Re: nalupu "sirivennela
Bapa Rao (brao@tis.com)
Tue, 15 Jul 1997 17:22:54 -0700 (PDT)
> Traditionally, black came to be regarded an inauspicious and
> unfavourable color in most cultures; In matters where some preference
> is exercised, the tendency is to go for lighter colors [any
I don't really want to drag this thread out too much further (less and
less relevant to telusa) but statements like the above are the better
for some research--do we really know much of world cultures besides
a bit about our own and the Euro/English culture? And, given that, since
the past half-millenium, almost all cultures in the world (certainly
most of the darker-hued ones) have been dominated by the European
cultural values, shouldn't we attempt to distinguish between the
color preferences (in terms of linguistic usage, customs etc.) of a
culture that are innate versus those that were a product of altered
self-perception resulting from European domination? For example, the
attitude of American blacks towards color (generally favoring lighter
tones) tends to be different from the attitude of corresponding AFrican tribes
(not giving too much importance to differences of shade).
> explanation why most cultures go for white clothes for wedding
> ceremonies ?]. So the author is trying to apply this linguistic usage.
Many cultures do (go in for white during wedding ceremonies) but I don't
know about most cultures. For chinese, white is the color of mourning.
They will (except for Christianized/Europeanized Chinese) not use
white in weddings. North Indians dress their brides in red; Jewish and
Christian custom is to use white dress for the (supposedly) virginal bride,
off-white or other non-white color for second and later marriages; the
groom doesn't traditionally wear white. Muslim brides don't wear white at
the wedding (at least Indian Muslims don't); Telugu people dress the bride
in a colorful saree just up to the actual solmenization at which moment
both bride and groom change into simple white madhu-parkaalu. I suppose
that various Africans, Australian aborigines, Maoris,
Papua-New guineans etc. all have their own traditions in this, with the
Europeanized among them adopting white dress for the bride.
I imagine that the original idea behind the Judeo-Christian use of
white bridal dress is to proclaim her virginity; it probably just so happened
that Jewish culture was one of the earlier ones in which virginity of
the bride assumed social importance. The underlying idea behind the symbolism
is probably that hymenal blood on the wedding night will show up more
clearly against white. In general, the origin of these customs is
difficult to pinpoint, as each succeeding cultural layer of the same
people will reinterpret the same symbolism to justify its current culture.
It is also easy to confuse the most widely visible
(in terms of media exposure etc.) with the most widely prevalent.
> The extrapolation from the #kOkila# to the social groups is a
> construction based on some empirical observations, not specifically
> about the author, but about some social groups. What is being done
> here is an attribution - of a color prejudice to the author in his
> matters social.
>
>
> I have several observations to make about #mAchirAzu sAvitri gAri# poem,
> but I will write only one of them here: the poem purports to
> pontificate the NRIs about discrimination against American Black people;
> (I certainly lived for a less duration than her or many others in North
> America) - I have not seen any such attitude (of discriminating blacks)
> among all the Indians I have known here, though I have come to observe
> other social maladies among them; so to whom is the poem trying to
> sermonize ?
>
[I suppose that at least this part is relevant to telugu lit.]
Experiences differ, and generalizations don't work, but I have observed
a level of fear and loathing of American blacks among Indians that is
almost at par with the "old" american south. (Actually, in some ways
it is actually worse, since the whites of the south at least have had the
advantage of knowing their black fellows as humans over the generations;
probably as a consequence, some of the most trenchant crusaders against
discrimination have been southern whites.) This is quite typical for
new immigrants to the US. Richard Pryor once said that the first English
word new Asian immigrants learn as soon as they get off "the boat" is
"nigger." And I agree with his observation (modulo the usual caution
about generalizations etc.). I have often heard student-visa types and
brand-new greencardwallahs refer to blacks as "kallus" and whites as
"real Americans", quite ignorant or unconscious of the historical irony
that on the average, the family of a black American has been living in,
and building up America (all free of charge) many generations before the
family of the average white (not to mention our worthy Indian FOB)
immigrated to America. I suspect that Savitri Machiraju may have
run into some of the same kind of people I have; only such people
need to check their shoulders for pumpkin marks, I imagine. Others
may learn from the poem to stand up to such expressions of prejudice
and baseless hatred from their compatriots instead of looking away
in embarassment as is normally done.
Bapa Rao