By Deepa Majumdar
Genuine colour-blindness, which enables greater objectivity, refuses prejudice based on colour, yet, for the sake of justice, recognizes colour where it matters – in situations of colour-based oppression. But when we sublimate the unchaste eye to reach the all-holy aesthetic indifference (in the material sphere) that characterizes the chaste eye, we reach still higher, to a greater objectivity through a noble body-blindness. This trans-corporeality means a refusal to subject physical phenotypes to aesthetic judgments. Seeing a person for who he is, rather than how he looks, begins the hallowed state of true respect. But until we attain this high moral altitude, we cannot help but engage in lethal body-based subjective aesthetic judgments that divide people into the beautiful, the ugly, and shades in between.
Racism deploys the two lower levels of subjective material beauty – that which lies in the eyes of the single beholder and that in the unanimous eyes of multiple beholders who agree without necessarily consulting one another. By worshipping racialized beauty, while demeaning those he deems ugly, the racist worships power (not goodness), thus harming his aesthetic object with the full force of his worldliness, but also himself, morally. Since the twin halves of power are sadism and masochism, pursuit of racialized beauty engenders a sado-masochistic aesthetics that pollutes the relationship between the racist and those he deems ugly. Drawing his dubious aesthetics and worldliness from a sense of moral, mental, cultural, and economic superiority to his object of racism, the racist traps himself in a narcissistic bubble. Imbued with sadism, his worldliness weighs heavy, burdening the racist with a jaundiced eye and a toxic worldview. When we regard the same phenotypes beautiful in some races and ugly in others, we become unethical and hence irrational in our aesthetic judgments. Rejoinders like, “Black is beautiful” or “Brown is beautiful” cannot remove racism or resolve this breach in morality, rationality, human rights, and justice. Although relatively ethical (because they do not deem anybody ugly), these counter judgments fall short of true body-blindness, which transcends the carnal sphere of pleasure and pain by favouring essence over appearance. To overcome racism, the race-conscious carnal eye must sublimate itself, overcoming its sense of corporeal beauty, and ascending to the all-holy aesthetic indifference of the chaste eye. If we are to conquer racialized beauty standards, sexist objectification of the female body, and corporeal prejudice against the differently abled, we must become aesthetically indifferent to physical beauty. Thus refreshed, the chaste eye pierces through bodily appearance to see the light of pure essence within the human person.
How do we ascend from corporeal to moral and supra-moral beauty? By transcending worldliness and carnal awareness, through a self-willed sublimation of our ordinary aesthetic awareness that converts the will-to-power to a will-to-service. Although challenging, this ideal should serve as our birthright. For, as human persons, we alone (not animals) possess this universal potential for transcending body-consciousness. Yet the human body is aesthetically challenging because it defies all neat categorizations of beauty. Thus, the human face – so often subjected to racist diatribes – although material, is yet capable of expressing divine beauty. Moreover, inasmuch as mind rules over matter, so that the body is its faithful echo, the mind etches the body with every thought it thinks, leaving indelible marks. As a result, physiognomy becomes a mirror of moral character. When it comes to the human person, therefore, it is difficult to distinguish material from spiritual beauty.
Furthermore, not all can reach the chaste eye (a lofty ideal) in one lifetime. Man therefore often succumbs to the lower liniment of eros. By falling in love, we not only sublimate the raw sexual impulse, but overcome the hatred in racial prejudice. Racists, therefore, often experience a hidden erotic impulse towards the very objects of their racism. Not always ethical or uplifting, this racialized eros, when lust-laden, explodes in hatred, manifesting itself through rape. When white men raped African American slave women, they expressed this morally repugnant face of eros. But in its positive form, eros can sublimate racist aesthetics, through romantic love. For, the racist escapes the intolerable toxicity of his own racism by falling in love with the very object he deems ugly and inferior. His newfound love and friendship sublimate his dubious aesthetics, which, otherwise, would have made him rule his aesthetic object sadistically.
Notwithstanding our search for romantic love, the sexual revolution, and greater globalism, racism continues to prevail world-wide. The human body continues to be assaulted by racist aesthetic judgments, which run across multiple color categories. While white-on-black racism has a special place in western history (especially American), it isn’t as if racism does not happen elsewhere. Racism can be brown-on-black, black-on-brown, or between different shades within each color category, thus adding further complexities to racialized aesthetics. This includes prejudice against other phenotypes (besides color) – like the shape of the eye, or the nose, etc. Although physical phenotypes are purely corporeal and biological with no inherent political or moral meaning, they become politicized in the hands of the racist, who, being deeply carnal in his worldview, is therefore blind to the common humanity beneath trivial surface bodily differences that have no real meaning.
It is this kind of sado-masochistic racism that we see in the Han Chinese towards Tibetans, in Latin Americans towards non-white persons, and in the complex race relations in the Indian subcontinent. If people from northeast India are racist towards mainland Indians, so are the latter towards north-easterners – often without the self-reflection or compunction of Meghalayans. Moreover, north Indians are racist towards darker south and east Indians. Finally, Indians can be lethally racist towards visitors of African descent. Also deplorable is the Indian adoration of white physical appearance, despite decades of independence from Britain. Without necessarily objectifying white bodies, Indians still find white people “beautiful.”
Racist aesthetics becomes secondary (but culpable) when borrowed from the primary racist and perpetrated by his victims (black and brown people) towards those perceived as still lower on the totem pole of racism. But I have no name for the non-masochistic adoration of whites by direct victims of white racism, like the former colonized – except to call it “opportunistic racism.” Hardly a helpless masochistic surrender before white power, this type of worship of whiteness by the non-white has to be the most shameless, cynical, naked worship of power ever, wrapped in aesthetic coverings. To counter this, however, there is growing awareness of racism in India. Thus, in 2020 Hindustan Unilever Ltd. sought greater inclusivity, by changing its skin-lightening brand name from “Fair & Lovely” to “Glow & Lovely.”
What is inner beauty? Beginning with the beauty of the moral virtues, inner beauty, which comes in a gradient, is always incorporeal. In some religious traditions, the highest beauty belongs to God. Thus, for Tagore, God is, “the Beautiful.” In his Symposium, Plato does things a little differently. He places Beauty-in-itself (the pure transcendental quality of true beauty and source of objective beauty) below the Good (his God). He divides beauty into two categories, with “perishing beauties” (subjective) below Beauty-in-itself, which is objective by being harmonious with all that is divine. Ugliness too is objective, by being inharmonious with all that is divine. For Plato, love always pursue beauty. He therefore constructs a ladder of love, which begins, at the lowest, with pursuing carnal beauty. But as love evolves morally, it pursues beauty that is more inward and abstract, culminating ultimately in a wondrous vision of Beauty-in-itself, which, Plato says, imparts itself to the lower “perishing beauties.”
How would Plato respond to contemporary racism? By including racist definitions of beauty, which lie in the eyes of the beholder, among his subjective “perishing beauties.” By deeming racism objectively ugly (or, inharmonious with the Divine), but the racist’s definition of “ugliness,” subjective and fictitious. By exhorting us to use his ladder of love to reach the aesthetically indifferent chaste eye that can see Beauty-in-itself. Finally, by urging us to appreciate more inward and abstract forms of universal beauty, as we ascend his ladder, to reach growing body-blindness. Moreover, for Plato, the truest test of the chaste eye would be its capacity to detect the sublime presence of incorporeal Beauty-in-itself in all “perishing beauties.” Plato, the arch-idealist, would declare this vision of the immanence of divine Beauty as the ultimate solution to the problem of appearance-based racism. For lower solutions, he would advocate Platonic love and more inward and abstract forms of beauty.
Above all, Plato would perhaps be astonished at the folly of modern man, who can fly to outer space and plumb the depths of the ocean – yet remains blind to the all-shining immanent presence of Beauty-in-itself. Having eclipsed the Divine, he thirsts for material beauty and power. Through his tragic descent into the body and worship of power, he succumbs to ethically primitive, racially prejudiced aesthetic norms of beauty. Plato would perhaps conclude that modern racism is historically unprecedented, while acknowledging that racism has always existed in one form or another.
(The author teaches Philosophy at Purdue University, USA)