…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?
wow! lot’s of comments on this issue. good to see it happening. don’t know if it would be worth posting if my comments will be read or just drown in this sea of commentary. but good to see it happening. In the end emasculation is tough, and as long as indian guys are without power – then I do not feel that it is appropriate for indian girls to date non-indian guys. if this happens you end up with a developmental gap that is present between the sexes. in a perfect world this would not happen, but this world is far from perfect. the same phenomenon takes place in other ethnic circles, where you see the women date and the men get left behind developmentally. The sexes should move in lock step and women should GROUND the men to make sure they are able to participate in the world and not get disadvantaged due to being minorities. If women dating non-indian men affects the GROUNDING of indian men then I am not for it. especially when those same women refuse to date say black or other asians.
Been there, done that. This might sound a bit racist, but I am extra guarded when the questions comes with a very thick Indian accent.
Not to mention the whole quixtar thing has spoiled my relationship with at least two good friends.
And some people who assume that they get it do stupid things.
I remember a famous incident where her DBD cousin brother (who has been here for like 4 years) punched her in a (what he thought was a) kidding way (except I could see that it hurt) when they met after like 10 years. The thing is, you do not punch your relative when you meet them (I am not so sure that I would punch even my closest friends, but its a kind of a desi thing), and you never ever do something like that to a girl to begin with. I have come to the conclusion that some people do not get it and never will.
Are you counting my exchange as one of them? I think that was more of a flamelet, and it was somewhat bidirectional. Just curious as to your flame classification criteria
Hold up a second, where I’ve seen this going on, both partners are willing participants, by phrasing it as “…performing pelvic thrusts on a girl…” you make it seem like guys just descend on a group of girls and just hump away.
i’d like to ask the mutineers – mainly my sista’s – if they think being the daughter in law of a white family is easier than an indian one. being happily married for four years, i still struggle and chafe at the role bestowed upon me. caucasian americans families dont have these suffocating roles, are they still as close if there is no set of duties each one must perform?
obviously, every family is different — some are more conservative than others, have certain expectations, are very loose, etc. although i’m not married, i’ve been in very serious relationship with white men and knew their families extremely well. i have to admit that it felt wildly freeing to be with their families, where i didn’t have to hide my relationship, could engage with his parents as an adult (as opposed to the perennial youngster), etc. there were a few times when i did feel resentful that i couldn’t just be myself around my own family the way i was with his. i don’t think we can just say that white families are one way and indian families are another. i know mixed couples who get along swimmingly with the indian in-laws, but who have major strife with the white in-laws. the one thing i find easier about having white “in-laws” is that white parents are much more willing to engage in conversation about differences or problems vs. the indian parents with the “our way or the highway” attitude i encounter so often. most indian parents i know have very fatalistic attitudes — they’re pessimistic and aren’t problem solvers. many white parents i know look for the silver lining and try to figure out ways to make things work. i dunno, just my observations based on my mixed relationships and friends’ relationships.
That has to do with the pathetic indian educational system which was designed by one Lord Macaulay to create a native class of english-speaking servants for the British Empire. Amazingly, even after 60 years of “independence” it continues to churn out such “house slaves” in large numbers.
Thats a fine example of this deeply entrenched inferiority complex towards your “aesthetic superiors”, the white europeans. Usually in these forums its the proverbial racist “aunties” who are blamed for perpetuating this slavish colorism, as in the recent post:
Practically everyone here has a similar anecdote about racist, casteist and even misogynist aunties; but no one has yet slapped the crap out of these wicked witches, or even boycotted them. Which tells me that the professed outrage is fake and the evil “aunties” are actually projections of their own slavishness.
could it possibly be because they have fewer things to work out than the desi parents?
Some people in my family may have held alarmingly fatalistic notions, but a good 10 years in the US have cured most of the “my way or the highway” mentality (although it did not always exist, even in ye olde country)
However, to take the argument a different way. You can look at it in terms of karma, that according to some religions there is reincarnation and there are potential relationships between people, or karma that takes place accross races. in these instances connections may be very tight and a relationship is in the natural order of the universe. I had a relationship with someone who was not indian but we were both very well connected. still race and culture presented itself as a problem. She was a redsox fan and I am a die hard yankee fan ( for those of you who do not know, this is like the biggest rivalry in sports), she was a phish head and I was really into pearl jam. So I have called these connections redsox yankee relationships – where the connections are so tight that they seem karmic. I feel these are ok, however, I feel that discretion should be used to make sure that Indian men are grounded and develop with some personal power. they will have no personal power if there are not females there to ground them, if indian women date non-indian men because they are developmentally advantaged – then their brothers, cousins, culture will get left behind. There is a starvving country that needs our attention and indian males in need of personal power. a culture that needs to form its identity in this country and plant its feet on the GROUND.
Ugh, Quixtar! The program that encourages major pressure tactics and in-your-face-ness, and apply that to desis who come from the culture of social pressure? Like trying to escape from a tornado when you run into one of those types
“your cousin is so much prettier than your sister! so much fairer!” Practically everyone here has a similar anecdote about racist, casteist and even misogynist aunties;
Why is this statement between 2 family members considered racist? I just don’t consider the usual exchange, “you’d be so pretty if you weren’t dark” between Indian aunty and her dark-skinned mentoree as racist. I’m sure sometimes when some people say that about others it’s malicious, but a lot of times its nonmalicious aunties making blunt statements about looks. That’s why I wouldn’t feel any need to “slap the crap out of them”; W/o a doubt some of these aunties who’ve said that to me, have also shown me so much love and loyalty.
OT- Do you have to be a Ivy league grad to be featured in NYT matrimonial announcements, or is it that brand conscious people have to put it out there. I only see Investment Bankers, Lawyers or Doctors.
As an engineer, I feel I am a shudra of the occupational caste system.
Eh, you are full of assumptions, aren’t you, Sathya with an “h”? I am a firm believer that resistance begins at home, and whenever I have an officious auntie or sleazoid uncle wax ignorant about shit, I always say something about it. Granted, it’s made me one of the more unpopular darkies in certain parts of the family, but I’m always delighted when relatives I wouldn’t even expect to really hear me actually get it. I’ve found that racist, casteist and misogynist ideas are inherited and therefore so deeply entrenched in people’s neuronal circuits that they never really stop to think about the veracity of such beliefs. But sometimes, when confronted by a little prodding and poking and just plain defiance, they give a little bit. And if you keep jabbing the needles in over time, it can be quite effective and satisfying to watch.
I somehow do not buy this argument when I find that it is a two way street.
I partly agree with this analogy. Yes on most occasions it is non malicious, but that does not mean that the person at the receiving end of this does not subconsciously register it in their mind. One fine day all this comes back to haunt them when they are met with failure.
And I have stood up to one such aunty only for her to assume that I was crazy. Her answer was “you know how I mean it” and she never got the fact that when my cousin sister grows up, she would recollect that exact conversation and feel that she was warned, when in fact there is nothing wrong with her.
Huh?
So now women have the responsibility of helping the men develop their personal power while also securing their own power? Vhat? Aiya, no, nay, don’t throw this back in our faces.
Harbeer, #431:
Long version: My bubble remains unburst. I think you’re seeing high moral dudgeon when I all I meant to convey was wry amusement with a joke that I freely admit wasn’t startlingly deep. Seriously, I didn’t mean to impugn the nuanced discussion of interesting topics. If anything, the statement applies to me, as I posted on neither the outsourcing nor the baby murder thread.
Short version: Dude, chill. I was joking.
Speedy
i went to an ivy league school, and the elitism that comes out of that environment is such a turn-off (boston even has an annual ivy-league formal(wtf?), and joint mixers for any given I-L school alum are almost always with other I-L alum clubs). i went to upenn, and approximately half the desis at penn were in wharton (biz school), which is disproportionately large, considering wharton only comprises about 1/4, maybe less, of the student body. i also remember that of all the people who transferred into wharton from other schools within the university, they were mostly desis (girls). the high wharton representaton among desis partly had to do with an interest in the subject matter, but i would say the prestige and earning potential had a lot more to do with it – only a handful of those desis were in a concentration other than finance. i think a large part is familial emphasis – if their parents were well-off, implicitly (or explicitly) they are choosing a profession that is guaranteed to give them at least that same level of affluence with which they grew up. i respect this sort of ambition, but the superiority with which is often comes, i can do without..
vic – not necessarily ivy league, but yes, NYT has a huge ‘prestige’ POV when choosing the featured couples. and apparently, the superficial trumps the substantial, since even ivy leaguers who lied their way into the ivy leagues, are ivy leaguers, nonetheless.
could it possibly be because they have fewer things to work out than the desi parents?
ummmm not necessarily … i just think that they have had more experience working things out and respond to obstacles in ways i understand, having grown up in this country. and maybe by more experience, i mean experience gained over generations. one of my ex-es was 1/2 lithuanian and 1/2 ukranian; his parents are the 4th generation in the US. even his great-great-grandparents shared a similar mentality to my parents, but with time and experience with different people and problems, they’ve modified their outlook on battles worth fighting. i share a vocabulary with white parents that my parents don’t have, so even if my parents have the capacity to understand and solve a problem, the whole discussion is much more strained. (add to that my dad’s partial deafness and it’s a real hoot).
I somehow do not buy this argument when I find that it is a two way street.
I do not feel that those numbers tell the real story. My personal experience speaks diffently, race/power/sex. There is an imbalance of power between sex and race that exists amongst the indian people. yes it is a two way street but that does not tell the whole story. For instance I got excluded from select circles during high school, but guys in those select circles would gladly approach or date a female member of my family. IF this phenomenon continues where the women in my family do not compensate for the element of racism – then the culture falls apart. there must be a compensation for sex- based racism amongst the indian people. If this did not happen amongst the jews they weould not be where they are today as a people. It is inappropriate to be any other way, unless – like I said before their is karma. In any event there must be compensation for sex based racism.
Complete and utter nonsense. You are obviously totally clueless about “neuronal circuits”.
Razib, that list of recently married couples is sweet. Everyone’s obviously just falling in love all over the place, race be damned.
I want to share a situation with the only people who’ll get the funny spot I’m in. A few years ago I went to India with a bf, for a year. He was irish-canuck. My old relatives adored him and started to nag about when we were getting married. Bf and I, who were together six years, broke up two years ago. I never told anyone over there (my dad passed away, and my mother and I do not discuss my personal life at all anymore – long story).
During my last trip, I just blissfully ignored the issue, never mentioning the ex, and to my surprise, no one nagged. I got the distinct impression that everyone was walking on eggshells around the topic. Then one day my uncle brought it up and my aunt shushed him violently. It came over me – they were being ‘sensitive’ to my delicate situation, because they thought that I must be dying to get married and the ex was stalling. Meanwhile, I am well over the ex and have dated a dozen guys since. I have another trip pending and am not sure how or if to break the news. On the one hand, I have no issues with being taken for a long suffering martyr, as long as no one forces me to talk. On the other hand, I am a bit annoyed that there is this immediate assumption that I am pining and victimized. I think I should come clean, but being 35, and having brought two guys over there so far, I have a feeling I will be shocking someone or other if I do. Any thoughts? Am I imagining all this? Are my relatives just peculiarly non-nosy?
Milli and HMF, thanks for the responses – M, thats what i thought, just never having dated any white guys (yes, i was raised in the states) seriously enough to meet their faimilies, i was wondering what it was like to walk on the wild side.
Yes on most occasions it is non malicious, but that does not mean that the person at the receiving end of this does not subconsciously register it in their mind.
I’m sure it depends on the extent of the comments, how degrading the comments are or if they are degrading, and also the nature of the relationship with the people having the exchange.
Now if it was someone who wasn’t Indian saying that to me, then I’d probably find it racist –
I was just thinking the above sentence. But I realize that I contradict myself b/c I also think this: it doesn’t bother me if some men prefer women who look different than me; so if a guy who happens to be white isn’t really into dark-skinned girls, than it’s no different to me that if a guy likes taller girls than shorter girls.
I realize my statements make no conclusion – I guess what is racism to me is contingent upon so many thing.
DQ, although I can’t say my family is particularly non-nosy, I’ve continually had to remind myself while reading this thread that the statements I’ve been making about “Indian parents” are really applicable to the ones who came here in the 60s & 70s. to my family back in india, i’m somewhat of an unknown entity. since i’m the “amrkeean” one, they don’t know what or what not to expect from me. i think if i were to marry a non-indian guy, they would be much more comfortable with the idea than my own parents (with the idea only; i can see my indian relatives being 100X more uncomfortable around the guy and his family, mostly because of language issues). basically, my family in india has lower expectations for me. i also feel like my family in india has more of a “so be it” mentality, whereas my parents, intent on preserving their culture just-so, are frozen in an era that has long passed them by. i have often thought that if i took a white boyfriend to india, my relatives there would adjust and deal just fine, whereas my mother would be on the brink of a coronary the entire time.
on another note, re: cognitive dissonance and languages, i have to admit that i only feel 100% kinship with people from my community (iyengars), which goes way beyond language familiarity. that does not mean that i am uncomfortable around others or that i disrespect them AT ALL, but that in others’ houses or in mixed groups, i am constantly picking up on the subtle differences between our customs, even the most trivial ones. i think i do have a mental list of whom i think i’d click with, based on culture only; i certainly do not use it as a filter when dating, though. i do chuckle when my non-indian friends ask me if i want to marry an indian guy/my parents want me to, because i do agree with whoever it was upthread that said that dating desi can be in itself a multicultural endeavor.
I’m a DBD, and I can identify with the above reaction by Faraz in #311. And I’ve heard it from many a DBD too, I must say. Speaking as a DBD parent of two young daughters under 10(does revealing this get me thrown out of SM, by the way?) I am bemused that its all turning out very differently for my twentysomething nieces and nephews across the USA.
I’m really surprised by the level of race/ethnic identification that ABDs appear to have (maybe SM is a biased sample) with each other. Compared to growing up in Delhi, Bombay or Calcutta back in the 1960s and 1970s (sorry to bore you with the old-time old-country example)where getting an English language education effectively deregionalized you, the same does not appear to be true, in terms of deracination, for the children of those of us who migrated to the USA.
Silly me, I migrated to the US thanks to listening to the siren call of all those 1960s liberal values. Based on the comments on this thread, it is too bad that assimilation appears to stop at race.
Do you ABDs feel ghettoized because you are Indian, despite your having walked straight through the door into the US upper/middle class? Because if you do, my spouse and I are going to have a long and agonizing rethink about our youthful decisions long ago to emigrate to the US, and whether we really did our little girls a favor by doing so.
Here’s one that closes the desi females doors:
intelligent, attractive, multi-degreed desi who does NOT want kids.
Talk about a “run for the hills” situation. It seems that procreation (based on my experience) is a prime directive of every desi woman I’ve encountered (except for my female siblings). Also in my experience, the only people who seem to be ok with no kids are white women.
having brought two guys over there so far, I have a feeling I will be shocking someone or other if I do.
I am AMAZED by this — you are so brave or (I know I don’t know you) but to me foolish. Your family does seem incredibly liberal. I was so scared to bring my ex (who was white) over to INdia, even though we were engaged at the time…I didn’t want to do it unless we were married.
My sister who married an Indian (we’re indian by the way) brought her fiancee over to India and visited my grandmother and my grandmother was annoyed that she would bring him when they were not married or weren’t immediately planning to get married.
I’m so glad I didn’t bring my ex to India, b/c now he’s an ex. I got such shit from my crazy father when my engagement broke off (he called my a prostitute); It gave me a taste of what the malicious gossip-mongers would do if they’d met my ex and then we broke up (as is what happened)
I think Pankaj has hit on an interesting topic here. I think what he’s trying to say (apologies to Pankaj if I’m citing him and this isn’t his claim–consider it mine, then) is that if:
1) Desi girls find dating white easier than Desi boys do (b/c of differential reactions to them by whites, I think, is what he’s suggesting–granted parental pressures may well cut in the opposite direction, as many of you have aptly noted–but, Pankaj could be correct about the net effect).
and
2) Desi boys therefore tend to marry back from India,
then
3) the American-based Desi community will “advance” less quickly than if it practiced endogamy–i.e., ABD’s married other ABD’s.
Obviously, we’d want a lot more evidence of the truth of all 3 claims–but, to me, it’s a heck of an interesting theory, and has enough of a soupscon of truth to it that I’ll claim it as my theory if Pankaj disavows.
yeh mate…certainly have. as i stated earlier, i wont go into who ive dated and what not. 🙂
american birds who study abroad in europe are “open.” european mates: “they (american birds) like different countries to enter and exit them.” A bit slaggy, innit.
Sathya, I wasn’t being literal about neuronal circuits, just trying to make a point. But…never mind, anyway. You’re obviously a humorless troll.
You should postpone your “thinking” until you have educated yourself. Since you seem to have bought into the three-race theory (caucasoid-mongoloid-negroid), what race do you think the “dravidians” belong to?
The three-race nonsense is nothing but 19th century crackpot racial pseudo-science that laughably lumps desis (and australian aborigines) along with white europeans as belonging to the same caucasian race. In reality whites do not see desis, from north or south, or east or west, as racial cousins. Which is why the American Census Bureau classifies all desis, from the brownish punjabis to the blackish tamils, as non-caucasians. Ditto for the american media and the general public.
Which is also why whites practiced apartheid against desis, along with africans, in South Africa; and in America before the Civil Rights Movement.
i’m not sure that is so indicative of pakistan. of all the desi friends i know, the one person who is vehemently against inter-racial marriages is a pakistani friend. and it’s not just him alone – all his school friends from home feel the same way – i get a lot of shit from them when i voice the opinion that i am open to dating non-desis. moreover, he himself admits that this attitude was given to him by his parents. i’m not doubting the liberalness of some social circles in pakistan (i have enough other pakistani friends to know this, and btw such liberalness does exist amongst desis here, too) but i think you are positing too much of a generalisation of both cultures.
i’ll bite, No Desh. apparently, my inclination towards not having kids is seen as ‘unwomanly’ and ‘cold.’ btw, how many degrees? because when i started my most recent one, my mother lamented that no man would want to marry me now.
Why do people from India keep saying things like this? Why WOULDN’T an educated, aware, and well-informed ABD know and care about what specific region or part of India his/her roots lie in, and the associated cultural trappings? Did you expect that they/we would just blend into some vaguely ‘brown’ identification with no finer nuances or subtleties than that? Certain words like ‘deregionalisation’ or ‘cosmopolitanism’ have a superficially charming and positive tone, but not if it comes at the expense of knowing who you are.
come on now! i’m in the middle of IM-ing one satya and reading comments from two sat(h)yas. this is too confusing!! someone has to go to sleep. maybe me 🙂
Milli,
Interesting points about the no-or-low expectations of family in India… also – very much agree about dating a desi being, on occasion, a multicultural endeavour.
PS – God, I’m sorry for what you went through. You should not have had to deal with that – the ‘prostitute’ comment just made my gut clench. My family is not what I would consider particularly liberal (orthodox bengali brahmins etc.), but they are well-adjusted, sane and laidback. They don’t get twisted into knots over these things; bad marks in school from any of us cousins would have had them hitting the roof, though. I am more concerned with causing sadness and worry by revealing I am man-less.
No Desh – I’m a female desi who has consistently refused marriage-and-kids. They’re out there.
pankaj @ #467 said:
Let me get this straight: You want reparations because white guys like your sister better than white girls like you? There’s a word for that, you know.
I suppose the “mechanism” by which step 3 would work (again, here, I’m trying to draw from Pankaj’s argument, but the same caveat applies) is that the “Desi boy” will “do better” career-wise if he has an ABD wife than if he has one from the pind.
Now, that’s a harsh claim (obviously seems anti-DBD!) and also it seems weird to ask the ABD women to “sacrifice” for the “betterment” of the ABD community. I mean, I could shoot tons of criticisms at it–illiberal, etc. etc. etc.
But none of those crit’s (those that I can come up with, at least) means it’s not true. It might be true, but we could also say “so what”–I’ll go w/ individualism and marry who I best can. I sure think that’s what I’d do. . . . But it is really interesting (to me at least) as a theory. And, I realize I haven’t established the truth of the claim, either.
because when i started my most recent one, my mother lamented that no man would want to marry me now.
Two years ago, I went out to dinner with 3 friends — a 24 y/o BS, 27 y/o JD, 27 y/o MD, and me, 26 y/o MA working on a 2nd MA at the time. We all grew up going to the temple together. JD told a similar half-comical story about her mother proclaiming that her professional degree made her less appealing to potential suitors. MD then related that she hadn’t had a date in over a year. It then dawned on us that the elder 3 of us with advanced degrees had been single (and having crappy dating experiences), but little BS was happily involved in a relationship.
Fast forward to last week. JD — single with no potentials in the last two years! MD — single with no potentials in the last two years! Me — single with no potentials in the last 2 years! And BS? On her way to getting engaged! 🙂
Maybe there is something to ak and JD’s mothers’ concern … (kidding, kidding. I think?)
Closing in on 500, with 756 not far behind. Barry had better pick up the pace… Speaking of mixing… are there still plans for future installments in the series of posts on half-desis?
Harbeer–is it really so dumb? Or have I gone crazy? It sounds like justice to me. Maybe I have gone crazy or something.
Milli–forward that MD’s contact info. over–I’m a degree whore (and want to make NYT too!!).
It’s not racism – that’s the problem – it’s choice. It implies that someone like myself chose to date someone white because of some disdain for Indian men. I wouldn’t have turned down a date with a hot Indian man – I was just never approached by one, or never met one that I was comfortable approaching.
Just want to say I’m so glad I’m done with the dating scene. Also, as a white women, I’d just like to say, I’m not slutty and I’m not for “practice”. I did know that such attitudes existed when I met my fiance. This will probably p.o. everyone, but I’d mostly known ABDs before and they seemed to have that attitude so I pretty much avoided desi guys. But, fiance is DBD and has always been uber-respectful. Skewed sample maybe. But, I had a hard time when we first started dating because I thought, at some point, he would dump me because he wouldn’t want to “get serious” with a white girl. But, that didn’t happen. And his family has been great too. They at least seem to really like me and don’t have any problem with our getting married. I feel really lucky.
And, I’m not fat, but I’m not a tiny petite thing either – and this isn’t an issue for him. Maybe growing up in the U.S. does that to guys – makes them want the tiniest, stick-boned women they can find. Does it make them feel big and manly? I don’t know. And, frankly, I don’t care anymore. 🙂
Can I come to the wedding? Two childfrees finding love touches even my cranky old heart.
Milli – are you all maybe just working too hard to go pick up guys?
Developmental differences do exist. For instance, like I remarked before – I was excluded from certain circles in high school due to being brown and for no other reasons. This contributed to my development and I, like so many of my brothers, have a more difficult time in connecting with people as a result. Likewise, I have been discriminated against by many white women – since an early age. this has made it difficult to connect with white women. As a result I am developmentally delayed when compared to my white counterparts who do not face such discrimination. Now if indian women do not treat me in a manner that is consistent with who I am, from the family that I come from – I lose my identity. If indian women then date the same white men who I have a hard time connecting with, have been excluded from hanging out with, then my identity gets forged as someone who is developmentally delayed. Before there was potential to emasculate me, when an indian women does not compensate for discrimination that I have to face in terms of my development then my identity gets screwed up. I faced a situation identical to this where someonoe close enough to be a cousin dated a close friend. she would go nowhere near me ( I got left out of the crowds that were select in high school) and I got emasculated in the process. prior to that I was insecure, after she dated my friend and did not compensate for discrimination in her treatment of me – I was emasculated and lost valuable grounding.
No, no, you have “nice” personality. ; )
Pankaj, Amen, brother! This sounds like my life too, and I’m not embarrassed to say it.
A N N A:
That was a nice pic of u. You remind me of Ileana 🙂
It is wrong not to compensate for sex-based racism or discrimination in the treatment of the males in a community by the females. As I have stated before – racism, discrimination by the majority does exist in many forms, some subtle; some not. IF there is not compensation for that discrimination, for the lack of power that is resultant then the masculinity, the development of the males in the population gets affected to in many cases – non-notural levels. It sucks to be emasculated and that is exactly what will continue to happen if there is not grounding provided by the females in the population. Furthermore, to ignore the discrimination that exists and sate casually outside your race when the world is in the shape that it is in may often be irresponsible. Often women who engage in such relationships compromise their integrity in the process.
Am I the only woman who is really upset by this? What am I missing in this that is not offensive?
490:
It’s not racism – that’s the problem – it’s choice. It implies that someone like myself chose to date someone white because of some disdain for Indian men.
It’s a choice that has economic consequences. This is Pankaj’s point, IMHO. Now, it’s a whole different question what, if anything, to do about those consequences. Personally, I’m enough of a libertarian to say, “go do your thing, I’ll do mine, what you call “community” I call “coercion.”” But that doesn’t mean Pankaj is wrong to point out the negative economic consequences certain dating patterns have.