The Dalai Lama is right-

The Dalai Lama has come under some flack for claiming that his successor has to be attractive.

I know that aestheticism is deeply prized in the Buddhist texts and even in the “Kathmandu goddesses.”

This idea that ugliness is a virtue and is correlated with BAME is profoundly pernicious.

A few good examples are:

please note I’m loving the representation of black and disabled people but I would also like to see Black Beauty really underscored as well instead of in a tokenistic manner.

Please note I’m not advocating for change or anything of the sort; I’m simply observing and highlighting. A lot of the Social Justice Warriors (who are white, liberal and prosperous) make it out like being born white is like the greatest thing in the Universe. They are fed on the other side by aggrieved minorities, who aren’t really interested in the cause but rather in climbing the totem pole.

I’m very interested in more equanimity in society but I think it happens through thoughtful observations and conversations. It doesn’t need to be these angry conflictual existential battles because on the whole the stakes aren’t that high. Respect and co-existence go hand in hand.

I was watching the Shows, When they See Us and Chernobyl. Both are excellent TV but Ava Du Vernay’s crafts such a beautiful and thoughtful piece about the Exonerated 5, that it really resonated with audiences.

Oprah and Ava, both black women, have managed to really show a mirror up to the US when it comes to race.

Now how does this tie into the Chernobyl, the show. Vidhi was accusing me today of having an alternative view to everything. In Chernobyl they crafted a female scientist character to represent all the scientists.

In a show that took such an authentic hue (all the English actors had regional accents to mirror the landscape) no space was made for a coloured character. Now the argument I’ve been hearing that there were no coloured people in the Ukraine in the 80’s but the USSR always had a healthy reserve of African and Asian students.

Just in a way that they created a female scientific composite; they could have created a coloured character. This is a good example of “gate-keeping” and it really hurts coloured actors in the West.

The solution is two-ways; one in which we have to engage the Host Society and tell them our needs/wants and the other where we have to listen to the Host Society in what they need/want.

I was walking past the British Library yesterday and I saw this block of flats. I was thinking how lovely it must be to live next to them. Out comes a Muslim immigrant family on welfare who probably have never been to the Library. It’s a triggering event and it’s leads to Trump-Brexit. If the coloured community do not want to take about these issues then the far-right will.

Finally for every coloured person in the West, who is not indigenous (Native American or Australia Aboriginal); there is a “back home.” I always recommend to every immigrant to regularly holiday back there. We have a homeland and it’s not the best idea to deracinate entirely. The West has a pleasant atmosphere, great citizenship and strong income but if we don’t serve our homelands in some way how we can expect the respect we demand in the West.

Brown Pundits