…because according to some commenters, apparently, it isn’t. Suddenly there are commentS about hot Desi girls choosing white guys over their own— and I emphasize the plural aspect of “comment”, because that’s what caught my attention– this wasn’t some one-off virtual rant. Frankly, Mr. Shankly, I’m shocked. While some of the people who are leaving the eyebrow-raising statements seem to be new, I’m fully aware that the normal pattern of Sepia engagement is:
Random Googling –> Sepia? What the-? –> Hmmm, interesting –> Lurking –> and then finally, posting.
If these anti-miscegenation fans have followed that tried-and-true process, then they’d be aware that there are more than a few members of the Mutiny community who are the products of interracial unions; I can’t imagine that they’d be so tactless as to disparage such pairings when they reflect someone like Siddhartha, Desidancer or SemiDesiMasala’s ancestry.
So, maybe these are just mischief-instigating trolls, having some wicked fun via drive-by hate-spewing.
Or are they?
I think there’s more to this– and that’s why I’m publishing this post. Let’s have it out, then. Some of you seem to be in the mood to REALLY tell us what you think, so here’s your deluxe chance. Almost everyone here is anonymous. 🙂 It’s safe to be honest.
The following comments were left on my post about a woman named Aarti being chosen as one of the cuter people on the Hill:
hillside: Also I’ve never dated an Indian girl either, probably partly because so many of the hot ones like the two on this list are into white dudes. [sm]
Sheetal: (referring to comment above)
I’ve noticed this too. What is up with that? [sm]
Sheetal followed that comment by excerpting the following portion of the Hill article, making sure to highlight certain significant words by “bolding” them.
Skipper is a native of Chicago but both parents are from India — something that had worried her when it came to the issue of marriage. The handsome man in church soon became her boyfriend, but he was American and Caucasian, far from what she thought her parents would ever accept.
Okay, loud and clear. Jamie Skipper is Desi and she married a Caucasian (never mind that Desis are Caucasian, too). Yet another commenter seemed to agree with hillside and Sheetal:
Kannan: its interesting that you bring this up..We have parallels with the asian community. I’ve heard/seen that before. Hot lil Korean spinner would rather hook up with tall lanky white dude than someone from her race and its kind of common because I know a lot of my asian brothers who want to date from their race gripe and bitch about it:) Its almost like an invisible social hierarchy And the same goes for desi guys, I have a lot of friends who date white girls just because they think it brings them more social value” Look at me FOB minority guy pulling from the majority race” However for me its never really been race, its whether I was attracted to the person or not and it so happens I have never gone brown 🙂 [sm]
Kannan, I think your final sentence encapsulates how most of us feel, but that doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t explore the other sentiments I’ve highlighted.
SM is at its best when we are honestly, openly and sometimes painfully hashing out the issues that our community/others refuse to acknowledge or discuss; I didn’t put this post up in order to invite you to pillory “hillside” and “Sheetal”. They weren’t abusive, they were blunt. I wrote this post because I wanted to know how the rest of you felt. The thing is, I am almost certain that they aren’t alone and that more of you agree with them than we realize. Maybe it’s time to call ourselves out.
To be brutally honest, I’ve been there. Years ago, I crushed on Desi guys who only seemed to “swing one way”; I’ve been let down gently by being told that:
If I did date Indian girls, you’d totally be my type.
I’m just not attracted to dark skin…I like pink nipples (!) (this from someone even darker than me)
and the best one, ever,
Um, I could never go out with you because it would be like dating my sister. White girls don’t remind me of relatives.
And what do black and Asian girls remind you of? It’s so telling that they almost never factor in to these cringe-inducing statements, it’s always white girls who are “preferred”, which invites doubt about the sincerity behind someone’s “type”.
Predictably, each of those instances left me feeling wounded. It didn’t help matters that every time my Mother came across some seemingly eligible, compatible (read: also raised-away-from-Mallus) ummarried boy, his mother would sorrowfully lament that
“He already has girlfriend. White. Enne chayum?”.
Mom would come home, grumpy. “The second they graduate from law or med school, they run after a vellambi. Chey!”
I knew why my Mother said something so annoyingly ignorant. Encounters with unavailable, suitable boys combined with input from her coworkers, a good portion of whom are African-American, to create an explosive cocktail of hurt; soon, my Mother absorbed that odious complex about “successful POC going white”, especially after the cutest brown resident at her hospital took up with some “white nurse who wasn’t even pretty” instead of someone Indian/Pinay/Chinese/Black (all of whom were/are allegedly gorgeous, in comparison). When they heard about the brown and white coupling, my Mother’s African American office mate snorted, “typical” while Ma shook her head and sighed. She told me all about it, bitterly.
“Mommy, maybe they’re in love?”
“Podi, penne. Stop being blonde.”
“Mom you’re being unreasonable.”
“You are never going to find a boy. There are no educated Malayalee boys with three degrees. If there are, they are only interested in the white girls.”
“I don’t care how many degrees…remember? I like engineers. They usually have just one.”
“Chinammamma is right. That’s a recipe for disaster. Boy should have more degrees than girl-“
“- and be three years older, and three inches taller and blah blah blah. Spare me, Ma.”
“Make fun all you want, those things are accepted for a reason- they work. You want your husband to resent you?”
“I thought you didn’t care if I got married?”
“I don’t. It would save me money. I’d rather travel than waste all that, or put the down-payment on a house for you. I have nothing to prove to your Father’s friends and I’ve never been interested in outdoing them. I just…saw Mercy’s son and thought he was so cute. My grandchildren would have been so cute!”
All right-y, then. What’s hilarious is that my Mother had to alter her theory a year later, when “Mercy’s son” got engaged to a Punjabi girl he met in law school:
“Sho! Anyone but a Malayalee penne, eh?”
“What, Ma…now there’s a hierarchy? White, then North Indian, then South?” 😀
I didn’t really make peace with any of this until I met an adorable white guy who confessed that he liked me…only to hear me gracefully blurt out that I only date brown boys. It’s true, I can’t help it. I always have gone brown and probably always will. It’s just what I am attracted to– black hair, dark eyes, tan skin (fur optional).
The epiphany I had at that moment, while staring in to wounded blue eyes and rapidly batting blonde lashes, brought me closure and a bit of enlightenment; duh, no one has to justify whom they are attracted to, but hopefully they are acting out of their purest feelings– we can’t help whom we fall for, but we can call ourselves out if we’re nursing some bizarre colonial hangover or other therapy-requiring-issue (full disclosure: I have a family member who ONLY dates white guys, because they are the polar opposite of her strict, very Desi Dad).
There are other aspects to the complicated issue of human mixology, too– one of my dearest friends is finally in a blissful relationship. With a black man. After being repeatedly rejected by Desi guys for her tan skin and curves, she has given up on making her parents’ dreams of an Indian son-in-law come true. Instead, she found someone who will accept her just as she is; she has decided to do what makes her happy– and I am thrilled for her. I’m also broken-hearted that essentially, she has to keep her love closeted. Additionally, I would enjoy beating the fecal matter out of the last Desi she went on a blind date with, who brilliantly said, “you’d be so pretty if you weren’t so dark!”, while recoiling from her. But I’m protective and furious like that.
Look. This stuff is real. It happens. Let’s talk about it, if you are in the mood. I’m opening a safe space for exploration, if you are so inclined. You don’t have to be P.C. or fake, you just have to be respectful and courteous; controversial topics are impossible to fisk if we’re not, right?
before too much more talk of sex imbalances:
http://www.asian-nation.org/interracial2.shtml (census data)
U.S.-Born or 1.5 Generation:
Asian Indians
Ethnicity of Husbands (of Asian Indians) (25,980) Asian Indians 69.2% Other Asians 3.7% Whites 20.5% Blacks 1.7% Hispanics/Latinos 4.3%
Ethnicity of Wives (33,179) Asian Indians 69.9% Other Asians 4.1% Whites 21.1% Blacks 2.5% Hispanics/Latinos 1.6%
unlike other “asian american” groups there isn’t much of a sex imbalance.
Thanks, Razib. 🙂
I’ve never been attracted to Desis, but all my Desi friends are only serious in their relationships when their significant other is a Desi. If they are with someone of a different race, it’s a more casual thing. I think part of it for me is that I was raised in a predominantly white neighborhood, went to a predominantly white school (and a Christian school, at that). I just can’t relate to Indians as well as I can to people of other races. Actually when I think about it, it’s hard for me to open up to my Asian friend and to my Egyptian friend, too. There are undoubtedly these common beliefs and values held in the Asian/South Asian community that I don’t share. Then again, I see these great discussions with people on SM, and I consider the possibility that I haven’t met enough Desis to formulate a strong opinion. In conclusion, I’m still thinking. I’ll get back to you 🙂
After being insulted by Desi guys for her tan skin and curves, she has given up on finding one who will accept her and decided to do what makes her happy— and I am thrilled for her. I’m also broken-hearted that essentially, she has to keep her love closeted. I also want to beat the fecal matter out of the last Desi she went on a blind date with, who brilliantly said, “you’d be so pretty if you weren’t so dark!â€
hm. well, where i live there aren’t many brown people. almost every time i see a brown person who i manage to hear if they have an accent or not, if they spoke english with an american accent and were “with” someone that person would be non-brown (white or east asian). sometimes when i would see a very dark skinned brown girl with a blondish white guy i would smile. honestly, the main reason is that i assumed that at least she wouldn’t have to deal with stuff about her skin color all the time from someone that pale, they know what they like. the statistics above don’t suggest much of a sex imbalance, but i do wonder about the possibility that some brown women in the USA are simply dating white guys because there is less skin color color judgment from that angle because to some extent brown-is-brown.
p.s. my gf, who is white, actually bitches on occasion that out kids will be too white-washed and pale. sometimes the grass i greener….
p.s. i once checked the above numbers by looking for indian surnames in wedding registries and it looks above right. obviously that is going to selected for people more likely to outmarry or higher SES (they were somewhat higher end dept. stores). but in any case, i didn’t find evidence of sex imbalance for brownz there either. i don’t think the emasculation of brown guys is as extreme or pronounced as east asian guys. there was an article in the UC berkeley paper i think about a professor talking to asian american female students who offered that they preferred whites and brown guys over other east asians. the latter angle was something that surprised the professor.
Chemistry Isn’t Color-Blind By Lakshmi Chaudhry: But even after a decade in this country, I was still taken by surprise when the first white person asked me if I’d had an arranged marriage — all because I’d mentioned that my husband was Indian. It’s taken me a long time to understand that in America, my sexual choices are indelibly raced.
A chirpy white woman I once met at an airport lounge said to me, “I don’t care about race when it comes to dating. It’s all about chemistry.” Smug in her liberal credentials, she didn’t understand that color-blind attraction is a racial privilege. Even as an increasing number of folks of color find love and companionship outside our community, it’s a luxury we simply can’t afford. Whomever we love — and of whatever hue or ethnicity — our desire has to run a treacherous course fraught with fear, self-hatred and anger.
I loathe this distinction, and nobody understands the look of “you make me want to puke” on my face when people say this. Well, I would be a lot more passionate about this if I weren’t recently singled, but when I was dating a white guy I got comments from my fellow desis like “I didn’t think you were like that” and “why don’t you like indian guys anymore?”
Wake up people.
It’s not about race. It’s about the person that lights your fire and brings out the best in you. I don’t know how it is in the rest of the US, but ’round these parts, I got tired of putting up with the foolishness of my local Malayalees.
When I was in high school (conservative Christian academy) my mother found out that I was going to a formal event with a white guy, who I happened to be friends with and have the very smallest of crushes on. She sat me down, put on her best ‘concerned’ look, and told me that she and my father did not approve of interracial relationships. To this day, this talk makes me laugh my ass off. As a smart-mouthed teenager I thought, “then why did you raise me as an American?” But because of this I found myself posting a profile on the indian websites, or giving that guy on the metro a second look; trying to find that perfect boyfriend to bring home to my mother.
Well, nobody is perfect.
Asian Women: Up For Grabs: Girls the class I taught generally gave me two answers to this question. The most obvious one being White men, as people around Berkeley and other cultural areas can most recognizably notice. The second most common answer from the girls was Indian men (South Asians). When I asked the girls why the preferred these two ethnic groups of men, their responses centered around two areas: economic status and physical attractiveness.
In terms of economic status, the Asian girls said that both white men and Indian men in our society (especially here at Berkeley), were viewed as successfull, intelligent, and confident. These are all qualities that the Asian community values.
Next, the girls said that they found these two groups of men to physically attractive. When I asked why, the responses I recieved were varied. My conjecture in this case would be that both groups tend to share the same sharp features (Greco-Roman noses/eyes) that the media tends to value.
With Gender Gap, A New Dating Game: Out of the 978 Filipino UC Berkeley students, 610 are women-and the gap is not unique just to Filipino students. In every ethnic group on campus except among whites and South Asians, women outnumber men.
It’s not about race. It’s about the person that lights your fire and brings out the best in you. I don’t know how it is in the rest of the US, but ’round these parts, I got tired of putting up with the foolishness of my local Malayalees.
but it depends on the person, right? race isn’t any specific thing but a cluster of things. if you have certain aesthetic preferences, no matter the ultimate reason, that might result in biases in who you would date. but it isn’t always about looks either, so it depends on the total package. as a mutineer told me once, all things controlled brown is better, but all things always aren’t controlled. and sometimes there are “deal breakers.” some people might only want to date someone who was of their religion. for most brown american hindus that means that their S.O. would almost certainly be brown (yes, there are non-brown hindus). of course, there is reality. noah feldman was raised as an orthodox jew, who observant into his oxford days. nevertheless, somehow he ended up with a korean american. all things controlled i’m sure that the 20 year old noah would have said, “just jews please.” then he met his wife and all bets were off. never say never.
mfunnierthanyou
Maybe you’re just being funny here, or satirizing a self-hating-and-therefore-racist desi, but this is a classic racist statement. There are two aspects – one is the sheer blanket-ness of the remark, and the second is the clear enunciation of race as the discriminating criterion.
Whenever I’ve had a problem relating to other Indians, it’s usually been a class or a cultural issue, and this has happened, shall we say, not unoften. Yet, I know it has nothing to do with race, and I wouldn’t be caught dead saying something like this – and that’s even leaving aside the issue of whether Indians do constitute a race, or whether race itself has any kind of reality besides its social construction in the American context.
despite it being a weekend, I predict 150 comments on this thread by sunday evening. 😉
In high school I saw all the Indian dudes chase after the white and Asian girls, and the white and Asian dudes chase the Indian girls although there were a few couples of the same race). All the Indian guys I grew up with were like brothers, so we didn’t see each other “that way”.
In college, the Indian guys I knew all dated stick-thin Indian girls with perfect hair and makeup. I didn’t wear lipstick until I was 20, and haven’t been a size 0 since the age of 12 (thank you, Punjabi genetics). At some point, I decided that I’m not the girl Indian guys want to date. The one guy who did like me wanted me on the side until he worked things out with his white ex-girlfriend (and I wasn’t attracted to him either).
So, since college, I have dated actor boy, tattooed ex-Straight Edge boy, and, currently, a Viking. All white. Indian guys I’ve met barely look at me, but white, black, and Hispanic guys seem to think I’m really pretty. I’m not shallow or suffering from low self-esteem – I don’t need to be told constantly how pretty I am. But in my experience – and I am NOT saying this is the case for all Indian guys – Indian guys like tiny little skinny things that look nothing like me. I KNOW this is not true for all, just my experience.
I will probably marry the man I am dating, because we love each other and he treats me so well, provided Papa doesn’t freak out and chase him out of town with a shotgun.
Also, I have lived out-of-state since high school, so maybe this wanton freedom has damaged me, as my mother would say.
So, to all the Desi men who say Desi girls date only white guys – where were you between the years of 1997-2003? 😉
chachaji, would be ok if they replaced “race” with “ethnic group”? is this a semantic issue?
A character from Paul Beatty’s White Boy Shuffle observes, “When a black man marries a white woman, his life’s achievements are multiplied by exactly zeroâ€. **Pulled out of my cobwebbed memory. Actual sentence may be slightly different.
Yeah, Anna, I got that lecture too. I don’t knwo how to break ti my parents that Viking boy only has a Bachelor’s while I am hard at work on my Master’s.
Maybe it will help if I tell them he will still make more money than me (I am going into social services)? But he works with his hands, so that’s already strikes 1-3.
Anyway, I thought it was just my dad who wanted me to marry someone better educated than me.
12:
Indian guys like tiny little skinny things
Interesting point–I am guilty as charged–why are my prefereces so stereotypical here–media?
Anyway, I thought it was just my dad who wanted me to marry someone better educated than me.
my mom is like that too. of course, she has a high school education while my dad has a doctorate, so she practices wut she preaches 😉
I am not a fan of blaming it all on the media. I’m sure it plays a role, but it’s not the whole reason. You know better than I do.
Did I dodge that well enough? 😉
Any time you blanket-ly ‘rule in’ or ‘rule out’ people based on aspects of them that they can do nothing to change – you display racism or ‘ethnic prejudice’ – it’s not a semantic issue, it’s very real.
over in singapore, about 15-20% of indians marry non-indians. within this group, most of the men marry chinese ladies, and the ladies marry whites. it’s been steadily increasing over the last 20-30 years- in my circle of friends from uni, all of the desi men, except me and another guy, married chinese ladies.
there’s always concern over what kind of ceremony to do, etc- sometimes, things get resolved, but not always, and there’s long-running friction over living choices, menu at home, bringing up kids, home decor (“lucky”/”unlucky” colors and items), etc. You can read some of the discussion here to get an idea: http://www.singaporebrides.com/forumboard/messages/36737/261821.html and http://www.newsintercom.org/index.php?itemid=436
One particularly singaporean issue is that the major govt-sanctioned social service agencies are organized by ethnicity, so that creates some concern over how things will turn out in the future with more mixed marriages. One bizarre way the Singapore govt does is to mandate that kids will retain their father’s ethnicity. So, you end up seeing kids who look totally Chinese, but being classified as Indian cos their dad was Indian. Very Singaporean way to resolve ambiguity- come up with a blunt knife which meets the end-goal but makes no sense at all 🙂
Chachaji,
I don’t care if you think I’m a racist, I just want you to think I’m thin.
🙂
perhaps, although pop-media (American) doesn’t include many images of stick-thin Desi girls. You might just be imposing the pan-racial stick-thin archetypes that you see in popular media and then using that as a filter for Desi girls that you encounter.
Either way man, bodies come in all different shapes: there’s a big difference between stick-thin and muscled thin
That muscled picture – my eyes! Aiya!
Gah! Finally! I’ve wanted to discuss this for AGES…but it’s such an eggshell topic…thank you Anna!!
I grew up far away from Indians, but I still love ’em (physically, for the most part). It could be because most of the horrific prejudice and racial discrimination I’ve ever experienced in my life was inflicted upon me by white people. I’m still pretty scarred from a lot of those experiences and I’m afraid they still might influence my sexual apathy towards the white men who have asked me out. Oddly enough, the “now you’re a dark one” snide comments from Indian people were a lot more bearable, but the sexism was so unbelievable I ended up becoming a feminist.
Anyway, the first boy I ever felt an unbelievable magnetic attraction to was another desi boy who was pretty removed from the South Asian Student Association culture as well and never once commented on my skin color or the fact that I’m a pretty hardcore tomboy. There were a lot of other appealing qualities about him that I can’t sum up in a post and to find such a rarity was a breath of fresh air!
My other fears regarding this, and I hope someone can find a way to gently address them because I’m at a complete loss, is that despite my removal from Indian people, I am very close to my Indian culture, my family, philosophical, historical, and theological explorations when I actually go back to India. I love being Indian, but I don’t think I have to express it by adhering to some group mentality. I want my children to experience a similar culture to the one I’ve experienced–but I certainly won’t force it on them. A large part of my family is comprised of marriages to individuals of many different races and while I absolutely adore the cultural diversity and exciting conversations we can have at gatherings, all of my cousins that were born of those marriages have completely rejected their Indian culture. Every single one. I don’t know if I can handle that in my partner or offpsring, but that’s just me. My uncles and aunts are pretty mournful of the whole situation, constantly bickering about who lost whose culture in the process, but have stayed together “for the kids.” There’s a lot of bad blood brewing because of all this and it’s painful to watch.
I know a lot of instances where this hasn’t bothered either parent, they have raised a child who has rejected or accepted both cultures and is very emotionally stable on their own and for that I am glad. People deserve happiness and should not be weighed down by the guilt of something as malleable as cultural propagation or race guilt.
I don’t think I said anything offensive in this post, but I’ve seen so much heat up over innocent comments that I’m apologizing in advance.
Well then how about the Indian kids who completely reject their own culture, even though both parents are immigrants? I have seen that too. The risk is always there. I think if you leave the country where your culture is predominant, you have to expect that your kids will not approach the “mother” culture the way you did.
It’s a touchy subject for sure.
12:
Indian guys like tiny little skinny things.
Really? Where are they? I can tell you, my 5″7, 102 lbs. self never got a DATE through college or beyond (1993-1999). Mama Saira actually took me to a pundit, who said I needed to gain 20 lbs for “suitable boys” to marry me. And, yes, I am still single, though proud to have gained 3 lbs since learning of my muharat.
I’ve had this conversation with my flatmate a few times over the passing months and I’m astounded that she would only date a man who of Indian extraction (she’s a little more precise than that, but for now I’ll leave it out), she’s says she’s just not attracted to any other ethnicity.
Where as me? I don’t care what race the fella is … my ex-boyfriend was/is white but as far as I’m concerned it was a conversation involving Shakespeare and Star Wars that clinched it (we were talking about doing the three parts of Henry VI as … nevermind). Every now and then I had to explain the odd cultural reference, but it made me a better Indian if that makes any sense.
When we were younger, it was expected of us, by our parents to marry someone of Indian origin but when my brother’s first marriage fell apart, my Mum gave up on that ideal and just wanted us to be happy, whomever we fell for (BTW, my sister-in-law is Chinese and their kids are a beautiful mix of both worlds).
For me anyway, race/ethnicity/whatever you want to call it, isn’t a factor in choosing a partner … although being a bit of a geek helps 🙂
I have been with a white girl for over a decade blond (since I was 20..married). It has its ups and down, but one thing that will never be the same is the relationship with my parents. Its very formal….and I notice that my parents visit my other siblings a lot more because they feel more comfortable there. There may be exceptions, but if you go white, its hard on the in-law relationship, especially if your parents have lived majority of their lives in India.
I couldn’t possibly get a better looking and sweet tempered girl ….but if I had to do it again…and knowing what I know now, It might have been easier being with a brown desi gal.
Ah, definitely! Sorry, I should have added that. It’s so complicated.
Saira,
You just need to hang out in the Village. 😉
And then you can be too skinny for everyone. I just joined a gym and my mom warned me not to get too skinny. On the one hand I am overweight, but then I can’t get too skinny or all the aunties will wonder why I stopped eating.
It goes back to self-imposed standards and societally-imposed standards, and how the two mix and blend and how we get caught in it. As I said above, Indian boys don’t only go for skinny Indian girls, but that was my experience, so it clouded my self-confidence (which is normally through the roof).
BTW – PanditJi told my mom I shouldn’t marry anyone who needs a Green Card.
everyone does reject a portion of their ‘culture’ in some way or other–especially if it’s considered illiberal in the political culture they experience during their youth.
Has no one ever run into the religion factor? I found that to be an even stickier issue than my rakshasa-like complexion in the dating world. By ‘sticky’ I mean that if it is an issue, it can usually never be overcome by any amount of reason/logic.
For what it’s worth, I have not met many single desi women who share my counter-cultural values and alternative lifestyle. I’m not saying that I was ever looking for a carbon-copy of me–I am not attracted to people who cannot challenge me–but I just don’t have the time or patience to explain and justify all of my idiosyncracies to everybody. My dating pool is necessarily limited to the subcultures I inhabit–where there is a dearth of desis of any gender.
I’m pretty crazy about my current lady. She has ancestors who came over on the Mayflower, but we understand each other so well that we can communicate through telepathy. I know there are plenty of beautiful radical desi ladies out there–just not in my world when the timing was right, I suppose.
LALALALALALA I can’t hear you. 😉
I have thought the same thing many times – wouldn’t it be easier if I just dumped Viking and foudn an Indian dude? But I cannot imagine my life without him – it’s been such a good 4 years – and I think if I were goign to bail, I should have done it 3 1/2 years ago when things got serious.
I am sorry to hear about your difficulties with your family. It must be painful.
P.S. The lady I speak of is a high school dropout who just got her PhD. I’m only just working on my masters.
Yeah, I’ve had a lot of desis (including my own mother!) make uh, subtle digs towards my “too dark” complexion… http://photos-d.ak.facebook.com/photos-ak-sf2p/v76/215/108/1572900185/n1572900185_30129587_6390.jpg maybe I should try some Fair & Lovely? 😛
For me liking/dating someone has nothing to do with their ethnic group/race. I used to think I had a type, but I don’t. To me the clincher has always been an amazing conversation and a kooky sense of humor. Someone I can banter with, and these men come in all races! I would prefer an Indian guy just because I enjoy the common background and talking about the quirks of our culture 🙂 Currently I have the biggest crush on an Indian boy.. sigh.. he is so cute!
mfunnierthanyou, have you been exposed to desi culture? i ask this because i grew up in a very similar environment – my school, and neighbourhood, were and are largely white, and i only had one desi friend growing up. on the other hand, i was heavily exposed to desi culture and groups – almost all my parents’ friends are desi, trips every year to india, classical music dance etc. however, my day-to-day life had very little desi-ness to it. it was only when i went to college that i became exposed to a desi social circle, which helped me understand desiness beyond the tamil/telugu culture (and overcome my mother’s prejudices about all those other desi cultures!). but more than that, it made me realise how varied, or similar, our upbringings have been in the states. so while i cannot relate to every desi person i come across, i also cannot relate to every other person, in general, i come across. i never considered that i might have more, or less, in common with somebody based on ethnicity.
what i find most interesting about your statement is that you think all desi people will categorically not have anything in common with you, just because of their skin colour or ethnicity. for instance, you say you are not really desi because of your background – did you ever think that other desis had the exact same backgrounds and the same mentalities as you? because there are plenty, so i find it odd that you think of yourself as non-desi, but fail to entertain the possibility that other brown people might feel the same about themselves.
personally, i would say race doesn’t matter to me, though i hear vic on the family bit. it would be rather tragic if my soulmate were muslim – i’m almost positive he would never be accepted by my family.
3 1/2 years is just the honeymoon stage hon. You will have fights about raising kids, financial issues etc (there are always a compromise to be made in ‘inter-cultural’ relationship)….so when you go through a rough patch, you don’t have the family pressure to make it work. In many cases they want to pull you apart. My mom is a superb ‘mind game’ drama queen playa, and she tried he best to get her way (which was to dump the gori)….but her antics only made me determined to make it work.
Good luck to you.
Or you could have ended up with a brown desi gal who hated your parents and told them so. Which would have made things even worse. And if you are wondering, true story from my family.
There are absolutely no guarantees in life.
hee I so did that!
Thanks. I am also determined to make it work – my parents suffered through a miserable 20 first years of their marriage to make it to the golden years – if they weren’t Desi they would have divorced. So if they did it, I can do it, cultural pressure or not.
OK–I’ll admit it, since everyone else here is so open-minded–it does bother me a bit when I see a hot Desi with a white guy– I’ve never been able to do as “well” (in a conventional SES sense–looks,$$,education) with white girls, so I don’t want the Desis disappearing on me–there–I said it!
Oh my god – that was so my brother’s first wife! But she did it very passive aggressively, ended up blaming me for being more loved by my own parents than her. Oh the things she did, horrible, horrible woman, just nasty.
For me, it was never just a brown versus not thing. I gotta contend to a Paki Muslim Mom – – which in my mind is 100x worse than a mom who is just interested in making sure that the grandbabies are the same shade as herself. Being raised in the south all my life until I moved to DC — which is more northern than southern in my brain — I’ve never had access to, or involvement with pakis, indians, or even generic-non-brown-Muslims. So now at 26, with an education (one degree mind you – – is that ‘three degrees, 3 inches thing true???), and stability, I have to contend with a mom who would rather me not marry than to marry a non-brown non-Muslim girl…it really narrows the playing field down a lot seeing that I know zero nice normal non-cluuby, even-keeled, likes-to-read, easy on the eyes,
But for me I think its also a matter of personalities and backgrounds. Every desi girl I’ve met in the past 5 years has been of the fancy pants variety – –
40:
AMEN TO THAT. I’ve seen blessed Desi-American marriages and horrible Desi-Desi marriages. About equal both ways.
It is really frustrating to watch what happens to your parents when you date a non-Indian. It’s completely arbitrary on so many levels, and yet so ingrained that they just cannot do anything else. It takes a special kind of couple to bear that.
<- Not special enough …
and considering how many problems there are within marriages back in india (the majority of which are not only with fellow indians, but with people of highly similar linguistic-religious-regional bakgrounds)it’s easy to see how little the background matters, and how much more the personalities do.
rob – a bit hard to swallow, but thanks for the honesty.
I dont care what color the person you go out with is, just as long as it isnt for the reason of thinking your own race is inferior to the one you are going out with.
“I date __________ guys/girls because Indian’s dont have ________” “I dont like Indian’s because unlike ______, Indian’s are backwards” “I only date ______ guy’s because I read a article on Sepiamutiny.com about condom’s being to big on Indian guys.”
If that is the case then you suck at life and that is your own fault.
This is a topic close to my heart so allow me to rant a bit, all in good taste.
One reason for this could be that the work environment and social circles that Desi Americans involve in are predominantly white. If they are not exposed to many black or other Asian girls, then the chances of them dating or marrying them will be less. Whites are still a majority in North America and thus the chances of dating and marrying whites will be higher.
Encounters with unavailable, suitable boys combined with input from her coworkers, a good portion of whom are African-American, to create an explosive cocktail of hurt; soon, my Mother absorbed that odious complex about “successful POC going whiteâ€, especially after the cutest brown resident at her hospital took up with some “white nurse who wasn’t even pretty†instead of someone Indian/Pinay/Chinese/Black (all of whom were/are allegedly gorgeous, in comparison). When they heard about the brown and white coupling, my Mother’s African American office mate snorted, “typical†while Ma shook her head and sighed. She told me all about it, bitterly.
There’s quite a number of sites http://www.blackwomenneedlovetoo.com/ bemoaning the fact that black men are dating and marrying white or other non-black women. Frankly I think it’s being exagerated because outside of New York or California, the majority of black men we see are with black women, but you often read or hear comments from black people about how brothers are with “ugly” white women for no other reason than because they are white, as if being white alone is some sort of marker of upwardly mobile. No mention is ever made as to whether these black brothers with “ugly” white women are drop-dead-gorgeous-Halle-Berry-worthy-top-notch men or less than ordinary themselves. Yet because they are not with black women, they are somehow expected to justify that by dating an Angelina Jolie if they don’t hang with the black girl next door. Does that make any sense?
And those very same black women will describe their own ample figures as “voluptuous” but the same size white woman will simply be “fat”, as described by Veronica Blakely http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=176249381 in her book, “I Want What Most White Women Got – A Black Man.” Face it ladies, fat is fat and voluptuous is voluptuous, two different things no matter who it’s on.
For someone who has done alot of inter-racial dating, but has never hated upon a man of my own race who does not choose me or hated upon the woman he did choose, I can say this all stems from a superiority complex based upon a deep-seated inferiority complex, i.e. really, really low self-esteem. Such low self esteem causes one to write delusions of grandeur such as; ONLY A BLACK WOMAN http://www.geocities.com/jywanza1/Onlyablackwomen.html
Sorry Honey, there are plenty of non-black women doing exactly the same things, but we confidently exclude the following; “ONLY A BLACK WOMAN can put a black man and his non-black date on pins and needles just by walking into the room”, because we have no need to put other people on pins and needles, we are confident enough to make others feel confident too!
If you are centered in yourself, happy and confident that you are being the best you can be, you will not find the time or neccessity to berate the men you want http://boycottblackmen.com/ or the women they chose.
Ladies (and men), work on yourselves first, then everything else will fall automatically in line.
THE SECRET
As for some people not appreciating those who date outside of the community: Maybe that is a fear or frustration they feel over their own situation? Those who don’t care may know a lot of people who have dated out and that is just normal to them now, whereas vise versa for those who are shocked/angered by it. Maybe there is a bit of racism there; a feeling that other races are stealing our men/women? Maybe some people have grown up mostly around non-Punjabis (assuming they are Punjabi) and so they REALLY DO associate Punjabis with family members, and they have trouble shaking that feeling? I know someone like that. Maybe they have grown up being told white is beautiful by either family or media and thus aren’t attracted to darker girls? Know too many like this.
Or maybe it is a bit of all of those things, which to me seems to say that have a lack of awareness. My experience tell me that attraction is not innate, it is a learned behavior. I never found Asian girls (Chinese/Japanese/Korean/Etc) attractive nor black girls. But this was basically because I was never around them growning up. Once I was around those groups a lot more, I started to find people attractive within those groups.
I think after about 350 comments, we’re gonna come to the conclusion there is no one answer. Its just based on how you grew up, and who you grew up around. Thats just what I’ve learnt through my experience.
So who is wrong? Those who date almost EXCLUSIVELY outside of the community, or those who hate on them? I think they both probably have some issues they need to deal with!