Brown identity

Brown identity is the objective or subjective state of perceiving oneself as a brown person and as relating to being brown. The identity is subject to multiple contexts, as a part of media reporting or academic research, particularly in Asia, and the Western World.

Background

Brown identity has been explored academically and both discussed and reported in a wide variety of contexts, being both an indigenous and diasporic concept, as well as a pluralistic phenomenon with overlapping, separate, and competing sub-factors. University of New Mexico's Vinay Harpalani has explored the concept in depth, observing that despite variance of skin tone, whether darker or lighter, skin color gradation normally "does not appear to play a major role for South Asian Americans claiming a Brown identity". Despite some identification outside binaries of color, Harpalani has demonstrated how the identity does allow a distinction between certain white and black identities:

For South Asian Americans, claiming Brownness allows them to establish a separate racial identity for themselves—one that is independent of White and Black Americans, but parallels those groups by employing a color-designated identity.

Dr Kumarini Silva has theorized how brownness and brown identity has, at times, even served as a cultural distraction from black-white race relations in the United States. Alternatively, co-authored by several academics with a range of ethnic minority backgrounds, assistant professor Fatima Zahrae Chrifi Alaoui has explored Arab Americans' connection to brown identity, theorizing how "a Black/White binary" can result in erasure of brownness and racial homelessness for brown people. In this regard, 2019 research by Sten Pultz Moslund - an associate professor at the University of Southern Denmark - identified separate and distinct black and brown identities emerging in the United Kingdom; observing the societal expression of cultural difference to the white majority by black Britons and Asian Britons since 2000.

History

Since spring 2014, Ontario Human Rights Commission director Raj Dhir has presented the Understanding Anti-Brown Racism workshop, including at institutions such as Humber College. Dhir has proposed that brown identity may be a unique phenomenon for brown Canadians, partially resulting in distinct forms of discrimination not experienced by other minority groups.