Color Connection: Studying Abroad in India - washingtonpost.com: ...I studied at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. I stayed in a home-stay, where you live with a host family as an adopted member. The first interaction I had with my host mother and father: I walked into the apartment, and, when I was waving hello, she looked at me and said, 'What part of Africa are you from? Nigeria?' I said, 'No, no, I'm American.' And she scrunched her face oddly and walked out of the room. I was taken aback. I couldn't understand initially what that was all about until I learned there is a deep, embedded color-grading in India that's probably been there for centuries. Obviously, as an African American, that was a point of contention for me. Sometimes when I would walk around in the markets, there was a sense of awe, which I appreciated. I guess, in the United States, many times I'll walk around, and I can sometimes feel invisible. But there it was the opposite: There was a sense of intrigue that I noticed in other people's eyes.
