…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?
i think interracial relationships are good for society at large. and besides, how cute are half half babies? SO CUTE.
HMF, seriously?? You rock, what style? I did jujitsu for 10 years!
TKD, a little bit of Wing Chuan, and Capoiera. Oh, and even a bit of Kalarippayattu, but just a little.
muscularity is, IMHO, a necessary element of my ideal ‘healthy thin.’ I wish more women would pick up the free weights, familiarize themselves with the squat rack and forget about the elliptical machines that infest gyms from coast to coast.
thin with no muscle just indicates a deficient caloric intake, a cardio-focused routine and unhealthy reductions of some staple food group(s) (essential fatty acids, protein, carbs).
anyhow, my comment was aimed at winkling out whether such a ‘physical-activity’ approach by guys would be met with disdainful reactions by desi women, weary of combating the ‘stick-thin, straightened-hair’ archetype 24/7.
Speaking of superficial ideals, what does it say about our society when women need to defend the fact that they’re “not fat”? Especially someone who, from the description, probably weighs close to the statistical average adult female weight, if even that. (Note: I don’t mean to pick on this particular poster at all — I mean in general.) By comparison, how do we view people who insist “But I’m not dark!” instead of taking a so-what-if-you-think-I’m-dark perspective? Describing oneself as “overweight” sounds akin to describing oneself as “too dark”. Internalized social norms, anyone?
It would be more valuable to be all about healthy-at-any-size (referred to as HAAS in health/medical literature). There’s nothing wrong with a taking an interest in becoming healthy (in a non-obsessive way), but the media and medical establishment have, unfortunately, done much to falsely associate health with thinness (or not-fatness, at least). Wouldn’t you be just as happy to be with healthy fat people? (If not, there are probably other issues at play here.)
I’ve actually been carefully wording my posts so as not to have anyone say, “Boy, sounds like you’re taking your insecurities out on other people”, so it’s funny you say that. Yes, it is sad that I had to even say, “And I’m not fat”. Hadn’t even thought of it. Thanks, modern media!
And yes, HAAS makes sense, but my understanding is that any excess fat, especially of the omentum variety, is bad for your health.
I’ve always liked this quote:
“Whatever you love is beautiful; love comes first, beauty follows. The greater your capacity for love, the more beauty you find in the world.” – Jane Smiley
my feelings about being rejected on a physical basis have nothing to do with weight. i am thin and objectively speaking, have an “ideal” figure. i work out 5X a week and it shows. i just don’t subscribe to traditional beauty ideals that desi men seem to prefer (even when they claim they don’t). i have zero difficulty attracting wonderful, non-lecherous boys of other ethnicities on the basis of my looks and/or personality; both seem to make indian guys pause. i can’t or don’t/can’t or didn’t want to change my wavy hair, “wheatish medium” skin tone, piercings, sense of fashion (decidedly non-banana republic), length of hair, etc. i think when we talk about feeling rejected because of having non-ideal characteristics, it stretches far beyond a simple weight issue. i do think that with time and exposure, many desi guys i know have developed broader ideas about what they consider attractive or acceptable; but, as i said upthread, i can’t help but hang on to some resentment/mistrust based on rejection by desi boys in their younger, less experienced days.
how about dating a guy who’s from india if you’ve been brought up in the us? Then it’s not an issue of race, it’s an issue of culture… it’s only been about 3 months, but all these differing expectations and norms of behavior have already come up. So it’s not necessarily just a race issue, someone can be of your same race and still be completely out of whack w/you.
I call bullshit. I love how the “lest they break a nail”-myth gets trotted out all the time– it’s an effective way of damning an entire gender with a smirk. For your edification, the last time I had “fake nails”, when I couldn’t find a screwdriver to help me install something, I used my index finger to simulate a flat. And I didn’t break shit.
I have NEVER met this much-referenced bitch who declines to participate in some activity by trilling, “like, oh my GAWD, I will, like BREAK A NAIL.”
I am so sick of the disconnect. A girl moisturizes regularly, wears some Bonne Bell lipsmacker, and suddenly she’s high-maintenance. You think those pneumatic lovelies in Maxim et al look that way sans product? Or manicure? What do guys want, anyway?
Indian girls just suck, don’t they? With their straight hair and their selfish lust for I-bankers and their unwillingness to break a sweat? Spare me.
For every negative issue with desi women, I can come back with plenty about desi men, who aren’t as emasculated or desexualized as you think and unlike their sisters, were generally allowed to leave the house. The pain, like bisexuals, goes both ways.
My sentiments exactly.
The angry girl in me agrees with you, Anna, but damn if the diplomat doesn’t speak up first – maybe this is just the experience he’s had, and he’s voicing that? That doesn’t make it right to generalize about all Desi women and their nail-breaking anxiety levels, but…you know…maybe his experience is limited.
And he said most, not all. Sorry. I just hate it when folks fight!
I agree with #351/anu that mixed race babies are cute! Then again for me, all babies are adorable!
Mixed race people grow up to be very beautiful too – like anglo indians, people like Alicia Keys, Halle Berry and Sunita Williams.
I said:
I had no idea that translated to
“most desi women, and when I say most, I really mean ANNA, the lady who happens to live in the DC area and run the sepiamutiny blog explicitly, and no one else, wouldn’t go near it…”
Secondly, are you familiar with the concept of exaggeration and metaphor? I don’t literally mean they are afraid of breaking nails, but I had trained in a 60+ martial art club, the total # of desi women in that club, during my 4 years: 3.
Since I didn’t say any of that, I guess you’re spared.
And where did I ever invalidate Camille’s assertion, I just stated the points she brought up aren’t necessarily exclusive to women. And yet you see fit to be a complete expert on the desexualized/denigrating attitudes toward desi men by women (desi and non-desi alike), so how about you spare me?
Anna,
this will ring true for much of desi men raised in suburbia and urban environments, but those brought up in religious communities have a serious leg-up on emasculation and desexualization.
My female cousin, who experienced this same community for about a 1/3 as long as me, managed to progress on the worldly track at rate exponentially higher than my own. I could certainly leave the house to play, but time alone with girls was still forbidden as were any discussions about human sexuality. Most of our time was spent on scratching and surviving–i think desi men raised in single-parent households might have similar experiences.
I know desi girls who play ice-hockey, rugby, shoot guns etc–all the macho sports/activities you can think of–i think HMF was referring to the scarcity of these girls in a class where non-desi girls would be found…i think this is a function of numbers alone–if desi girls were in in the same abundance as non-desi girls (i.e. if they weren’t minorities at all) HMF would probably be able to find them in jujitsu class.
who aren’t as emasculated or desexualized as you think
…are you talking about me? 😉
I’m really with razib and ANNA on this one. At the end of the day, I don’t think it’s about desi women at all. It’s that we all have negative dating experiences, and from those individual experiences we make projections on the group. HMF, I wasn’t saying the issues facing desi women are exclusive, but I really do think we have way more drama to deal with than guys.
Haha, Amit, where have you been all my life? 😉
No… why would I be? I am absolutely someone who looks out for my health (both in terms of food/eating habits and working out), but that said, I am not 4’11” and <100 lbs. I don’t really think that’s an ideal body type, but that was definitely the body type of choice among desi guys looking for desi girls. I personally am happy and comfortable with my body type, but, like chicagodesidiva, I was athletic in high school and have a somewhat more muscular, curvy build.
MayurP, I think this is a really astute observation. Just as I think there are a lot of preconceived notions heaped onto desi girls from outside the community, we also heap a lot of stereotypes on one another.
Our club was 40% female. and it was the largest MA club on campus, when the desi women I did meet find out I was a member, I might as well have been a resident of planet Mars. Look, I was just stating that Camille’s point about women who do “non traditional desi” things have their applicant pool reduced, would hold equally true for men.
It seems to me that these disparaging stereotypes about desi females being high maintenance are summarily applied to women of all ethnicities, so I don’t think the observation holds any water anyway. And ANNA, I’m with you–I hate how spending five minutes on my (curly!) tresses marks me as high maintenance to some men, but if I don’t go hours out of my way to make sure the bush is properly waxed, there’s hell to pay. The schizophrenic mentality men seem to have about women being uber-feminine (cause for conflict in some senses, a prerequisite in others) is so bloody frustrating.
I trained martial arts, most desi women wouldn’t go near it, lest they fracture a nail.
Sadly, I do know these girls — they are the same girls who seriously evaluate a guy’s EP and car model before dating him. They exist, but they also tend to stick together and occupy a very different social space than I do. That’s fine, there are plenty of guys who want to date them and don’t have a problem with their values!
As for martial arts, well … when I was growing up, the two boys I knew who were really into martial arts (one desi and one not) were also overweight and really nerdy (e.g. spoke Klingon to each other in public). To my 10 year old self, this made a martial arts class anything but attractive. This is why I would not take Taekwondo at my mother’s urging, though as an adult, I’ve often regretted it.
Some of which is self-induced. I agree with your points generally, what’s setting me off is your refusal to ack the point I made about women having an easier time importing the american dating principles (since they place less requirement on women in general) than guys do.
Oh no! My last comment got garbled, and I’m not sure how. Whatever, it was about body image/ideals and not that important. I’m happy with mine, but it is not the underweight petite standard that was the norm among the desis I knew in college, that’s all I meant to say 🙂
True. We are taking capoeira 🙂
but I really do think we have way more drama to deal with than guys.
i totally agree with this. mebee i’m such a MAN that the whole emasculatization thing never touched me, but i have seen the double-standards which “traditional” brown (and other groups) employed in regards to their male & female offspring. on occasion i did thank god i wasn’t born a woman, because life was oppressive enough already. this doesn’t mean that being a dude doesn’t have issues. HMF pointed to real data that suggests that race matters much more in online dating from female-to-male. this has result has been reproduced. but
1) this is online dating. the average white women supposedly would only date an asian dude if he made 2 or 3 hundred thousand dollars. i think we have to take what people say with a grain of salt (remember, most people say they’re better looking than average and smarter than average).
2) the issues are less important when you meet people in real life because you aren’t a bundle of paper characteristics. it is easy to say you would never date X when they aren’t smokin’ flesh & blood in front of you 😉
3) there are problems with the statistical significance of the study HMF cited, though the general result still holds.
4) if you are a brown dude there are WAY more white women out there than you could possibly date. so practically saying that half of women are off limits might not matter.
I’m not trying to refuse to acknowledge anything… I actually don’t think we have a harder time with American dating principles, either, because everyone is ALL UP IN OUR BUSINESS community-wise, and because a desi girl who dates is often thought of as a slut by the older generation, whereas guys are given the old “boys will be boys” bit. I’m not saying people aren’t all up in your guys’ business, also, but there are a lot more community-based “chee chee!”‘s happening for desi women who date, in my anecdotal experience.
I’m really out of touch. As a hermit, I should technically be banned from commenting on this thread 🙂
but there are a lot more community-based “chee chee!”‘s happening for desi women who date, in my anecdotal experience.
this is close to a human universal. i think empirically we should consider this a background assumption for any real discussion to proceed. the double-standard is so notorious across various patriarchal cultuers (which means most) that most people don’t even have to clarify what they’re talking about. there’s a rule of thumb that a man’s property value goes up with # of partners, and a woman’s goes down, and that influences dating dynamics as people grow older.
So? the study in fact says the race information can be believed more given the online setting, as people polled in person will be more likely to say “race doesn’t matter” when in fact it does.
Please produce a result that is without problems. This is a copout.
This result also has some statistical significance problems, as in, there’s no statistics to back it up.
What is this obsession over Albinos? [1] [2] [3] ?
not fair, HMF. even if you met desi women who had this attitude, it’s not cool to extend this to an entire ethnic gender. in general, there are fewer women who take up martial arts, as opposed to men, and to start breaking it down by ethnicity means that you have to consider how many desis, and then desi women, actually live in the geographical area. 3 out of 60 seems like it might actually be decent. fyi, i trained in tae kwon do for nearly four years, and it was an amazing time. the reason why i was the only desi woman in my entire training time had partly to do with the fact that there weren’t even that many in the area. hell, they’re weren’t even that many women, period, in our classes, which meant that almost always, we ended up sparring with some 200-pound, 40-year old man. when i took my test for a first-brown belt, i was the only woman – out of twenty five – at the exam.
HMF, you’re an asshole/bitch (i don’t know your sex).
.Please produce a result that is without problems. This is a copout.
statistical significance is a technical term. do you know what it means?
I already stated 40% of my club was female. which is fewer, but not 3/60.
There were plenty of desi women around, it was university. Nice lawyer tricks, but I think you’ll have to concede this point.
translation: you have facts to back up what you’re saying and I don’t
translation: you have facts to back up what you’re saying and I don’t
no, you’re the most consistent and eloquent tard around here. any disagreement with your tardish talking points elicits snide insinuations and contempt.
like this gem:
HMF, you’re an asshole/bitch (i don’t know your sex).
stop being such an ass, HMF. and why the hell does everything have to come back to my being a lawyer? i didn’t assume anything about the numbers of the situation on your campus – nor did i see the 40% number since it was posted while i was typing. given the numbers you stated, it does seem like there were proportionately fewer desi women in the club, but what was the % of desi women to women overall on campus? as for the attitude of those who judged you for being the club, it sucks, but that does not mean you have to judge other desi women who were not involved in this situation.
stop being such an ass, HMF
be nice. an asshole remains an asshole by the nature of the butt. just request that it clean the crap and wash on occasion.
The point wasn’t to judge anyone, it was to simply say that Camille’s point wasn’t exclusive to women, which she clarified by saying she didn’t intend it that way.
Razib – thanks for the clarification. I was basing my comment on a statistically insignificant sample (n<30).
Munda – your categorization is rather charming. Have you noted the difference between dating women from different countries. A scandinavian blonde is quite a different person from an Irish Redhead who is quite differnt from a Californian blonde.
Praniv – I concur with you- heaps more sex available in Desh now especially in the BPO / call center industry. A couple of years ago a junior employee requested a transfer out of the IT division and into the BPO division as there was a lot more action there. I acceded to his request.
Based on my limited experience with international women, american women of all hues are probably the most open / generous / kind. Scandinavian / English / South Africans / Hungarians/ Indians /Australians would follow.
Wow razib, I thought you entered the state ‘Im much too smart to engage HMF, as he’s just a bot anyway” to what do I owe this TLC?
.Wow razib, I thought you entered the state ‘Im much too smart to engage HMF, as he’s just a bot anyway” to what do I owe this TLC?
frankly, i try and avoid threads where i see your comments on the sidebar. so yeah, i’m in a bad mood now that you’ve joined what was an interesting thread. now all the discussion will center on your crap talking points.
or Filipino variants of kickboxing. 😉
::
Very sweet and awww-inducing. Also, tell your inner angry that the next time I’m in Chicago, I’m buying her a drink. 😉
::
I started to feel bad for my hot-headed reply, then I read…this. I don’t run anything, I just try and write a little lite something daily, so the blog which is otherwise on hiatus has something new to keep you from boredom, but thanks for the dig. It was nice. Didn’t singe at all.
::
Mayur’s excellent point is my favorite part of this entire discussion. The next time I run in to Miss. “All Indian people suck because ____”, I’m going to immediately ask why meeting that one sucky white guy last year didn’t ruin the entire race for her, etc.
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Preach it, my sister. There’s a special place in heck for men who lust after Hef’s girlfriends and then sneer at a medicine cabinet full of Nair, shaving gel, exfoliating crap, eye-makeup remover, concealer et al. It ain’t just airbrushing– it’s PRODUCTS. Lots of them. And with regards to landscaping the nether regions, it’s PAIN. Lots of it. Sigh.
::
Milli, I mean this in the nicest way possible, but some of the desi girls you have met terrify me and I hope I have a silver stake/garlic necklace and crucifix on me, should I even encounter one (or five? Do they travel in packs?) in an alley. 😉
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THANK YOU. It’s ridiculous and as Harbeer pointed out upthread, widely-accepted that “shiksas/goris are for practice” and so vy not let beta run about at night with a proud wink and a nudge.*
Now if I remembered at 8pm that I hadn’t put x in the mailbox, and had the gall to go outside to do so absentmindedly, by the time I turned around after hoisting the rusty red metal flag, my Father would be at the front door with a pichathi and a ferocious glare. Yes, daddy. I was inseminated in the driveway, in the twenty seconds it took for you to grab the knife from my poor Mother, who was innocently hacking open a coconut. All is lost. :p
*MuraliMannered, I am continuously enlightened by and thankful for your comments, which always etch out a unique past that I never would have known of or considered otherwise; you are one elegant exception to the rules. That and hell with it, for all the vomen on this thread who might have wondered…you’re cuuuuuute. 😉
Ouch, maybe we can all collectively change the subject? Not to Scythians and Dravidians, though, please 😉
It sounds like one of the common themes of these comments is that we all have expectations/assumptions about one another within the desi community. Maybe part of the problem is not, as MayurP indicated, treating each other like individuals, but instead tensing up with the baggage of expectations what are projected on us from within (our communities) and without (from “mainstream” society).
I also thought the comment at the beginning about dating within desi communities is also a form of multicultural/multiethnic dating. I think this is so true on so many levels, and it seems like there are a lot of regionally-based (and religious) aversions. I wonder how this translates (or is maybe irrelevant) within the U.S.?
the explicitly was a misplaced modifier in my grammatical structure, it didn’t refer to the “run” it referred to the “really mean” but I didnt mean the “run” as a dig, if thats worth anything.
Whatever. if you had a problem with the report then explain it to a layman like me without tech terms, or don’t, and use me as a punching bag for your bad mood. Talk about someone having zeitgeist.
Not if we don’t engage or address them.
Not if we don’t engage or address them.
ok, ok 😉 i’m reengage my mental “killfile.”
I also thought the comment at the beginning about dating within desi communities is also a form of multicultural/multiethnic dating. I think this is so true on so many levels, and it seems like there are a lot of regionally-based (and religious) aversions. I wonder how this translates (or is maybe irrelevant) within the U.S.?
this is an interesting point, and i tend to be curious about this as well. i know several bangladeshi+pakistani marriages where the principals are american born or raised. though united by common brownness and islam there is obviously clear tension and discomfort on the part of the parents. my own parents are typically racist for browns i would say, but i suspect they would favor a marriage with a muslim non-brown over a non-muslim brown. i wonder if anyone as perceptions on differences between intermarriage rates between christian and non-christian malyalees? the a priori hypothesis from me would be that christians would intermarry with “americans” more often because of the lesser religious distance with the mainstream.
sincere thanks for that one–now for figuring out how the heck i take advantage of that in a city where brown still means, “Thank you, come again!”
my own parents are typically racist for browns i would say, but i suspect they would favor a marriage with a muslim non-brown over a non-muslim brown.
i do want to clarify something here: they would ideally say they would prefer a marriage with a non-brown muslim over a brown non-muslim, but reality might be different. my mother was often frank that she privately preferred socializing with hindu bengalis to pakistani muslims because of cultural (cuisine, language, etc.) affinities which made the socialization more enjoyable. but, as a believing muslim she felt guilty because she felt as if she should enjoy hanging out with the pakistanis more….
Hmmm. Memories of my old strategic communications classes are being summoned…what if we could re-brand somehow…so that the phrase refers to multiple orgasms vs. convenience store greetings? 😉