Okay. This one is for you dozen tipsters who are jonesing for our take on this article about “”love-cum-arranged,” marriages that appears in today’s NYTimes.
Yawn. Haven’t I read this article like a dozen times before? It’s always half of an article where they drum up the angle that they wanted to write in the first place instead of doing any real reporting.
These young people may have come of age in an America of “Moonstruck” and “Dawson’s Creek,” but in many cases they have not completely accepted the Western model of romantic attachment. Indeed, some of the impetus for assisted marriage is coming from young people themselves – men and women who have delayed marriage into their late 20’s and early 30’s, said Ayesha Hakki, the editor of Bibi, a South Asian bridal and fashion magazine based in New Jersey.
“That has been the most remarkable trend,” Ms. Hakki said, citing the example of a male acquaintance, who, after dating on his own, turned to his parents for guidance.
As Madhulika Khandelwal, a historian who has studied Indians here, said, “Young people don’t want to make individual decisions alone.”
[cough]-bullshit-[cough]. It’s not that young people don’t want to make “individual decisions alone” and have decided that their parent’s “guidance” is best. No. It’s that they are giving up and no longer want to fight “the system.” Ladies in their late twenties can only pursue self-absorbed or commitment-phobic guys (and there is nothing wrong with being commitment phobic 
) for so long before they throw in the towel and opt for “traditional,” by default. Likewise, guys are forced to deal with women who are too neurotic to date mostly because their parents are breathing down their necks to get married. We (Indians raised in this country) turn to our families for the exact same reason as someone of another culture would turn to their’s, except for the fact that there is more pressure to turn to them. This article and others like it always seem to dodge the truth in order to accentuate the exotic “embrace” of our culture. What the article describes is more than just being set up on a “blind date,” which it compares it to. Lots of cultures practice the art of the blind date, whether through family or friends, and it isn’t particularly newsworthy. When journalists single out Indians they do so with the implication that the family’s fingerprints are all over the entire courtship process. If that is the case then explaining it away as a willing “return to tradition” makes my eyes roll. Here is some more bullshit:
The embrace of more traditional habits is apparent in other ways. Weddings are often elaborate and last three or four days. Families of the betrothed often still consult a Hindu astrologer who schedules wedding ceremonies according to the stars. When Anamika Tavathia, 24, was engaged to a young Indian she met in college, his family visited hers to propose on his behalf and the priest determined they should marry on June 26 of this year between 10:30 and 11 a.m.This fall is expected to be an unusually busy wedding season in Indian communities, because many couples postponed weddings last year when many days were deemed inauspicious.
Are you f*cking kidding me? I guess the Times decided that the article could use a bit more masala when they added that last sentence. As a quick aside though, I made up a drinking game for when I go to Indian weddings. Any time someone uses the word “auspicious” you take a shot at the reception.
Despite its groundings in pragmatism, assisted marriage is spoken about among some young Indians in highly romanticized terms – implicit in it is the cinematic idea that immediate attraction should result in an eternity spent together.
Damn. I hope that’s not true because that would mean that a lot of my close friends are totally abnormal.
Kesha Petal’s sister married a man to whom she was introduced through her aunts. She decided to marry him the day after they met. “A lot of my friends,” Kesha Petal said, her eyes gleaming, “tell me you know in an instant.”
Oh, oh. I just vomited all over myself. Speaking of weddings though, did you guys see this long-overdue article in the Guardian?
The wedding beast, I fear, is swallowing us all, and Liz Savage, the editor of Brides Magazine (circulation 68,000), confirms it. The British bridal industry is worth £5bn a year and growing, and Savage cites a faintly nauseating buffet of factors. First, people are increasingly paying for their own weddings, thus unleashing a torrent of Personal Romances-style fantasies on us all. “Fathers of the bride are no longer automatically footing the bill,” she says. “Couples have more money to spend and they want the wedding to be an expression of their personal style.”The key driver, it becomes clear, in the excess of the modern wedding is pseudo-sophistication and grisly one-upmanship. “Our tastes have become much more sophisticated and glamorous,” says Savage. “I got married nine years ago and there was none of this fuss over the menu and what we were drinking. Then you wouldn’t have dreamed of turning your nose up at the wine but today we are putting ourselves under far more pressure … Our readers spend more time thinking about the reception than anything else. The attention to detail is amazing – the choice of napkin ring, how they are going to tie the napkins and how are the place settings going to look. It doesn’t matter if they are traditional or getting married in winter or abroad, our readers want to surprise and delight their guests. People are much more creative and imaginative today. They want their wedding to be talked about and to give their guests the best they can. They really want the wow factor.”
[begin rant] It’s true. It’s far worse for Indian weddings though. One of my closest friends and his fiance were in town a couple weeks ago to do some wedding shopping. They both advised me never to get married because the actual wedding will suck all the life (and money) out of you. Everything has to be perfect and you have to invite guests that you will never talk to again in your life. I for one will never buy a diamond engagement ring. I’d rather spend the $14,000 on a 4 week 5 country honeymoon, and I won’t have to worry about some kid in Sierra-Leone getting his limb chopped off for a rock that in reality is worthless. I also can’t stand the way that women shake hands when they are newly engaged. Also, please, please, please save your money and do not make a “wedding music CD” for your guests. Nobody wants to listen to the music you guys do the dirty to. [end rant]
Article touched a nerve, did it, abhi? 🙂
Yeah, I just get bummed by the lack of faith in many of my peers. Seems like everything is about keeping up with the Joshi’s and not enough about doing what’s right for you. This somewhat sanctimonious post was dedicated to all the commitment phobes and free-thinkers. 🙂
Ok, I can’t believe I’m going to write this, but I know a lot of younger desi ‘kids’ are lurkers on this site and I can’t help it.
Don’t let the pressure from your parents close you up to opportunities, close your heart or make you afraid. Be fearless in love, be fearless. Love and honor your parents, but don’t run away from your feelings. You desi kids know what I mean. The push and pull of settling down – on the one hand you want to be free of all that pressure and on the other hand you are tired of the freedom. You don’t have to have a big, fancy wedding. And just because your parents may pressure you to settle down doesn’t mean that you can’t look honestly and openly at the people they may choose to set you up with; you don’t have to run away from the whole situation to prove yourself. Be kind. Be loving. Take a chance. No matter what you do, you will have regrets in this life. You can’t be perfect, no one can. You can do your best be honest, fair, and truthful. And really, take another look at that person sitting next to you. I bet that person is beautiful – you just never really looked….
the article does the typical journalistic bait & switch: Arranged and assisted marriage have left Indians with the lowest rate of intermarriage of any major immigrant group in the United States. Among South Asian men and women here in their 20’s and 30’s, the vast majority of whom are foreign born, fewer than 10 percent marry outside their ethnic group, according to an analysis of the Census Bureau’s 2003 American Community Survey conducted for this article.
it seems the foreign born part is likely more important than arranged marriages, since arranged marriages tend to narrow the focus from a broad-sense of ethnicity to a narrower one of particular region, class, caste, etc.etc. i have posted before that not all the evidence points to low outmarriage rates among those born here in the USA. look at the big difference between aggregates and born in the USA (among all asian groups).
hail abhi!…
The secret to getting marriage is knowing that a wedding is not what makes it. A $50,000 wedding doesn’t promise you a happy marriage or wealthy living, as much as a rings aren’t what keep a couple faithful and respectful to each other. I don’t think your friends meant don’t get married, just don’t have a wedding the traditional way. Go to a temple just your family, or go to a beach and take your vows (in the language where you understand the meaning) and register it there.
A wedding is just a celebration where some do with rituals, other vows, and others with some bub’ and food. Wedding are never perfect, any bride knows this, she can try, but that’s all she can do.
I gladly decided to not go for rock & ring and instead invest in the memories we’ll make on our trips… so i totally support your idea abhi!.
btw, i grew up around a lot of mormons. the differences are usually cosmetic in terms of arranged/non-arranged when you have to get married by 20. of course, being brown, there’s the whole exotic-from-the-east-angle.
oh, and that dude kinda looks ugly (big lumpy nose, weak chin). don’t begrudge fuglies arranged marriages, i know of fatties who went back to brownland and bought, oops, i mean married, better than they ever could in the USofA. of course, that chik looks decent and american, but mebee she isn’t into looks or he’s got a sexy voice…can’t figure chix.
hehe.. had that on my blog today.. laughed..and guffawed 😉
btw, the family + family think in arranged marriages is bizarro to me. understandable, but such embeddedness in “family” seems un-american, more sicilian. my mom lured me to bangladesh last year by telling me that my grandma was dying (true), but also introduced me to a bunch of bizarro chix. one chik i never met passed her marriage “resume” on to me. it had her education, her parents’ education, jobs, her brothers educations, jobs, etc. so i had to write up a resume, and when i got to family, i decided to put my two youngest siblings down, “riz, 6th grade, somewhere-in-seattle-elementary,” “fatima, 8th grade, somewhere-in-seattle-middle-school.” my parents were not amused.
Oh, this is the way the thread is going to go, huh? Well, who am I to give advice anyway? I really shouldn’t, given my history.
Desi’s aren’t the only ones who feel the need to have a big wedding (come to think of it, my big fat desi wedding was the highlight of my marriage to my ex, so glad we didn’t skimp……at least I had a roaring good party, if nothing else). One of my best friends (uber blonde and British-American) upset her parents when she and her husband decided to do the wedding all on their own, in downtown LA in a great old Art Deco hotel. He’s a photographer, does fashion photos in addition to car ads, so he had the bride and bridesmaids’ makeup done by someone he knows and works with, she had vintage dress, we all helped decorate and we bridesmaids wore black and white gowns we picked ourselves. Not to stereotype (ok, I am) the Prada clad gay man sitting next to me at the reception said my dress was fabulous, so you know I did ok with picking out my bridesmaids dress 🙂
Fantastic party after an elderly relative read a funny and touching little ode to the couple, he married them, too (I don’t know how he got to do that, some kind of internet preacher or other?), fun, elegant, small, flowers and wine and music and then, swimming in the pool on the roof of our hotel. Under a starry LA sky. That’s the way to do it, boys and girls.
Bugger.
PS – Abhi, I hope you weren’t implying non-commitment-phobes (yes I know the opposite is commitment-phile, but I’m hardly one of those) are not free thinkers..! I’m looking forward to getting married. But I’m really not fussed with a big wedding and thankfully my gf isn’t either. However we know plenty of Gujjus and Punjabis from the old country who delight in recounting how expensive their cousin’s/brother’s/dog’s wedding was. And if you didn’t get an invite to the Mittal wedding or that 40 million Euro one in Brussels (or something), then quite frankly, you’re not worth talking to. I hate how it’s seen as a stamp of success. This showy obsession in Indians pisses me right off. Perhaps it’s cos I drive a Nissan Micra and not an Escalade, but I like to think it’s because I’m not so shallow.
Razib the groom may be a donkey, but his sister’s quite foxy.
Hmf. This article made me cranky, or maybe sad, about what my boyfriend and I will go through when we decide to get married down the road.
All things considered, though, I don’t recognize a “trend” among my friends’ families and my boyfriend’s extended family. Some people marry people from India; some people marry NRIs; some marry outside their caste or religion or even their race. It really seems to vary from person to person more than anything.
If days are “deemed inauspicious” this year, won’t next fall be busy too? I guess I don’t understand the science behind scheduled weddings. I read this article this morning and couldn’t help but think I had read it a million times before.
Razib the groom may be a donkey, but his sister’s quite foxy.
perhaps momma had a lot of infections while he was in utero. could have affected fluctuating asymmetry.
Certainly not BB. Losing one’s phobias actually allows you to spend more time “free thinking.”
SO funny- I was going to send this tip in after reading (and fuming over) the NYT article, but then thought the exact, above thought!
typed patel on the ny times wedding and celebration page.
names….
Payal Patel, Ravi Chatani
Sandhya Jain, Samir Patel
Sheevani Patel, Ruchir Raikundalia
Sonal Patel, Sachin Chaudhry
Bena Shah, Abhay Patel
Vinisha Patel, Saurabh Shah
Shefali Patel, David Shusterman
Lisa George, Sarit Patel
Vihas Patel, Tejas Patel
Hemalee Patel, Unmesh Kher
Anil Patel and Clare Stephens
Sheila Patel, Steven Benfield
“”love-cum-arranged,” marriages
Bwahahaha…immature, I know, but sure sounds like the sequence of events that leads to a shotgun wedding.
Fantastic party after an elderly relative read a funny and touching little ode… That’s the way to do it, boys and girls.
Touching odes are nice. But far more important than the wedding is the bachelor party.
Morituri te salutant!!!
Abhi, $14,000 ?
I think you’re taking the 3 months salary thing a little too literally. Only zillionaires drop that kind of cash on a rock.
typed patel on the ny times wedding and celebration page
The sample is hardly representative of Indians or Indian Americans in the US. I mean it only covers Patels in the NY area and still there are only 5 outmarriages for the 19 desis mentioned here. That makes it a 26% outmarriage rate.
but mebee she isn’t into looks or he’s got a sexy voice…can’t figure chix.
Oh yes you can 🙂
Brown isn’t Harvard, but it’s pretty decent. 10.5 MCAT avg.
…of course, a key question is what university his wife got her degree from. 10 bucks says it isn’t above Brown in the rankings.
btw, did anyone else catch this quote from the article?
Someone has to tell this guy that if “mommy” still has veto power over his life, he’s not a man by any stretch of the imagination. What a wimp. Well, at least he’s not as pathetic as the Indians born in the US that need to ask their parents to set them up — the girl he dumped is proof of existence (albeit possibly accompanied by uniqueness) regarding this particular guy’s ability to compete in the universal pool.
The sample is hardly representative of Indians or Indian Americans in the US.
Since you asked, here’s the Census numbers, which Razib already linked above:
http://www.asian-nation.org/interracial2.shtml
U.S.-Born or 1.5 Generation: Percentages of the Six Largest Asian Ethnic Groups who are Married to X
Asian Indians Husbands (25,980)
Asian Indians 69.2 Other Asians 3.7 Whites 20.5 Blacks 1.7 Hispanics/Latinos 4.3
Wives (33,179)
Asian Indians 69.9 Other Asians 4.1 Whites 21.1 Blacks 2.5 Hispanics/Latinos 1.6
So, for example, of the 25980 Asian Indian males from the 1.5 and 2nd gens in the sample, 20.5% of them are married to whites.
Point: 1.5 Gen SA’s & SAs born in the US outmarry at close to a 30% clip. I bet if you restricted to US born SA’s only w/o the 1.5 gen immigrants (who could have ‘otherizing’ accents, etc. depending on when they came) that the rate would be 40% or higher.
Among my acquaintances, the majority of SA males are dating non SA females. Even those who are currently dating SA females generally haven’t made a habit of it, so to speak (with a few notable exceptions). Give it two gens, and we’ll have fully assimilated. The NYT is behind the curve w/ this report, as it focuses on the foreign born.
yenta. this ain’t new. i wish people (the writers of the new york times) would stop pretending this is peculiar.
and gc, fugly dummies gotza to marry. american passport is their ticket to a decent overseas package. though the one person i know who did this (couldn’t speak bengali!) is (coincidence) brown educated, but a major league lard-ass fatso. his brother, who takes care of himself, didn’t have to go this route.
not to stereotype. i just think all these stories always have the ‘i tried dating, but….’ aspect, it is never ‘dating was great! bu i like this better!”
Peter Sellers in “The Party” does not bother me. But this does……..bad, bad, stereotyping. This is more harmful than 10 Apus.
I read the article early morning and thought NYT is losing it. I think it is not even written decently. I want some spice.
btw, i think there is a gender angle on this. in some ways the winner-take-all mentality that seems to dominate the singles choose-it-or-lose-it dating market is i think more biased toward ‘male culture.’ even if we are fugly dummies, we are usually conceited enough to think we aren’t. we’ll take our chances, and if we fail, we’ll use this as a back up option. on the other hand, i’m not so sure that the modern dating world is the best for many ladies. but internet-dating seems to eliminate some of the hazards and stresses.
You know you can look at it as ‘arranged to fall in love’, someone introduces you to someone and the rest is history. No one really wants to quote statistics about the success of these marriages or the failure of the unarranged marriages, but we do need to realize that many of us, including you Abhi, will have some massie introduce them to someone and POW! You will be singing songs in the rain
😉 Not surprising at all gc. Similarly you could probably have guessed that me and all of my acquaintances cancel out the stats of you and all of yours. And we like our “habit.”
Also Razib, why the fascination with looks (i.e weak chin, fugly). Anytime we ever post anything remotely related to physical appearance you come out with some pretty harsh stuff, seemingly for the sake of being harsh. I know you are an Atheist, but I am a Karma fearing Deist so I’d wish for the sake of your soul (and physical appearance in this life) you’d do me the favor of refraining from such unnesessary comments on my posts, lest they taint me.
Give it two gens, and we’ll have fully assimilated. The NYT is behind the curve w/ this report, as it focuses on the foreign born.
That would be quite an achievement.
Anytime we ever post anything remotely related to physical appearance you come out with some pretty harsh stuff, seemingly for the sake of being harsh.
Maybe Razib just says aloud what we are all thinking anyway 😉
Yes Rani, that is a blind date or an introduction, no? That is different than what is being described in the article though.
There isn’t a massie alive that can work her magic on me unfortunately. 🙂
Are there any statistics on divorce rates between SA/non-SA marriages vs all brown affairs?
reg: mommy interference and the seven-year age difference. It is one thing if the guy was 28 and met the 35 year old, being wise in the ways of the world etc. Looks like preet singh went from one mommy to another (“helped me mature into a man”). The way this thing would work out fast forwarding 10 years – guy is 38, he is looking around and sees all these 20-somethings hotties and figures he missed out during his ‘youth’. Affairs and divorce. Just saying, very likely scenario. Mom interference still nasty…
not to stereotype. i just think all these stories always have the ‘i tried dating, but….’ aspect, it is never ‘dating was great! bu i like this better!”
Exactly. Speaking bluntly, arranged marriages for Injuns born in the US are consolation prizes for social losers. FOBs of course have a different standard, but something tells me that the socially adept in rapidly modernizing India are increasingly independent of “mommy and daddy”. There are plenty of desis from India that I’ve met who are less conservative in this regard than our parents’ generation.
all of my acquaintances cancel out the stats of you and all of yours.
Well, I can sort of understand this. Particularly for the bookish, slightly-below-median-height South Asian American guy that is probably the modal male Sepia reader, it’s just easier to hit on desi chicks than others.
like i said to manish some time back:
Statistically speaking, consider the above stats from the Census on Asian Indian outmarriage rates. As an upper bound, assuming the 2nd gens are more cosmopolitan than the 1.5 gens, we can assume a 40% outmarriage rate for 2nd gens. Then (1-.4)^2 is 36%, which is less than 50%. Even at the most conservative lower bound of 30% for the 1.5 gen/2nd gen bundle, (1-.3)^2 is 49%.
That gives the probability that a given phylogenetic lineage is entirely composed of non South Asians.
What that means is that if present trends simply continue, the majority of 3rd gen+ people of partially South Asian ancestry born in the US will be mixed with that of other Americans (of various backgrounds).
The man in the NYT picture isn’t ugly. Not as hot as the bride, but not bad. I don’t understand the prejudice against big noses, I think they’re cool.
As a vestern voman, I assure you, arranged marriages ARE peculiar in the US in this day and age. It’s not cultural, it’s temporal. Yes, most European and Jewish groups have long traditions of arranged marriages – traditions which were completely abandoned many generations ago. I certainly couldn’t turn to my parents to find me a husband, even if I wanted to; even if they wanted to (which they definitely would not), they wouldn’t know where to begin.
Many Americans, especially New Yorkers, are frustrated and exhausted by dating. Many use dating services, an extremely impersonal version of the long-lost yenta. Online dating – do-it-yorself yenta-ing – is a lot of work, even if you’re not seeking a long-term commitment. Those who are seeking long-term commitments online may secretly covet the arranged marriage option, especially those with baby-rabies and ageing reproductive systems.
Give it two gens, and we’ll have fully assimilated. The NYT is behind the curve w/ this report, as it focuses on the foreign born.
That would be quite an achievement.
Maybe I misinterpreted your comments, Al Mujahid, but what’s the “achievement” in fully assimilating?
That gives the probability that a given phylogenetic lineage is entirely composed of non South Asians.
Ooops, scratch the “non” there. Here’s what I meant:
1) Start w/ 100% second gen population
2) One generation of outmarriage @ 40% rate leaves 60% “purebreds” and 40% “mischlinge” offspring, assuming no differential fertility and 2.0 TFRs*
3) Second generation of outmarriage with the 60% purebreds @ 40% rate gives 36% purebreds, 24% more mischlinge.
4) This means that of all individuals w/ South Asian ancestry, the majority are not “purebreds” (which is obviously a misnomer as SAs are highly genetically inhomogeneous anyway; see for ex. Bamshad 2003.)
Two assumptions in this simple model can be critiqued, and they pull in opposite directions.
First is the assumption that TFRs will be invariant w.r.t. to the pairings of races of the parents. This assumption is invalid in general. One would expect the more cosmopolitan to have less kids. Modeling this with a parameter x would give the second gen composition of purebreds to be 60x/(60x + 40), where x = relative fertility of same-race vs. different-race couples. For example, if we set x = 2 (an extreme value), same race couples would have twice the number of kids of different race couples, yielding a 3rd gen composition of 75% purebreds and 25% mixed vs. the original result of 60% pure and 40% mixed.
If you want to calculate x from data, I’ve seen stats indicating that IR marriages are somewhat less fertile (lower TFR) than same race pairings, though the difference varies a lot depending on the pairing (i.e. white-Hispanic is very close to white-white). Controversially, this might be a function of genetic distance (as it is w/ many other species), but I haven’t seen any hard numbers to this effect.
The second effect which militates in the opposite direction is the likelihood that the intermarriage rate will accelerate. There’s a very high likelihood of major immigration reform legislation being passed in the next five years, which has historically led to significantly boosted rates of exogamy.
I think my parents would be kind of surprised right off the bat, but I think that they could poke around and see if any of their friends had kids, or friends of kids, and if word got around … well, you might get a couple of blind dates out of it. A marriage might be asking a bit too much. And frankly, I don’t think my parents would ever want to have full veto power over my spouse.
Seriously! One of my roommates wanted to know where she could be signed up for an arranged marriage.
Also, re: the statistics showing outmarriage percentages, I’m surprised to see that they’re almost equal between men and women. When I take a look around, I always feel like I’m one of the very few white women dating an Asian male (my boyfriend is South Asian, but this applies for pretty much all Asians I see). It always seems like there are many fewer Asian men than women dating outside their race. But that’s just a general observation.
Maybe I misinterpreted your comments, Al Mujahid, but what’s the “achievement” in fully assimilating?
I don’t know what Al meant by it, but it’s obviously better for a population to feel at home in the US than to keep themselves “racially pure”, apart from the mainstream.
I certainly couldn’t turn to my parents to find me a husband, even if I wanted to; even if they wanted to (which they definitely would not), they wouldn’t know where to begin.
there are traditional jewish communities who practiced arranged marriages. i mean, you hear about it on this american life even.
it’s just easier to hit on desi chicks than others.
but what’s the “yield”?
abhi, sure, i’ll try not to be as shallow.
I always feel like I’m one of the very few white women dating an Asian male (my boyfriend is South Asian, but this applies for pretty much all Asians I see). It always seems like there are many fewer Asian men than women dating outside their race. But that’s just a general observation.
Anj, not sure if you meant “Asian” in the American or British sense…but there’s a huge difference in exogamy rates between East Asians (Chinese, Korean, Japanese ancestry) and South Asian (Indian, Pakistani, etc. ancestry). The former have super high exogamy rates for females and much lower rates for males, while the latter are much more balanced. See this page for much more info (note that the first table is of immmigrants, and the 2nd page is probably the one you’re interested).
Al Mujahid, but what’s the “achievement” in fully assimilating?
people can be “authentically” brown in brownland. the american “identity” is always in flux, and browns contribute some to that certainly, but i for one don’t think that people should attempt to maintain little punjab or calcutta in the use indefinitely. i don’t think that the project here at SM is a big barrier to assimilation to be honest, at least the posters, this seems a much more american enterprise than an “indian” one.
And then there are assimilated, secular “Jewish” communities – well, not really communities, since they’re fully integrated into the rest of society – that don’t have clue 1 about how to arrange a marriage. Most if not all of my traceable ancestors were Ashkenazi Jews, but no yentas here. Furthermore, the “traditional jewish communities who practiced arranged marriages” you heard about on TAL are just as “exotic” to Mainstream America as South Asians who practice arranged marriages. Arranged marriages are not mainstream in the US, no matter who’s doing them.
Arranged marriages are not mainstream in the US, no matter who’s doing them.
well yeah, sure, but the arranged marriage stories are always about south asians and their ways (john stossel even did a documentary about it!). what i’m trying to say is that these new york times stories about browns getting arranged hitches have a soft glow to them. the ones that depict hasidic jews tend to be more ambivalent. but there really isn’t that much of a difference. ambivalence should be a normal reaction. just because people are brown it doesn’t make the institution that much different as when “old world” white ethnics brought customs over that slowly died off.
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blockquote>well yeah, sure, but the arranged marriage stories are always about south asians and their way
Always? You just said you heard about a “traditional jewish community’s” arranged marriages on national public radio.
I’m afraid most stories about contemporary American arranged marriages are going to be about brown people, because they’re the largest group in the US still practicing it, even if less often here than in South Asia.
The NYT tends to put a “soft glow” on anything that has to do with weddings. It’s a pro-wedding bias, not a racist bias. Don’t even get me started on the bizarre ritual of the Big Fluffy White Dress.
damn you, missing end blockquote tag!
oh, i never said it was racist!
my #1 priority is journalists take a remedial course in 6th grade math and logical fallacies. an intro in statistics wouldn’t hurt, but that’s asking a lot.
I agree with gc, about the guy in the NYT article who dumped his gf because his mother wouldn’t have let her live with them. Pathetic. That guy needs to have grown a pair already.
I made the huge mistake of falling for a guy who was younger than me, but more important, was also less experienced, and who put up ads on desi dating sites (while we were still living together) and ended up walking out on me so he could sew his wild oats. Of course, it didn’t help that his conservative south Indian parents treated me like a pariah (yeah, i’m white). I think they actually believe that old chesnut about their 5,000 years of culture and how superior they are because of it.
Oh, and who was he just about fooling around with (he tried to do the deed and could hold up his end of the bargain) when he moved out? A white girl in his office.
On desi guys dating non-desi women, dating is one thing, marrying is another.
On desi guys dating non-desi women, dating is one thing, marrying is another.
i freely grant there are a lot of assholes out there, but that isn’t everyone (cough).
who put up ads on desi dating sites (while we were still living together)
Wow. What an ass.
On desi guys dating non-desi women, dating is one thing, marrying is another.
Don’t let one loser turn you off for good 🙂
Btw, the other possibility is that he was just a standard issue commitment phobe using his family as an excuse (especially given that he was fooling around w/ his white coworker).
what gc said. the fact is, a lot of guys are major league assholes. some cultures indulge this with double-standards. i knew a girl who once dated a sudanese muslim who was banging her while cloisturing his sister in purdah. she was pretty irritated but trying to be non-judgemental. i told her that non-whiteness is no excuse not to be civilized and you got to call people on this bullshit!!!
muslim, brown or for that matter evangelical dudes gettin’ down with ‘loose’ women before settling with ‘respectables’ is par for the course, and frankly an unfortunate structural byproduct of a diverse society where alternative norms exist side by side. these guys are simply taking advantage of energy differentials in the topography. nevertheless, i’ve talked to many people who have personally expressed their distaste and repulsion at this behavior, whether it was a female in such a relationship who was starting to notice bizarre double-standard behavior or a brother or a friend or an acquantaince even. i always ask them, why don’t you call the assholes out on their bullshit!
ostracism and shaming is certainly still a viable option. the scumbags and their fellow-travellers still deploy them.
i have serious qualms (understatement) with the direction of feminism today, but the rough parity before the law and general sense that as an ideal men and women should be judged by the same morality is something that i think we americans worked hard to attain. i don’t have any patience for ‘different cultural values,’ because all that allows is for parasites to game the cracks in the system like above. the romanticization of ‘arranged marriage’ in the USA in some ways fits into the pattern of enabling in my opinion. i will be open to studies that assay their outcomes, but i can’t imagine that they are as successful in the USA as they are in india, where the whole culture (to a first approximation) is suffused in a set of values that makes them normal. my curiosity is particularly acute in the case of men who bring over women from the ‘old country.’ that sort of operation usually seems to be mail-order-bride-in-alternative-garb. i’ve known of one case firsthand (the fatso mentioned above), and it ain’t pretty.