Zayn Malik And Racism In One Direction

Slowly but surely, however, it all became a bit…uncomfortable. I started to wonder why it had to be Zayn that was labeled the mysterious, and even worse, bad one. Why couldn’t any of the other quiet boys be mysterious? Heartthrob Harry Styles, for instance, seemed to speak just as sparingly in interviews and was infamous for his slow, languid drawl that most people attributed to–well, nothing. He wasn’t mysterious. He wasn’t intriguing. He was just Harry: irresistible, charming, and endearing because he was likely to be the last of them to get a joke or crack one successfully.

And then it hit me. Zayn being a half-Pakistani Muslim was what counted as mysterious these days. He was exotic. He was dark. He was different. He was the other. He wasn’t plain and boring like the rest of his pale-skinned, bright-eyed bandmates, all of whom could’ve been the good ol’ boys next door. His name was Zayn Malik, for heaven’s sake. When was the last time you met someone named Zayn Malik at your nondescript local Starbucks on a bland Sunday afternoon ordering a vanilla frap? (Please note: this paragraph is best-read while wearing a pair of sarcasm goggles, preferably with a built-in ‘Long-Suffering Recipient of Racist Stereotypes’ filter.)

Of course, this marketing scheme was never an accident. Somewhere within the hierarchy of people who work to shape boy-band images and mold them into compartmentalized products for easy consumption, it was decided that Zayn, the half-Pakistani Muslim, would play the distinct role of the slightly foreign one. He would be wrapped up in an enigma so fans could get that unique pleasure of trying to understand him, but in the end, the public would be ultimately and perpetually mystified. This plays into the racism faced by South Asian, Middle Eastern, and South American communities and other people of colour in the West, in which they are not perceived as the standard, plain, ‘normal’ folks, but something else — something strange and out of the ordinary. This process is known as Othering, and on the most basic level, it works to alienate people of colour and standardize whiteness.

Danger, Danger: Fan Perception

(L-R) One Direction members Niall Horan, Liam Payne, Harry Styles, Zayn Malik and Louis Tomlinson. Via Wikipedia.

But all of that wasn’t the worst of it, really. Neither was the now-deleted (but screencapped) Oh No They Didn’t! comment that fetishized Zayn’s race, claiming that his mixed heritage was a) the most attractive thing about him and b) meant he couldn’t be brought home to meet the commenter’s mother. In fact, the YouTube and Twitter users who repeatedly called Zayn a terrorist, along with the Tumblr users who jokingly referred to him as “Mexican Zayn” (hint: Pakistan is not in Mexico, and people of colour are not a monolithic tribe that come from interchangeable countries) weren’t even the worst of it.

For me, the worst of it were the more covert instances of racism that surfaced in the period of time following the band’s first headlining tour.

Zayn, like any pop star who’d gone through three legs of extensive touring and performed over sixty shows in less than a year, was photographed looking out of sorts, worn thin, and under-rested. Nothing out of the ordinary, Zayn was caught with a messy mane of hair, barely darkened circles beneath his eyes, and a pair of slouched shoulders.

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