…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?
Camille, HMF,
are both of you approaching this from the perspective of being raised in two-parent, heteronormative households?
reason being, there are some of us men who were raised solely by women (mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters, etc) and find the idea of devaluing any work performed by our guardians to be a bit foolish as we were taught to do, and performed, many of the commonly devalued ‘domestic’ tasks.
yea
First of all. I never said anything about keeping men down, in this particular context, especially not by any active participation from their female counterparts. Rather, it’s just ingrained thinking, it’s beliefs carried out ‘just because’, but in this particular regard, one could describe it as a privilege. I dont understand why this is so controversial or tough to swallow, when women collectively say things like, “we weren’t allowed to go hang out with our friends and our brothers were..etc..” I dont question that.
Also, I believe the point regarding orthogonality was new.
And my point is that a man’s work isn’t heavily “accounted” in the desi parent sense, in so far as it just provides a damn paycheck, and doesn’t make the neighbors go “oh my god, he does that?” Whether or not it satisifies the man’s intellectual curiosities or anything of that nature, is a distant 5th place.
As for wages, yes, by all means, equalize them for equal work/experience.
HMF, to clarify, I’m not trying to be pugnacious or taciturn. I probably should have just kept my mouth shut and let folks have at it regarding the workplace discussion.
muralimannered, yes and no. I am speaking more from a labor economics / macro/ development perspective, not from a micro perspective. I fully agree with what you’re saying, and I have a deep appreciation for my mom and her career. That said, I am talking about aggregate trends within the U.S. that are compounded along race/gender lines for desi women.
To backtrack (again! sorry, folks, I had to, y’know, leave the apartment for a while :), I guess I don’t see anything particularly heterosexual about the topic of dating white (or other non-browns) while brown. It does make me wonder how many queer SMers there are out there (like, has Sin checked in lately?) But maybe it did seem like a straight discussion for a while – I didn’t jump in until someone asked (but then I tend to lurk, since, well, I’m white and here to learn).
To me, it seems that judgments about dating non-brown can come from, to paint with broad strokes, either peers or parents/family, and that a distinction is made between dating and settling down with a partner.
I think that peer judgments about dating outside of your culture/ethnicity seem slightly less in queer circles in general, just because the dating pool is smaller. (At the same time, though, of course there can exist the same suspicions about “curry queens” exoticizing the Other, etc.)
In terms of marriage or partnering or settling down, I think being out to one’s family immediately raises the issue of grandkids and passing the family genetics along – I mean, LGBT couples have to work out just how they’re going to have kids, if at all. Maybe there’s overlap here with straight people dating outside of their ethnicity? (What will the kids look like, what religion will they be, etc).
Okay, not sure what point I was making now. But yeah. 🙂
its called youtube
Goddammit!
I decided to read through every single comment on this thread (in the right order too) just to make sure I’m not repeating anything that anyone else said. I started when the thread was like 350. But I’d read a couple hundred and refresh, only to find three hundred new ones. Stubborn motherfucker that I am, I’m not giving up, but this could end up being a two week project if all y’all keep on like this. Keep it going though. Let’s see how far this will go. I haven’t hit 1000 yet…
Already came across a zoo of characters including the ultra-bizarre Pankaj drama and freak Divya, some banning , not to mention topics like penises and foreskins and hair and underwear.
Puliogre:
No luck tonite–home relatively early–got an early mtg. tomorrow. Chatted w/ a couple of desis at Bellavitae after checking out a few other places in the Village–I didn’t claim to be an i-banker as I’d jokingly said I would–how do I slyly insinuate that I have some $$ even though my job doesn’t suggest it, w/out being a freak?
I think I’ve developed a complex from reading these comments that the desi women are into $$. . . .not anyone’s fault–I’m insufficiently “grounded” is all. . . .
Ahhh! Who was that person being criticized for suggesting arranged marriage–> less time and $$ wasted? My liver is not liking my endless “fishing”–guess that’s no excuse–should just switch to lemonade!
please don’t do that, as it will detrimentally hurt your chances of conveying the
richright image to all those desi ladies you’re trying to catch. to paraphrase SATC : how will the girls know you’re worth it if you don’t order something they can’t afford? personally, it’s always a red flag when a guy fails to buy me some cristal 😉ak—is that comment supposed to be what passes for “grounding” these days–you are the grounder!!
i’m a bit unclear, still, on this concept of grounding, but as applied to your pick-up secene : if you are denied a bottle of cristal, then i shouldn’t date anybody who is drinking cristal? that may work, since i have no particular affinity for cristal-drinking fellows, but if it’s g&ts we’re talking about, then sorry, rob, you’ll have to remain pankajed.
Drop some cash in front of them – if you’re out at a club, shoot, buy a bottle. 🙂 (I’m not advocating it – just giving suggestions 🙂 )
1263-64:
If I’m going to get these kinds of comments, rather than getting “grounded,” I’m going to bed!
😉
Rob, I wish I could find the link to the last convo we had about how — for many of the SM women commenting here — $$ is NOT the primary issue (although not being a slacker is, and poverty is not equated as slackerdom, either). I think it would help “ground” you 😉
I don’t even know where to begin…err end with this post.
whats with the south indian bashing. Many DBDs (men/ women) will tell you that mallus (men/women) tend to be the horniest of the lot. Althought it was often said as an insult 😉
yeah, the “i’m working for an NGO” line doesn’t seem to fly with my family. They do tend to prefer something which enables you to add several initials to your name–making for impressive gravestones, no doubt.
and although that would apply to both boys and girls, it is the girls who are best represented in that community.
How long does it take, while steeped in some morally compromised sector of our vaunted market economy, to become an utter idiot who mistakes micro for macro?
I’m only two years removed from writing papers with titles like, “Discursive Appropriations of Political Icons in the Indian Context,” and I make a rookie mistake like that. Just terrible.
I hope you’re joking 🙂 You’re not an idiot at all; it was an honest misunderstanding, and I am not always super clear when I write, anyhow.
Wow. This is hereby declared The Thread That Will Not Die.
…I just want attention.
So long as you don’t want to be grounded, Salil. 😉
1274, suckers.
Well if you leave comments like that Salil, it might 😉
1266 Camille:
Rob, I wish I could find the link to the last convo we had about how — for many of the SM women commenting here — $$ is NOT the primary issue (although not being a slacker is, and poverty is not equated as slackerdom, either). I think it would help “ground” you 😉
Anything you could do to ground me would be 1) much appreciated and 2) should relieve you of some guilt for not doing your duty to ground us desi guys!! 😉
rob weren’t you going to bed? Ah the call of SM
1277:
Yeah–dozed off for a couple of hours and then woke back up–I need a vacation, I think! But, yeah–have been talking about SM to my friends crazily these past few days–it is addictive!
That said, I have a feeling this will be just another war of attrition about why, yet again, women are somehow specially privileged and keep men down.
this quote was especially amusing to me, since i am currently wearing a shirt that says “got privilege?” on the front and “well behaved women rarely make history” on the back. [if you know where this shirt came from, i want to know who you are.]
HMF, i am too tired to read through the previous comments to take a real bite, but, in regards to my parents’ strange exceptions to their orthodoxy: a) you’d have to ask them, b) i think they’re completely irrational and unpredictable myself, and c) they’d have to make some exceptions, considering the crazy, stubborn (yet painfully honest) person they wound up with for a daughter. my previous boyfriend have included: a drug addict (after the fact), several tattooed, alcoholic punk rockers, and a hand-to-mouth contractor. when questioned about my preferences, my mother said, “oh, first of all i think you’ll end up with a very artistic person. and he will probably be a lefty, and oh, probably a very poor person, considering your tastes.” sooooo. no. i don’t think they expect that i’ll end up with some dude with a lucrative career. as for prestige vs. practicality when it comes to post-retirement support, i really don’t want to discuss these things on an online forum (or in real life, for that matter). for as many wealthy doctors and businessmen we know, there are an equal number of middle class engineers and professors who are counting on their children for some fraction of future support.
probably there is more to respond to but i am hacker-pschorred out for the night. ta ta good bye.
Milli, Do send me that MD’s contact info. (once you clear it with her, of course!).
rob, unless you are a teetotaling, muruga-worshipping, midwestern breeder, i’m sure you’re not meant for each other.
Milli, Thanks for the consideration–seriously! But, you are right–I am certainly not teetotaling, nor a midwesterner–not sure about “breeder,” and as for Murugan–sure, I’ve heard of him, but I’m not Tamil, etc. So–sounds like we’re not “meant for each other” indeed. Damn, b/c I am a real degree-fiend! Thanks, though! G’nite and all best, always! Rob
there r loads of south indian pornos…is it all mallus? for the record, me dont watch southie porn.
hmmm…not sure…perhaps when this thread closes?
Spicy: As a semi-“northie” myself (Guju), I’d beg to differ on the IR marriage thing. I have a lot of southie friends and, by far, I see Guju and Punjabis marrying goras more than southies, bengalis, and marathis. The southies I know tend to be less assimilated that way and more likely to marry other southies.
BTW me don’t watch desi porn at all: northie, southie, or other. It’s all seems pretty amateur and the “actors” certainly don’t look like pornstars. 😉
Delurking after ~1300 comments(~ = eng) WOAH, What a great cast. Successful femmes, who want guys that probalbly don’t exist and the guys are shit scared of em. Internet-Funny and real-life-succesful guys/gals who are probably rich and alone tonight Lurkers who don’t want this to end but can’t articulate All these so-phis-ti-ca-ted people scare me
what about http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fmSF4chL2I
Good night
and “Woah, I have nothing better to do with my time than to look up the misspelled word ‘woah’.”
SFGirl, thanks for (temporarily?) exempting me from your (temporary?) misandry.
And Seahawks fan, I’m flattered by your kind words too.
I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that. I fell for that once in high school. “Oh Rahul, you are too wonderful not to have your own prom.” I believed them. And nobody showed up. Not even to drench me in pig’s blood.
milli, I might be the one for your MD. Except for the teetotaling, muruga-worshipping, midwestern breeding part. I’m a man, though. I think.
SFGirl, thanks for (temporarily?) exempting me from your (temporary?) misandry.
And Seahawks fan, I’m flattered by your kind words too.
I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that. I fell for that once in high school. “Oh Rahul, you are too wonderful not to have your own prom.” I believed them. And nobody showed up. Not even to drench me in pig’s blood.
milli, I might be the one for your MD. Except for the teetotaling, muruga-worshipping, midwestern breeding part. I’m a man, though. I think.
(SM Intern: Can you please delete my comment #1288. One of the links there is wrong.)
hey notconfused good thing you are improving your inferior genes with your boyfriend. Better hope he doesn’t come to his senses, realize he’s diluting his gene pool with your inferior genes and go for a superior, more beautiful, smarter mixed-race woman. I bet his kids would be even better looking then! lol..
The classic question. So do “desi” nice guys finish last? I mean is it any different for the “desi nice guys/geeks” compared to “purple nice guys/geeks”? Probably this is the only thing that was not discussed so far.
P.S: I am not saying geeks=nice guys.
Given your SF proclivities, milli, did you, by any chance, mean murga worshipping?
(p.s: this homework assignment requires a knowledge of hindi and poor standards for multilingual word games)
1294–Yay!
for de hetro blokes and lezzies
me seen differently but whateva…
ha
LOL.
hi just came across this blog- which struck a chord. Thought would share my own comments. As a single desi uber chick in sydney oz, been rejected by desis amongst others for being too curvy, short, and having horror of horrors curly hair. Having said that I havent had much success with anyone else either? anyone have any ideas for me?
The exception I alluded to is expecting financial support (not just a ‘place to live’) from an only daughter, even if its the only child. And this is perfectly doable from a teachers (especially when you get to that point later on) salary. So really the only other logical conclusion is their aversion to teaching is based on some kind of perceived ideology.
i know this was part of a very angst-filled post (and i’m sorry about that, milli – though you’ve been quite strong thus far) but this is hilarious as a parental objection. from an orthodox hindu, i can believe it – but for it to be an objection up there with the ‘big’ ones – do you even respond to this particular ‘insult’?
HMF, what about concern that your daughter (and son) make enough money such they have at last 10 times more than what they need to financialy support themselves (and the parents’ financials are taken care of)? this is how my dad approaches his children’s careers…
We’ve already established your residence in OppositeLand regarding these matters, but I’d ask you to take an honest look and consider, is it 10 times more for daughters and 20 times more for sons? Look at the relative distance. It was milli’s eye roll that prompted this discussion, and in particular because she brought up screenwriting, which I challenged her exposure & experience with. Since there’s been no response reg’ding that point, my guess is she pulled that example from her behind.
no, HMF, it actually is equal for all, regardless of gender. my dad’s whole reasoning is that you never know what’s going to come your way in life – that you must set aside x amount to cover all these possibilities – nothing more than this amount is expected from any of us, nor is my brother encouraged exclusively to make more than this (though all are encouraged to make as much as possible). at this point, my dad has two children – a boy and a girl – who do not make enough money and he’s pushing both equally to do their MBAs to change that. my dad is very single-minded in this regard – it’s the one thing for him that spells success to him, and he’s just as tough on all his kids to do this. but if you consider this as OppositeLand, then it has a lot more inhabitants than you think – most of the people in my parents’ social circle have the same mentality, be it their daughters or their sons (and we are mostly daughters).
But if a female in your family quit a high paying job for non profit work, or creative work, then married a man with income to support both of them, would he shriek in horror, run through the hallways exclaiming, “What has happened!?!?” If he’s truly gender equitable in this regard, then yes it is OppositeLand, and maybe everyone in your social circle is in it, but it’s still a distant minority. The fathers that I’ve met who make it a point to “treat their daughtters no differently” do so because they acknowledge the dual standard when it comes to matters of career expectation and are attempting to make a POINT to stand against it. So they know they’re in oppositeland themselves.
my dad’s not altruistic enough to do any of this to make a point. he wants his kids to make money – period. my dad would actually freak out if i left a job, or leveled off my career path – it would equal failure for him. continuous upward mobility (read : increased income) is the key to success – and he doesn’t think it should be affected by marriage, or kids etc. but i am certainly not saying that my dad is equal with regards to all gender-related issues – he still has set stereotypes when it come to women. and, yes, i do agree with your point that this is not typical.
I met an Indian guy once through on-line dating. I am Irish background. Anyway, fine, we meet in an Indian restaurant. After living so long in America he doesn’t feel very Indian. Cool — I don’t feel very American so we meet in the middle. He is deeply into enneagrams–something to do with nine ways to be human. So–that’s cool too — I’m always looking for new ways to be me. But readers–he did not actively encourage my spirituality AT ALL. I will dispense with details, but he left a very long message on my phone, mournfully listing my lack of readiness for enlightenment. And me who knows all about the Maharishi and his disciples! Snow jobs. They never change. And I thought, he being an Indian of mature years and into enneagrams, he’d be different. Probably he thought I’d be different. Different from what I don’t know. These mixee-matchees can be so much of a muchness. We are all so different yet sooo much the same it actually gets predictable.