“Feminism has been and has to be like water, fluid. In some places, it’s fighting dowry, in others, fighting a witch hunt.”
— Kamla Bhasin
I analyze and make media for social good, particularly on colorism. I currently facilitate workshops at schools, in higher education, youth organizations, maker spaces, and thought leadership spaces in the U.S and India. My thoughts and insights have appeared on or in Bitch Media: Popaganda, Brooklyn Free Radio, Romper, and The Washington Post.
I am the founder and creative director of The Colo(u)rism Project, a media-literacy education initiative that critically engages women of color and youth.
My first, public-facing ‘counterpublic’ project, ColorsOfBrown.org was a website and a video channel. Published in 2008, it was a culmination of media studies graduate work.
Aside from the analysis presented in this 20-page website, which is still relevant, I produced, conducted, and edited 10+ video interviews with Indian luminaries such as the classical Indian dancer and national awardee of the fourth-highest civilian award in the Republic of India, Padma Shri Shovana Narayan; art historian, scholar, and the dean of the School of Arts and Aesthetics at JNU Delhi, Parul D. Mukherji; and the celebrated art-house actress and director, Nandita Das. Some of the video interviews can be found on my video channel from the time.
In 2013, I had the opportunity to add an interview series with Professor Radhika Parameswaran, Associate Dean and Herman B Wells Endowed Professor (Class of 1950) in the Media School at Indiana University, Bloomington. Dr. Parameswaran was one of the earliest scholars to begin working on colorism practices in the Indian subcontinent. Her important and deep work and words encouraged and reignited my passion to pursue anti-colorism work.
My most recent anti-colorist media project is a children’s book, Different Differenter, an arts-based racial literacy toolkit for 5- to 9-year-olds. I crowdfunded, designed, researched, wrote, and finally self-published it in 2019. It has been included as a specialized K-2, anti-racist resource on or in Social Justice Books (a Teaching for Change project), in the Resource list for Race and Ethnicity in Planning to Change the World, Drew Barrymore IGVT, and The New York Times Holiday Gift Guide, and McGraw Hill’s Wonders, a cultural competency curriculum for teachers.
Different DIfferenter is currently being used nationally at charter, public, private, Montessori and Waldorf system schools, as well as at museums, including the Eric Carle Museum in the U.S. at the National Gallery in London, U.K. The book uses a critical pedagogy framework to proactively engage early elementary-aged children (3-8 years) on the topic of skin color using arts-and-crafts. Different Differenter, which took nearly 2 years to complete, is based on focus group discussions, interviews, research data, and numerous independent conversations with people from several cultures.
Another project, for which I received the Individual Artists’ Grant by the Houston Arts Alliance, supported by the City of Houston was to curate and host “Putting the U in Color,” an art + media culture exhibit that challenged biases targeting “dark-skinned” girls and women (and men) in the South Asian community and media. The naming highlighted the need to not only add the South Asian perspective to the discussion of race in the U.S., but to raise awareness of colorism in the South Asian diaspora. This exhibit acquainted colorism’s Indian avatar to other communities of color in the U.S. as Latinx, Hispanic, and Black visitors would tell me, “We didn’t know this happens in your community too.”
My professional work in the U.S. prior to founding The Colo(u)rism Project includes working as Executive Director of The Indus Entrepreneurs-Houston, a membership organization for South Asian entrepreneurs, and consulting projects with the Bach Society-Houston and Asia Society Texas Center. During my graduate years in the U.S., I wrote for the South Asian Journalists Association Forum (SAJAForum) and completed two successful summer internships with Breakthrough.tv, a human rights organization, and Love146.org, an international organization working to end child trafficking.
Before moving to the U.S. in 2005, I worked as a creative with international advertising agencies, including J. Walter Thompson, Mc Cann Erickson, and Havas Advertising Group’s direct mail marketing venture, The Sales Machine. I also worked as an infographist in the art department at The Economic Times, Bennett, Coleman, and Company Limited’s financial daily, with a readership of 1 million readers at the time.
When in Delhi, I volunteered at Mobile Creches, who work for the right to Early Childhood Development of marginalized children, and SPIC MACAY (Society for the Promotion of Indian Classical Music And Culture Amongst Youth). I consulted with the Center for Advocacy and Research on a PhotoVoice children’s project, culminating to a film festival by and for children, called, Children Have Something to Say.
I hold an MA in Media Studies from The New School University and an MA in Liberal Studies from The Graduate Center, City University of New York, both in Manhattan. I have a BFA in Applied Art (Visual Communication) from the Delhi College of Art, in India, where she worked for a few years before moving to the U.S. I currently live in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York, with my 9-year-old son whose most recent feedback is that I am "overdoing the [discipline] lessons."
“Would you think twice before talking to your child about daily hygiene, math, or their safety? Skin color, and by extension, social justice is no different.”
— Jyoti Gupta, Founder, The Colo(u)rism Project
