Brown identity

Brown identity is the objective or subjective state of perceiving oneself as a brown person and as relating to being brown. The identity is subject to multiple contexts, as a part of media reporting or academic research, particularly in Asia, and the Western World.

Background

Brown identity has been explored academically and both discussed and reported in a wide variety of contexts, being both an indigenous and diasporic concept,[1] as well as a pluralistic phenomenon with overlapping, separate, and competing sub-factors.[2] University of New Mexico's Vinay Harpalani has explored the concept in depth, observing that despite variance of skin tone, whether darker or lighter, skin color gradation normally "does not appear to play a major role for South Asian Americans claiming a Brown identity". Despite some identification outside binaries of color, Harpalani has demonstrated how the identity does allow a distinction between certain white and black identities:[3]

For South Asian Americans, claiming Brownness allows them to establish a separate racial identity for themselves—one that is independent of White and Black Americans, but parallels those groups by employing a color-designated identity.

Dr Kumarini Silva has theorized how brownness and brown identity has, at times, even served as a cultural distraction from black-white race relations in the United States.[4] Alternatively, co-authored by several academics with a range of ethnic minority backgrounds, assistant professor Fatima Zahrae Chrifi Alaoui has explored Arab Americans' connection to brown identity, theorizing how "a Black/White binary" can result in erasure of brownness and racial homelessness for brown people.[5] In this regard, 2019 research by Sten Pultz Moslund - an associate professor at the University of Southern Denmark - identified separate and distinct black and brown identities emmerging in the United Kingdom; observing the societal expression of cultural difference to the white majority by black Britons and Asian Britons since 2000.[6]

History

Since spring 2014, Ontario Human Rights Commission director Raj Dhir has presented the Understanding Anti-Brown Racism workshop, including at institutions such as Humber College. Dhir has proposed that brown identity may be a unique phenomenon for brown Canadians, partially resulting in distinct forms of discrimination not experienced by other minority groups.[7] In 2014, Danielle Sandhu discussed the concept in Theorizing Brown Identity. Sandhu, a former president of the University of Toronto Students' Union, analyzed the utility of brown identity by South Asian communities in Canada, and the identity's intersection with black identity; whether its expression supported or hindered the distinct separate identity of black people.[8][9]

In 2017, Canadian writer Naben Ruthnum suggested that brown identity was at risk of being "shaped by outside perception, by the imagination that the majority imposes upon us".[10] Ruthnum's writing and research into the phenomenon, which he associates with South Asian food and culture,[11] has been reviewed and explored in Canadian media.[12][10]

In 2018, discussing his experiences as a British Asian, former featherweight world champion Naseem Hamed discussed the shift in brown identity and representations that occurred in Britain, during the years that followed the 9/11 attacks.[13] Also of West Asian heritage, Dr Tufool Al-Nuaimi, an associate professor at Imperial College London, has discussed the experience of being a Saudi American in the post-9/11 United States, detailing how some "Arabs hid their brown identities behind bleached hair and blue contact lenses."[14] American Psychological Association fellow, professor Sunil Bhatia has detailed, in his Citizenship and Migrant Identity in the Post 9/11 Era, how during this period Sikh American males suffered discrimination, as their brown identity came under scrutiny by government and media alike.[15]

Actress Freida Pinto has spoken of the importance of the identity to her with the context of Hollywood, and how racial inclusivity in the industry should be meaningful, rather than what she described as token.[16] In 2019, musician Sarathy Korwar's pluralistic view on the identity, within a spectrum of South Asian ethnicities, was reported in Indian media.[17]

Academic research

In 2012, Douglas College's Widyarini Sumartojo published research which proposed how, in an analysis of South Asian Canadians respondents, adoption of brown identity was somewhat of a counter to modern multiculturalism discourse, in that it appeared to "re-inscribe race onto multiculturalism".[18] In Ayla Raza's 2014 "Negotiating “Brown”: Youth Identity Formations in The Greater Toronto Area thesis, the academic demonstrated some test participants' bias toward perceiving only those of South Asian heritage as being brown, or possessing "an authentic “Brown” identity".[19]

In 2016, University of North Carolina's Kumarini Silva proposed how a changing understanding of brown identity had occurred in the early 2000s.[20] Her book Brown Threat explores how the identity evolved into more than a political, cultural or ethnic identifier, and into an increasingly hegemonic phenomenon in the context of the Western world.[21]

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See also

References
  1. Varsha Gowda (August 17, 2019). "Brown and proud". The New Indian Express. Only during her college education did Kumar-Ratta realise that there were many different brown identities. “I met Indians whose parents migrated from East-Africa, but they were Indian and this prompted me to go on a journey of discovery of my identity.”
  2. Philip Labrado (2019). Reconstructing a Brown Identity. Floricanto Press. ISBN 978-1951088057.
  3. Vinay Harpalani (2015), "To Be White, Black, or Brown? South Asian Americans and the Race-Color Distinction Race-Color Distinction", Global Perspectives on Colorism (Symposium Edition) Issue 4 (Volume 14 ed.), Washington University Global Studies Law Review, p. 632
  4. Kumarini Silva (2010), Brown: from identity to identification, Routledge, p. 169, The vignette described here ... is not meant to introduce blackness as part of brown identity, but rather to highlight how the particular deployment of brown as identification that is under scrutiny in this issue has in part become a way to evade the discomfort of talking about black/white race relations in the United States.
  5. Fatima Z. Chrifi Alaoui; Raquel Moreira; Krishna Pattisapu; Salma Shukri; Bernadette M. Calafell (2017). "My Name Is Not Maria/Samira - On the Interchangeability of Brownness in U.S. Pedagogical Contexts". In Sonja M. Brown Givens; Keisha Edwards Tassie (eds.). Underserved Women of Color, Voice, and Resistance: Claiming a Seat at the Table. Lexington Books. p. 32. ISBN 978-1498557269. Passing being forced onto a White body through the dismissal of their Brown identities also challenge identity categories through the development of a similar diasporic consciousnesses that renders them 'homeless' within Brown communities ... how a white body works to erase Brownness in a world captured within a Black/White binary ... My identity as a Brown Arab-American in white body left me feeling displaced and yearning for acceptance.
  6. Sten Pultz Moslund (2019), "Postmigrant Revisions of Hybridity, Belonging, and Race in Gautam Malkani's Londonstani", A Review of International English Literature (Volume 50 ed.), Johns Hopkins University Press, p. 107, A growing confidence in the representation of black and brown identities and new and heterogeneous ways of being British. Such confidence is apparent in the lack of anxieties about difference and unbelonging that characterize earlier periods of black British and British Asian literature.
  7. "Understanding Anti-Brown Racism". Humber College. Is there a unique “Brown” identity in Canada? Does being “Brown” expose someone to different and unique forms of racism or discrimination not experienced by Black, Asian or Indigenous people?
  8. "Community Network: Danielle Sandhu". Canadian Race Relations Foundation. December 17, 2015. Her master’s thesis, Theorizing Brown Identity, examines the possibilities and limitations of theorizing Brown identity as an anti-racist and anti-colonial framework ... Sandhu completed her Honours Bachelor of Science at the University of Toronto and served three terms on the executive of the University of Toronto Students’ Union.
  9. Danielle Sandhu (2014), "Introduction", Theorizing Brown Identity, Sociology and Equity Studies in Education: University of Toronto, p. 2-3, Brown identity or Brownness could be mobilized as an essentialist identity among South Asian communities for the purpose of shared anti-racist and anti-colonial resistance. Here Brown identity speaks to the racialized identity of South Asians ... How does Brown identity relate to, support, or hinder the objectives of Black identity?
  10. Manisha Aggarwal-Schifellite (September 1, 2017). "Review: Naben Ruthnum's Curry explores issues of identity in food and fiction". Globe and Mail.
  11. Naben Ruthnum (2017). Curry: Eating, Reading, and Race. Coach House Books. ISBN 978-1552453513. The distinctive taste of curry has often become maladroit shorthand for brown identity
  12. Ryan B. Patrick (August 17, 2017). "How Naben Ruthnum uses curry to stir discussion on what it means to be South Asian in Canada". Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. His book Curry is an engaging and insightful long-form essay that connects the dots between the popular dish and how it functions as shorthand for brown identity in representing the food, culture and social perception of the South Asian diaspora.
  13. Amna Qureshi (September 6, 2018). "how 2001 changed everything for brown identity". Vice Media.
  14. Tufool Al-Nuaimi (2005), "Adopting a Different Brown", America's Worst Brown, MIT OpenCourseWare: MIT Press, p. 8
  15. Sunil Bhatia (2018). "Citizenship and Migrant Identity in the Post 9/11 Era". In Phillip L. Hammack Jr (ed.). The Oxford Handbook of Social Psychology and Social Justice. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199938735.
  16. Ankur Pathak (September 14, 2018). "Freida Pinto On Woody Allen, Brown Identity In Hollywood And Why She Hasn't Done A Bollywood Film Yet". Huffington Post.
  17. Muneef Khan (December 11, 2019). "'There is no one brown identity'". The New Indian Express. Sarathy Korwar: "A lot of collaborators didn’t reside in London but were based in Mumbai, Delhi, Abu Dhabi, etc. The idea of the album was to feature various South Asian voices to drive home the point that there is no one South Asian voice. More importantly, there is no one brown identity"
  18. Sumartojo, Widyarini (2012), "Conclusion", My kind of Brown": Indo-Canadian youth identity and belonging in Greater Vancouver, Simon Fraser University, p. 117, As a reference to skin colour, "Brown" seems to reflect the importance of race to respondents' identities such that its adoption stands somewhat in constrast to pervading mulitcultural discourse ... In a sense, the term "Brown" works to re-inscribe race onto multiculturalism
  19. Ayla Raza (2014), "A Brown Identity: Multi-Layered, Fluid, And Ambiguous", "Negotiating “Brown”: Youth Identity Formations in The Greater Toronto Area, University of Toronto, p. 48, Considered him to be “Brown” because he was able to trace his lineage to a country in South Asia. One of the defining features of a “Brown” identity, then, is the ability to trace one’s lineage to South Asia. This seems to be the most salient feature of a “Brown identity. ”Hence, the theme of an authentic “Brown” identity, or if one is “really Brown”(Participant 1) arose in the interviews.
  20. Anita Rao; Frank Stasio (December 8, 2016). "Being "Brown" in Post 9/11 America". WUNC (FM). Silva interweaves her own personal experience with ethnographic research and popular culture analysis to understand how a shifting understanding of “brown” identity shapes the treatment and control of brown bodies in post-9/11 America.
  21. Kumarini Silva (2016). Brown Threat: Identification in the Security State. University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 978-1517900038. How has the concept changed since 9/11? In the most sustained examination of these questions to date, Kumarini Silva argues that “brown” is no longer conceived of solely as a cultural, ethnic, or political identity.
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