Racist Landlords in Malaysia to Chinese Privilege in Singapore, Why Is Asia So Hung Up on Skin Tone?

[FarCenter]

When two burly, stern-looking police officers stopped him on the streets of Kuala Lumpur last November, Faisal Ibrahim could not stop the fear running through his mind.

The well-dressed, bespectacled expatriate had been doing nothing wrong as he strolled along the Taman Tun Dr Ismail area of the Malaysian capital, but as someone who saw himself as a guest in the country it was only natural for the doubts to creep through his mind as the two officers patted him down, rifled through his bag and demanded him to empty his pockets.

Were they corrupt cops seeking a bribe, or had he perhaps done something through his work as a filmmaker to upset the powers that be, wondered Ibrahim, 28.

“I felt like a criminal even though I had done nothing wrong. I was just walking. I wasn’t even jaywalking. There was nothing,” Ibrahim said. “What frustrated me was that it is a very busy road, people were passing and they could see [the cops] patting me down and going through my bags.”

A nervous Ibrahim handed over his immigration card and plucked up the courage to ask why he had been stopped. How the officers responded transformed his view of the incident.

They told him it was a random check – something Ibrahim had experienced on numerous similar occasions since he moved to Malaysia from his native Nigeria in 2006.

http://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2135120/racist-landlords-malaysia-chinese-privilege-singapore-why-asia-so

[kwassa]

1. The world is hung up on skin tone.

Whites have the power, to be powerful is to be white.

What this article doesn't talk about is skin tone differences within ethnicities. In India the Brahmans are light skinned, the low class Dravidians very dark. This is a dynamic that happens in many places.