit that now Black people are more developed and still I admire white people for their accomplishment in the world. And I hope that it will not only be China, India, and Japan who are now more developed than the other ASIAN countries, I hope one day I can be those who can change people’s bad perception about the women’s image in my country.
And I am happy to be friends with good Black and White people and proud to be Indonesian who can be open minded about this matter.
PEACE to all races in the world.
Regards,
Purna
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