Airliners-India.com

VABBy · Member Joined: 19 Dec 2006 Posts: 823 Location: DEL

A brilliant article which talks about hw rasict our airlines are...

Racism in the air
William H Avery

A US airline once had the motto 'Come Fly the Friendly Skies'. A more fitting motto for some of India's airlines might be 'Come Fly the Fair and Lovely Skies'.

Even a casual visitor to India soon notices the national obsession with skin colour: the fairer the better. I saw this up close when i lived in Chennai 10 years ago.

Some Tamils there had the habit of segmenting the population into fairer-skinned Tamils with north Indian roots and darker-skinned Tamils with south Indian roots.

Frankly, to me the difference in skin tone between the two was often hard to notice. But to one smug 'north Indian' Tamil it was like night and day. Or black and white.

LINK
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BigTom · Member Joined: 21 Mar 2007 Posts: 271 Location: Dubai, UAE

He's made some pertinent points about the way a lot of India views itself.

AKLDELNonstop · Member Joined: 19 Dec 2006 Posts: 1066 Location: Auckland

I find this to be a very well written article and the writer does bring up some really true points.

And we all know what he says is rampant in India. Mallya will very soon be hiring brothels, the way he is going.
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Jaysit · Member Joined: 19 Dec 2006 Posts: 4346

What a load of dreck.

I wonder what airlines this diplomat has been flying on. I flew Jet Airways, Sahara, and Kingfisher while I was in India and the only airline on which I saw only light-skinned cabin staff was Sahara. Jet Airways in particular had some beautiful coffee-colored Goan cabin staff, as did Kingfisher. What's more, Jet had some incredibly handsome and very dark-skinned young men as cabin crew..

Yes, the reality is that Indian society views light skin as superior to dark skin, but I find that is changing. As far as airlines are concerned, I may have been flying at 40,000 feet instead of 35,000 feet, but I saw all hues of Indian skin among the cabin crew onboard.

stealthpilot · Member Joined: 19 Dec 2006 Posts: 2325 Location: BLR, DXB

I don’t think airlines only hire white FAs in India, I don’t get that impression. I have seen FAs of different colours and from different parts of India, south Indians, north Indians, many from the east etc.

Now when it comes to appearances, and the airlines hiring good looking people, well that’s a different argument. But the fact is that Appearance: clear complexion, unblemished, unscarred, etc' does not mean white. It means clear skinned with no acne etc. Personally I believe that it’s a service industry and the airlines have a right to put such restrictions (even weight restrictions) in place.
Anyway, what he says about Indians having this fascination for white skin is probably true. Fair and lovely/handsome. Huh??
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stealthpilot · Member Joined: 19 Dec 2006 Posts: 2325 Location: BLR, DXB

sammyk · Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2007 6:27 am Post subject:

What is the rule on gender discrimination in India? I saw on Kingfisher's site that they wanted female only for cabin crew (Flying Models)...and expat too...so no one local?

Jaysit · Member Joined: 19 Dec 2006 Posts: 4346

VABBy · Member Joined: 19 Dec 2006 Posts: 823 Location: DEL

well i saw quite a bit of the truth in this article so thought might highlight it. Unfortunately havent come across any dark complexion FA,s except IC and the AIX Wink

we have the pics of those in the photography section. As for KF c,mon dont u think they are overdoin things I had seen alot of KF fa,s in DEL 1A terminal and everyone was just full of make up.

Too much of mascera lipstick infact the ground crew looked far better.

Well Mallya is going for white chicks only for his so called KF international which will operate btween BLR and US wat are we suppose to imply from that he is fetish of whites or is it the indian travelling public fetish for same..
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Jaysit · Member Joined: 19 Dec 2006 Posts: 4346

AKLDELNonstop · Member Joined: 19 Dec 2006 Posts: 1066 Location: Auckland

the_380 · Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2007 4:26 pm Post subject:

Karan69 · Member Joined: 22 Dec 2006 Posts: 1334

Its a very well thought out and well written article, but i do not agree completely with it, infact on some of my recent flights with 9W/IC/G8 i did not come across even one fair skinned female attendant all were the true indian brown colour and ofcourse with their faces lit up because of the make up

Karan

Birendra · Member Joined: 15 Feb 2007 Posts: 1411

Truth is bitter. Nice article or is it the truth of our indian mentality. Crying or Very sad

Jaysit · Member Joined: 19 Dec 2006 Posts: 4346

Oddly enough, there's a hint of Euro-white based racism in that article too when the writer states that the differences in "brown" that the south Indian Tamils were busy fussing about were invisible to him.

Is it because to all "whites" from the West, brown is just one shade? Whites in the West make a big fuss about minute differences in complexion from fair to "olive" between say Irish red-heads and Greeks and everything in between, differences which at first may not be visible to say the average Indian or Chinese or African. Admittedly, the author can tell the differences between fair skinned Indians (like Parsees for instance) and dark skinned Indians (like many Tamils), but you'd have to be blind not to see those. However, what may be invisible to the author, may be quite apparent to many Indians.

I agree with the writer that Indians tend to be obsessed about women being "fair," and that North Indians irrespective of how brown they may be will still call South Indians dark (incidentally, if you think Indians are bad then Pakistanis are far worse), and I'm with the India.net members on here as I too think that Mallya can be a big obnoxious buffoon, but let's put both the writer's world view and the average Indian's world view in context before we start pointing fingers excessively.