…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?
Well, yeah. Free speech and all.
Sorry man, but it just sounds like sour grapes to me.
I still do not get what he is saying and if what he says is true, I think the onus is on both sexes to “fix” the problem. Not just women. No?
Well, yeah. Free speech and all. I just don’t see it.
what does this mean?
Am I the only woman who is really upset by this? What am I missing in this that is not offensive?
all I tried to say that indian women who engage in relationships with men or circles where there is not a racial balance, meaning there are racial shenanigans, can compromise their integrity. This girl at my last job was dating a co-worker of mine who was at the same time using a racially linked aspect of me being to harass me. by dating someone who is racially imbalanced there is potential to compromise one’s integirty. It is horrible to see my cousin drool all over my “dirty” best friend while totally ignore me because of race. that is all that I am saying.
Spicy munda- that was a good one 🙂 to put it in other words – Americans have a low entry barriers 😉 When I was younger my ambition was to lay at least one woman from every single country in the world. Did not even make a statistically significant sample (n<30) 🙁
Have now settled for visiting all the countries. If you are still in the game good luck 🙂
Uh – ‘economic consequences’, Rob? What does Bill Gates look like to you? The cool kid? If anything, being excluded seems to drive certain types to greater success.
Pankaj, for god’s sake, stop brooding, get an interesting career, become successful, collect art, write poetry, grow your hair long, get your ears pierced, build some muscle – do whatever (it doesn’t take a lot) and you will get some women, alright. The onus is on YOU to keep yourself from being ’emasculated’. To think women should behave in order to prop you up is medieval rubbish. When does a real man need a woman to make him masculine?
Karthik, It’s not just “sour grapes” if it is a pattern (Pankaj needs to establish this), but it sure as heck sounds like my experience growing up in Westchester, NY in the 80s. Collective individual choices have aggregate consequences. It’s not wimpy to note them. What to do about them is the core problem of political theory–it’s like Nozick’s “Wilt Chamberlin” example. Is it “sour grapes” to have any taxation of Wilt? Maybe, but not in all plausible political theories (ironically, it is in my favorite one, but me doubts most of you are libertarians).
pankaj and rob: you guys really do sound like sour grapes to me too, as karthik said. Whats this bullshit with economic consequences to hte community anyway? Its not like the entire desi population maintains a joint account or anything. Even if you want to look at it from a group dynamic perspective, if white guys marry brown girls, it would only spread more browns(or fractional browns) into the American population which should be a positive thing. And you are just talking crap, because unlike your personal experience, the reality is that, as many white girls marry brown guys as do white guys marry brown girls. So my suggestion is to stop whining and give a cheer to all the brown sistas who married white guys(you could also cheer the brown guys marrying the white girls, but it somehow seems like something you dont care about so much anywya).
OK, I really want to understand this, because I am reacting instead of thinking and then speaking, so help me understand.
Integrity could be defined as “adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty” (thank you dictionary.com). So if I am in a social circle with racial imbalance (which I am), and I date someone non-Indian, I am compromising my integrity – that is my moral and ethical principles or my moral character. Is that what you are saying?
And when you say your friend is “dirty” – what does that mean? Not racially pure? Because if so – well then, I can think of a few other historical figures concerned with racial purity.
504
I meant, for example, it would be coercive to try to ensure Desi women marry Desi men in the interests of the “community.”
But that doesn’t mean Pankaj is wrong to point out the negative economic consequences certain dating patterns have.
It is not only for economic reasons it is for the greater good. I did not think of starving people economics. It is about development, society moving beyond race. society moves beyond race when all races are empowered. races will be empowered when the men or males are protected. I think the crux of what I am getting at is girls should not date a guy who won’t socialize with her brother. If girls are dating guys who are discriminating against their brothers, or looking at them as not the son of the girl’s parents – but some emasculated being – then there is something wrong with the relationship.
Not always.
Can I likewise say the onus is on YOU to keep from being exoticized? No, because the emasculation is nothing behavioral based, rather based more or less on skin color.
.
have you been called a “paki” or “sand nigger”? Or mingers rejected ya? perhaps a wank could do some good
Chicagodesideva, No–Pankaj is saying it’s wrong if you go about in racially UNbalanced circles. So, you’re OK. He means if it’s whites plus Desi females.
Oh no, Camille, I thought we weren’t going back to the “down there” hair topic (forgot the previous discussion link). 😉
Maybe its because people from India (hmm, PFIs, useful acronym…must use in future) are actually sincere in their bewilderment?
I don’t expect that my ABD kids would not know or care about where their roots were, but what I’m saying is that some of those cultural trappings are more than one generation removed from ABDs and I would would have expected these details to be not in the ABD identity, or at most at the periphery of it.
And you misread me-my expectation (and hope) was precisely that y’all would not fit into a general ‘brown’ American identity, and it looks like, looks like, this (racial) identity is perhaps as much your own creation than that of the larger non-brown country you live in.
As for “deregionalisation” and cosmopolitanism (not a word I used) I’m not sure why they are only “superficially charming”. To my mind, its the you-are-who-your-parents-and-grandparents-were classifications that are superficially charming. We are all authentic products of our time, place and experience, and my point is that India specific regional/caste (in my case, Tam-Brahm) identities had become inadequate and limiting descriptors or classifiers even for me (and many, many others) as we were growing up in post-Independence India. And my concern for my children is that that sort of limitation of label demon may be resurrected, whether by non-browns or ABDs, after skipping a full generation. I would be sad if my children’s sense of self were to be narrower than mine or that of my peers, and my concern is that they would miss out on some of that freedom of self-identity that let my generation emigrate so fluidly to a very foreign land and culture. I would be sadder still if the loss of freedom turned out to be of their own making.
OK, this is the only part that makes sense though… I grant it to you that a brown girl shouldn’t date a white guy who is racist… (And herein does exist a gender imbalance that you sort of allude to: because this will never happen the other way round – example: a racist female of race A will never even consider looking at a male of race B, whereas a racist male of race A might still be interested in conquering a female of race B inspite of his inherent racism)
See, that’s not what I got from the racial imbalance statement. I agree – Desi girls should not date racist guys of ANY color – white, black, whatever. What I’m having a difficult time understanding is, if I am the only Desi girl in my social circle in which no one is racist, and I date a non-racist white man, how is my integrity compromised?
And apologies for the double post earlier.
There seems to be this big brouhaha over Indian women who hook up with white men, but from what I’ve seen, the usual mixed-race combo tends to be an Indian guy with a white woman. Hmmm, wonder if the double standard’s just because of the classical gambit of women being the repositories and preservers of cultural/ethnic/what-have-you purity, meaning that true exogamy is looked down on when it’s a woman who’s shaking off the manacles?
Again, just in general, as a retort to this whole emasculation thang, I think a lot of Indian guys–in a purely superficial, carnal way–are actually very sexy. My experience has been that their ideas of what makes an Indian woman desirable are oftentimes too limited to include the likes of me, however. And yeah, I ended up with a whitey, but I’ve also dated Latino, black and East Asian men–all of whom seemed to grant me an appreciation I never did find with Indian guys. In the end, while I may have initially imagined myself with a brownie, my heart succumbed to the highest bidder 🙂
what I am talking about is power. Personal power. power that men need to get dates, to have high-powered jobs, to take care of their families. POWER. Indian men today, growing up face dificulties in attaining personal power. their race and skin color is a hinderance. that same race is not so much of a hinderance to indian girls. As a result their is the potential for a developmental gap to exist where indian girls develop more in a western sense than indian guys. I feel that this phenomenon can compromise indian culture and is something that needs to be addressed given that the world is the way it is today. moving towards a world that transcends race can only happen when all races are empowered and there should be a movement in that direction. jewish girls I do not think dated much outside of jewish circles when there was anti-semitism prevalent. if they had, jewish men would not have been able to develop. Today there are instances of indian women dating non-indian men while there is sex based racism and discrimination. I am personally against this as I feel it impedes the development of their brothers. This is in my oppinion a low-class thing to do.
HMF,
My argument was not that social exclusion always gives rise to a drive for success, but that it often does. Hence Rob and Pankaj’s ‘economic consequences’ theory is a lot of hogwash.
Why should women modify their dating patterns to combat some supposed perception of desi men which may bear no relation to the actual lives/behaviours of these men? I don’t ask desi men to help combat ‘exotification’ by taking desi women off the wider dating market, so that they are simply no longer available for exotification. Instead, I refuse in a thousand ways to conform to preconceived notions of me based on skin color. Over the long haul, messieurs, it works.
Rob and Punkaj, I don’t want to invalidate your experience. Sounds shitty—I’m sorry. Maybe I’m so far out of line that I don’t see my own privilege, but guys, listen up—-Nobody can emasculate you without your permission. And this wounded, entitled attitude that you’re espousing—it is NOT going to help your prospects.
PS @ #459 said:
Whether the intent is malicious or not, such a statement 1) couches a subjective standard in a false-objective light; 2) has the effect of making somebody feel bad about something they have no control over; and 3) reveals a perceived hierarchy based on complexion.
Pankaj @ 457 said:
That’s it, you’re grounded. The lot of ya.
Speedy @ 464: Sorry. I read your joke as sanctimony.
pankaj and rob – are you guys serious? perhaps the so-called ’emasculation’ was not a result of some slight from social circles, but your inability to take charge and do something about how things turn out in your own life? you can’t blame all desi women for something that some desi women ‘did’ to you. and as if desi women don’t have a hard enough time finding a man of any race/ethnicity, now we have to restrict ourselves – possibly eliminating the prospect of ever finding the absolutely best companion amongst this limited pool – because we have to pay ‘reparations’ for a so-called ‘injustice’ of which we were never a part? please. and i’m sorry to say this, but both of your perceptions are entrenched in the belief that the slights from women, and men, were about race, and not something more specific to your individual personalities/beings. this is really hard to accept.
on the other hand, the comment about rejecting a guy who rejects one’s own brother because of race – fair point. but if the dude is willing to marry a brown girl, race, possibly, is not the only factor behind the bro-bf tension. though i think some of you are saying that the opinion of rown woen vs brown men is different from the POV of non-desis?
HMF, i’m not sure the exoticization analogy holds – exoticization is instigated by another (i.e. the other’s perception)- it is up to the brown woman to accept this as a self-description, whereas emasculation, as used by pankaj, seems like an internal perception – the result of actually having accepted that position in society. or is there some other POV on this emasculation?
I agree with this part. This means your sister is dating a racist white guy who just wants to conquer her. And thats not good for her either. Rob is the only guy who is left to clarify now
OK, this is the only part that makes sense though… I grant it to you that a brown girl shouldn’t date a white guy who is racist… (And herein does exist a gender imbalance that you sort of allude to: because this will never happen the other way round – example: a racist female of race A will never even consider looking at a male of race B, whereas a racist male of race A might still be interested in conquering a female of race B inspite of his inherent racism)
this is getting to the heart of what I am trying to allude to. this is a racial imbalance. keep this thread going.
The therapist in me says that you had a shitty, shitty childhood and your sister did little to acknowledge it or support you. Worse, she dated one of the guys who fucked with your head. I’m sorry. That’s awful. I cannot imagine doing that to my brother, and it upsets me that your sister had that little regard for you.
But my brothr didn’t have a curfew and I did. I had to fight to do Western things like go to prom, whereas my brother has many many pictures taken by my parents of him on prom night. I have lots of examples of how my brother had more access to develop more in a Western sense (not that I was chained inside the house – I had my fun). So, I have to disagree with that statement.
So now it’s a lack of integrity and low-class? Aiya, that’s it. I need a break from this thread. I’m off to watch the rest of Venture Brothers.
This has some truth to it, but I don’t think there’s really much can be done. In an evolutionary sense, the female mind is the female mind, whether it’s encased in a white body or a non-white body. From an evolutionary POV they will be naturally attracted to those they perceive as having a greater chance for physical/social/emotional survival. For a white woman, race plays into the decision far moreso than for males, as males are more interested in fertility fitness values – and there goes your ‘hinderance’
See, that’s not what I got from the racial imbalance statement. I agree – Desi girls should not date racist guys of ANY color – white, black, whatever. What I’m having a difficult time understanding is, if I am the only Desi girl in my social circle in which no one is racist, and I date a non-racist white man, how is my integrity compromised?
if you are a desi girl and none of your friends are racist or discriminatory then if you date a non-desi guy, you are not compromising your integrity. but I want you to look at this situation from some desi guy out there who is not developmentally viable in your circle of friends because he was discriminated against, who is your kin, your paizonne. your families are connected, in india you would be perfoect for each other. by you dating a white guy, that other desi guy may be emasculated. he needs grounding and you are his grounder. so his grounder is dating someone outside of his comfort zone because he is developmentally delayed to you, his likely match. and by you dating a non-desi, he goes from being insecure to emasculated, because he has been stratified developmentally. had you grounded him prior to dating a non-desi guy, he would have had a chance at life, marriage etc.
ak wrote:
3 down, 2 years to go for 1 more, and possibly 1 more down the road. An extended relative told one of my sisters how selfish and callous she must be for not wanting kids.
And as far as degrees and education goes, one of my biggest fears (this has been true in the past) is getting in a relationship with a great woman (great personality, heart, looks, and intelligence), but ultimately getting intellectually bored. I have seriously thought about this and no, I don’t think it’s a case of wanting something new, etc. or having a fear of commitment (I suspect many of you were thinking this). Two people have to grow together, and if they don’t do it at the comparable rates and in somewhat similar areas, well… I’ve had many Ivy friends who were really driven by a cause/desire for intellectual betterment, then got married, had kids, and now they talk about parent-things whereas all those previous goals, etc., have been primarily discarded/set aside and have become complacent. That’s just not what I want.
DQ wrote:
I’m glad to see that there are at least 2 folks on SM that think similarly! I notice a similar thing with religion. Most people in the US that I’ve run across would rather you be anything than an atheist. So to be an atheist who doesn’t want kids…that just evokes fear!
Nina P wrote:
Nina, I’ve never taken you as cranky! By the way, I remember about a year or so ago you had listed the name of a website for people who didn’t want kids, and I thought I had bookmarked it, but couldn’t find it. Do you by chance still remember it?
So now it’s a lack of integrity and low-class? Aiya, that’s it. I need a break from this thread. I’m off to watch the rest of Venture Brothers.
sorry I will try to find a mmore harmless word in describing behavior that is often just what people fall into due to being displaced and wanting to adapt.
Punkaj @ #521 said:
Man, my experience is so different from yours. I often tell white people that I am SO MUCH more priviliged than them. (Both my parents immigrated from Punjab in 1972. I was born here.) Not only do I have any privilege afforded to white people that I would want, I can cross almost any racial line barred to white people and joke with African Americans, Latinos, Filipinos, Jews, Vietnamese–race is just a NON-ISSUE in my life, except as a joke.
I got so much more love than my sisters growing up–more than any white/black/whatever kids out there–way more than I deserved, just because I was a boy in an Indian family. Makes me want to puke. Anyway, if this was also true of your upbringing, I have news for you: you are not entitled to be coddled and babied by the world. Be nice to your mom–she may be the last person to do that.
I meant emasculation as general perception of American/white society towards Indian and Asian men, which in fact does exist, (jokes like this wouldn’t be funny otherwise) despite the testimony of some here that say it doesn’t (for them anyway).
We can go back and forth about whether it’s really internalized or externally imposed, but I find that women expect men to be better psychological warriors in this sense. We need to have that battle hardened demeanor, where we can approach 100 women, get rejected by all of them, and have it not effect our self-perception and feed us with some kind of societal expectation of how we look and act, the same way women are affected by self-image issues.
I think I got as close as what i wanted to say in post # 529
This is getting too bizarre, Pankaj. Please explain whether ‘grounding’ is a euphemism? And why is a woman the ‘grounder’ of a man? You are either the last of the romantics, or a member of Siv Sena trying – rather clumsily, I might add – to infiltrate SM.
The ‘developmentally delayed’, dis-comforted, ’emasculated’ brown dude in your example above just needs to latch on to the nerdy white girl in the lab coat. Kay? I’ve seen it happen too many times to count. And from what I can tell, most brown guys have NO problem getting chicks of all colours.
in 532 harbeer talks about being loved and race being a non-issue. I feel this is wrong. I still feel the effects of racism, of being mistreated and what it does to one’s personal p[ower. if there are no indian women where one is – does HARBEER have the power to date white women? Power is important racism is about linking race to personal power and then emasculating someone. power must be instilled in the brown population of people today.
HMF, no arguments there. i do think that when it comes to dating, the burden for initiating many things – and not just the first conversation – is on men, and i suppose with this comes the greater brunt of rejection (this has consciously inspired me to be more pro-active in dating and shoulder some of that burden/pressure) which can have such greater effects on the self-perception. i think many women shy away from this burden by accepting the traditional gender roles when it comes to dating. sad, but it is still the reality in many, even most, cases. on the other hand, going beyond that traditional role might yield them some demeaning monikers, to which many, like milli, have attested here.
this entire thread has overly emphasised how much dating can/does suck. sigh. and fucking hell.
Sorry for my flippancy Pankaj. There does seem to be a lot of personal pain in your last comment. I do agree with others here, though, that the best way to fight such experiences is to become as strong, as interesting, as fearless as you can. This is all within your control, not anyone else’s. And wouldn’t you rather focus on that, than attempt the impossible goal of getting desi women to date only desi men?
So much for TV. I had to come back and see what I was missing.
So no one here can invalidate any racism you suffered – I want that clear. I agree it can affect your feeling of personal power.
Racism is about the dominant race (in the West, whites) using their privilege to disempower minority races. Ok, I get that too.
Yes, as he and Melbourne Desi and Spicy Brown Munda have all demonstrated. This is where we move from blaming others to empowering ourselves.
Look, I’m not saying institutional racism doesn’t exist, and that it impedes social and economic development for racial minorities. But there is still rom for personal action. If you said that you tried and tried and still got beat down – I would not be arguing with you because I would write it off entirely to experience. But as Harbeer and others said before, you have to step up to the plate and swing already.
grounding is a word used a lot when talking about race and sexuality. a person may not be racially grounded or sexually grounded, or both. the brown dude in my example was not raciually or sexually grounded but came from a good family. due to his lack of grounding his inheritance was lost, his stock lost because he was emasculated because there was a lack of grounding. he got emasculated because he did not have the power to socialize in the same circles as his likely match. there was a developmental gap between them, and he got stratified. emasculated. grounding would have prevented that emasculation from happening.
Pankaj: In 532 Harbeer talks about privilege. He argues that ABD Male Privilege may supercede even White Privilege in its BRUTE, AWESOME POWER. Do not doubt the power of Harbeer–the limits of his capabilities have yet to be discovered. The depths of his depravity have yet to be plumbed.
Look man, I don’t know much about you and your life, but I’d put a lot of money on the fact that your life is pretty cush compared to most other people. You’re emasculating yourself, my friend. Grow up and take some responsibility for yourself. Nobody owes you jack. Instill yourself.
dq, it is not about just the brown people – it is also about the yellow people and black people and latin american people. just until what was mentioned earlier goes away, or until the effects are eradicated from society; where a racist white man would still be interested in a woman of another race. until the effects of that phenomenon go away we should be careful of the development of males in the minority populations. until we move closer to one people.
word. pankaj, i don’t even know why you’re looking to these (particular) brown women for grounding – they seem to be not worth your time or attention.
harbeer – i read your short story – very nice. i do love the submissions to switchback – there are some real gems in there.
Maybe Pankaj should seek out white women who share his interests. I hear lots of goris enjoy fishing…
Thank you ak. We aim to please.
Punkaj, take Branch Dravidian’s advice and find some hippie chicks, yaar–for all ours sake. Just be nice to them–they’re not for practice.
Whoa whoa, I haven’t read most of his comments, they certainly are out there in some instances, I dont fully agree with all of them. But seriously, what kind of nonsense is this? Oh I see, he’s male, so the bootsraps best be pulled, no Q’s asked. Would anyone ever say something like this to the myriad of women who’ve told stories of how they were called ‘fat’ and ‘dykes’ and other such things? He was advised to build muscle, how would it look like if I said, “well you were called fat, then lose weight, take responsibility for yourself” I’d be drawn and quartered.
Secondly, how in the blue lagoon do you know what this persons life is?
HMF – building muscle was offered as one option. Others were writing poetry and collecting art. I’d like to see those offered as suggestions to WOMEN for attracting men. Ha!
Harbeer, I guess a lot of it is a question of baselines. Sure, I’m better off than most Americans, grateful for that, etc. But, I do feel that, in my professional and social circles, appealing white women put a discount on my being Desi, while a lot of appealing Desi women date white men. I know there are some statistics presented by Razib (way back at #1) that suggest this is unusual. Maybe that’s me, maybe it’s a diff. bet. ABD and DBD (his stat’s combine US-born and 1.5 gen.), maybe it’s that the measured variable there is marriage, and I’m griping (hopefully not whining) about a perceived “discount,”–again, sure I could marry a white woman if I wanted to and wan’t picky about SES factors. But, w/out question, a lot of Desi men that I went to school with, work with, or socialize with go back to India to get a bride.
I took Pankaj to be arguing (among other points) that marrying the bride from India (rather than an ABD bride) would, on average, lead to lower lifetime SES for the ABD man. That would appear to be true if I were to reflect on my own situation–perhaps it’s not true overall, but it seems plausibly true. I’m certainly not arguing for doing anything about this phenomenon (should it exist)–but I think given the topic of this blog-post, it seems interesting to mull over.
I think we should stop feeding the troll. And if Pankaj isn’t a troll, and he really is just so emotionally-damaged that he sounds like one, Harbeer is right. No one can make you inferior without your consent.
He doesn’t get sexual reparations from brown girls just because he’s “delayed”; that’s just insane– and not our problem. Whoever mentioned his Mother, might have nailed it– just because she went above and beyond to coddle and swaddle, we don’t have to. No one owes him anything, except for respect and courtesy, and he’d get more of the former if his rants weren’t so illogical, irrational and just plain weird. Truth hurts, just like self-imposed emasculation, don’t it?
HMF: I don’t think you’d be drawn and quartered if you said, “well you were called fat, then lose weight, take responsibility for yourself.” We’ve already seen statements such as that in this thread.
Secondly, you’re right, I don’t know what this person’s life is. I expressed a degree of sympathy. But from one ABD male to another, I do think I have some authority to comment on his manipulative, entitled, whiny, woe-is-me attitude that wants do deny anybody else their fun until we wash his feet and annoint him and feed him burfy and bring him a fair-skinned, doe-eyed maiden or three.