'We are scared' _ Africans in India say racism is constant

The police and government began holding workshops in neighborhoods across the city to try to sensitize local residents about their African neighbors.

There were other well publicized examples of anti-African prejudice in India before Oliver's death.

In February, a Tanzanian woman was beaten and stripped naked by a mob in the southern city of Bangalore after a Sudanese student's car hit an Indian woman. In September 2014, a video of three African men being beaten inside a security booth at a New Delhi Metro station went viral. For several minutes a large mob beat the men with bare hands and sticks and shoes as they climbed up the walls of the glass booth in terror. The police were absent.

These incidents made it to the local newspapers. Hundreds more do not.

Prejudice is open in India. The matrimonial columns of the newspaper are strictly segregated along caste lines. Landlords in cities including New Delhi and Mumbai deny homes to people based on race and religion.

Indians f-rom northeastern India, who look different because of their Asian features, are routinely harassed and have to endure being called names on the streets.

But the worst kind of discrimination is reserved for the Africans. In a country obsessed with fair skin and skin lightening beauty treatments, their dark skin draws a mixture of fear and ridicule.

Landlords shun Africans in all but the poorest neighborhoods, and in those they are c-harged unusually high rent. African students in the New Delhi neighborhood of Chhatarapur reported paying 15,000 rupees ($225) a month for a single room and bathroom that would normally rent for 6,000 to 7,000 rupees.

Strangers point at them and laugh — or gang up and assault them.

At a recent racial sensitization session in Chhatarapur, the mutual distrust between the Indian landlords and their African tenants was glaring.

"I'm scared," said Nancy Joseph, a 23-year-old law student f-rom South Sudan. That fear keeps her f-rom visiting friends at night. The autorickshaw driver may refuse to take her. Groups of Indian men could gather and call her vile names just for fun.

"Delhi is the worst city I've ever lived in," said Eddie King, a student f-rom Nigeria. He hasn't made a single friend in the year that he has spent in the country.

"I can't talk to my classmates. They won't even answer me. They pretend they don't understand."

The landlords say African tenants drink all day and play loud music all night, c-haracterizations that Africans dismiss as unfair.

"They stand drinking beer on the road. We feel scared crossing the area," landlord Umed Singh said.

Whether this session succeeded in sensitizing anyone was unclear. Police simply told both sides to try to understand each other.

King said he'll leave India as soon as he finishes his studies next year. "The African man cannot work with Indians. That's just the truth," he said.

Opeyemi, a 34-year-old soccer coach, said he will stay. It's easier for him to earn a living here than in Nigeria, so he will endure the indignities.

Those include hearing someone call out "Habshi!" — the Hindi word for a black person — as he tries to get on a bus.

Recently, as he tried to park his car, someone called him "bandar" — a monkey. "The security was looking but they said nothing," Opeyemi said.

"We are scared. We don't fight back because we know what will happen," he said. "They will break your head with a brick."