Racism alive in India: Story of Kim Barrington Narisetti, an African-American professional
January 25, 2014  10:31

My 12-year-old daughter gets exasperated easily. Maybe it's because she's 12. She gets even more exasperated because she says I seem to have a saying for everything: Patience is a virtue.

 

You can catch more bees with honey than with vinegar. Never judge a book by its cover. When you assume, you make an ass out of you and me. The last two seem to be the most relevant as they apply to racism and racist acts in India. It saddened me to hear about the recent attacks on Ugandan women in Delhi.

 

As a darkskinned African-American woman who lived in New Delhi for nearly four years, the stories quickly brought back memories of my daily experiences and the assumptions that were made about me and how I was treated. I constantly felt I was on display. 

 

 

I was stared at in restaurants, elevators and even in my car on the street. Random people would come up to me when I was shopping at Khan Market (usually men) to let me know that they knew someone from Uganda, Nigeria, or the Congo. My response would be: That's nice. I'm American. The most disturbing incident happened when my husband, Raju, and I were walking back home from a restaurant down the block from our house in New Friends Colony. A young boy of about 8 was riding on the back of his bike with his father. As they passed us, he hurled a huge rock the size of a fist at me. It landed with a thud on my sunglasses and my head snapped back. If I weren't wearing huge aviator sunglasses, I likely would have lost my eye. My chivalrous husband chased down the bike, pulled the boy off and gave him and his father a tongue lashing in Hindi and made him apologise.

 

Read the full story on The Economic Times

« Back to LIVE

TOP STORIES