The Washington Post featured an article this morning about ethnic dating patterns, primarily those in the Asian and South Asian American communities. At first I assumed, “here we go again, another hackneyed piece about arranged marriages or something.” While there were a few clichés in the article, it did feature an intriguing revelation (to me at least). 2nd generation South Asian Americans (like some other ethnic groups), are increasingly marrying within their race. The magnitude of the trend was somewhat shocking to me since South Asian Americans are better assimilated than our European counterparts, and truly homogeneous ethnic enclaves which would foster such trends are very rare in the U.S. I thought for sure there would be a minor slope in the opposite direction:
The number of native- and foreign-born people marrying outside their race fell from 27 to 20 percent for Hispanics and 42 to 33 percent for Asians from 1990 to 2000, according to Ohio State University sociologist Zhenchao Qian, who co-authored a study on the subject. The downward trend continued through last year, Qian said.
“The immigrant population fundamentally changes the pool of potential partners for Asians and Hispanics. It expands the number and reinforces the culture, which means the second generation . . . is more likely to marry people of their own ethnicity,” said Daniel T. Lichter, a sociologist at Cornell University.
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Increasingly, singles are turning to a growing number of niche dating sites on the Internet, such as http://Shaadi.com and http://Persiansingles.com. [Link]
A recent book titled Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age also tracks the dating and marriage patterns of 1.5 and 2nd generation South Asian Americans and finds similar results:
Researchers spent a decade following 3,300 children of immigrants in the New York region as they navigated adulthood, which led to a study published last year called “Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age.” They followed both the “second generation” children born in the United States and the “1.5 generation” — children of immigrants who came as youngsters — who were Dominican, Chinese, Russian Jews, South Americans and West Indians.
Researchers found that their subjects were constantly struggling with the desire to be open to people of all backgrounds vs. family expectations, and their own desires to sustain their culture. Most paired with others who shared similar racial or language backgrounds. [Link]
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p>Reading about how these young men and women are struggling between a desire to exhibit their openness vs. family expectations seems like a whiny sob story after reading Ennis post earlier today, but I’m sure many of us reading this can relate to being torn between the two, including myself:
“People grow up the entire time rebelling to our parents, doing everything we could to fit in and spending the majority of our time running away from the traditions and our heritage,” said Bhavna Pandit, a political consultant of Indian descent who lives in the District. “Now I’m 29 years old, and I actually care about this stuff.” Like many women in the Washington area, she says it’s difficult to find a nice guy. And because she’s looking for an Indian man, it’s harder — they are in short supply in the Capitol Hill circles she runs in. [Link]
I blame the Obama administration which has been WAY too slow in vetting people to fill positions. They never responded to my change.gov application by the way. Well, as I tweeted via our Twitter account yesterday, this song will be hugely popular at desi weddings for the next decade, especially if the trend mentioned in this article holds true.
46 · Priya said
I don’t know if you’ve seen the little “documentary” they made as a companion to the book, but that made me really want to read his book because a Southie desi doctor married to a Rhodes Scholar/Marine from a working class Irish Catholic family seems like such an interesting relationship dynamic. Also, Craig Mullaney will be on The Daily Show tomorrow.
I’m not entirely convinced that it is largely immigration. The study mentioned in the article compared marriage rates between 1990 and 2000. Immigration rates were very stable during the period from 1990 to 2000. Per country visa caps have not been changed since 1990. If immigration rates were relatively stable (note they have been far less table from 2000 to present) over the period, I do not think immigration alone can explain the change in inter-marriage rates.
the quoted piece refers to latinos and asian americans in the aggregate. if someone can find ethnicity-by-ethnicity breakdowns that will clarify. the data i linked to broke down by ethnicity. we actually don’t know that for indian americans the intermarriage rate changed much at all from what i can tell.
Oops…I meant the movie – Ghosts of Mississippi where the lawyer divorces his wife because of her dislike/opinions abt his work. Sometime its helps to know what you want and sometime one realizes what one wants later on in life based on experiences.
cite: According to the 1993 Census, 310,000 interracial marriages were registered by 1970, 651,000 by 1980 and 1,161,000 by 1992, accounting for 0.7%, 1.3% and 2.2% of the total marriage numbers during those years, respectively. With the introduction of the “mixed-race” category, the 2000 census showed interracial marriage to be somewhat further widespread, accounting for 2,669,558 such marriages, or 4.9% of the total.[14] These statistics do not take into account the mixing of ancestries within the same “race”; e.g. a marriage involving Indian and Japanese ancestries would not be classified as interracial due to the Census regarding both as the same category. Likewise, the Census Bureau does not consider Hispanic to be a race but an ethnicity. Consequently, Hispanic marriages with non-Hispanics are not registered as interracial if both partners are of the same race (i.e. a White Hispanic marrying a non-Hispanic White partner).
43 · ShallowThinker said
Wow that sounds like me except I’m not Punjabi.
24 · Hardkaur said
Somebody’s got insecurities =P
California is around 11% of the American population. Let’s say, for arguments sake, that 1/3rd the desi population in America live there. This means that desis from CA are under-represented in a national sample, while desis from states with fewer desis, like LA, are over-represented. This creates bias because desis who live in CA and those who live in LA are very different, so our subsample of desis in the national survey is biased. This is why Latino surveys, for example, are based on a different sample frame, one representative of the community rather than the nation as a whole.
reading the methodology at the link i provided, i think this is not a problem as i don’t think the analyst weighted in terms of geography. rather, they just took the raw data.
Lea@51..thanks for the link. I hadn’t seen it before. Will watch the Daily show. Btw why is Craig learning Hindi if she is a Southie (is she a northy-southie) ?
Well, I don’t know if she is Southie for sure, but Meena Seshamani sounds like a pretty Southie name to me. My friend and I came to the conclusion that it was for the sake of just knowing a desi language, plus she seems to have made him a Bollywood fan, so maybe that’s why.
59 · Lea said
i’m betting Palakkad Iyer.
Well I just looked at my penis and I guess I am more “Indian” than I originally thought. JAI HO!
I think you need to find another basis to see if you are ethnically indians – “The reported averages of penis size for this non-representational sample of 1,400 men in this study fall very much within the Western averages.” http://sexuality.about.com/b/2006/12/12/penis-size-its-hila-racist-ious.htm
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_penis_size#cite_note-69
Interethnic Marriage: A Choice between Ethnic and Educational Similarities.
It’s fairly obvious, women are beginning to realize that quality exists within their own kind as well, and beginning to fight off colonialist brainwashing. Kudos to them!
I do think that u gotta date outside as there arnt that many emo desi chicks.
I haven’t read the actual study. From the article, it appears the study shows a change in intermarriage rates in the 1990 to 2000 period. Basically, I think your criticism that the change was due to immigration is not supported by the data you linked. The linked data and table are not looking at the period the article discusses. Immigration shot up significantly after the 2001 dip. See http://www.migrationinformation.org/DataHub/charts/final.immigbyyear.shtml Stable immigration levels during the 1990-2000 period leads me to think that it was not largely immigration. It is possible that dating websites altered marriage patterns during the 1990-2000 period, or not.
43 · ShallowThinker said
not drinking and not socializing does make it difficult to meet women independent of your background.
the rest of it isn’t really that big a deal breaker, although i don’t know whether by “hate” you mean that you won’t indulge in it, or you have a visceral revulsion and disgust towards these things that you never lose an opportunity to express – and that kind of attitude would be a problem again, in general.
I am a atheist that hates Indian movies, music and all types of Indian dance I dont drink, which makes me weird for Punjabis. My favorite bands range from Metallica, Rammstein, Led Zeppelin, and Bruce Springsteen. I am a very private person that hates large gatherings of people and Indians love those types of events.
I thought I was the only punjabi guy like that.
“there arnt that many emo desi chicks.”
Sure there are..fyi Metallica and Bruce ain’t likely to pull any emo chicks, maybe..perhaps an ex liz phair disciple
I haven’t read the actual study. From the article, it appears the study shows a change in intermarriage rates in the 1990 to 2000 period. Basically, I think your criticism that the change was due to immigration is not supported by the data you linked. The linked data and table are not looking at the period the article discusses. Immigration shot up significantly after the 2001 dip. See
the % of foreign born increased between ’90 and ’00. constant immigration increased the % of immigrants (asian americans as a whole have low fertility). in any case, the data linked took ACS data from the 2006 update. in any case, wuteva.
i don’t know what a “typical” indian is either. i live in mn and i’m of caribbean descent. i didn’t grow up with a lot of cousins my age or other brown kids let alone brown kids from the caribbean. i also grew up in flamingly middle-class neighborhood. i’m 28 now and though i never really wanted to when i was younger, i interested in marrying brown. so here’s a problem i have: i’m a lawyer. (i’m fascinated by the “doctor or lawyer” prestige thing because i don’t see a lot of brown in law. also, i do public interest, not corporate law.) maybe this affects who i date but most of the brown guys that i date seem to have chips on their shoulders. not surprisingly, many come from much wealthier families and there’s a materialism in aspiring to maintain the life with which they grew up. some have spent years of their (frequently very successful) lives on drugs. i don’t really know what to make of this. a good brown friend of mine who grew up in tanzania is also uncomfortable with the level of spoiled materialism he sees in american-born desis.
I don’t think there is such a thing as typical, anymore. I am a desi girl who is very happily married to a Punjabi boy. Having said that though, we couldn’t be more different. He loves Indian movies, he’s a drinker, enjoys Indian music and dancing and is fairly sociable.
As for me, I too hate large social gatherings, I enjoy being with a few really good friends versus a huge social crowd. I don’t care for Indian movies. I am more into historical movies and the fantasy genre like Lord of the Rings. I read quite a bit – mostly nonfiction but I love children’s literature. As for music – I love all kinds of music so I don’t mind Indian music, but my tastes span the gamut – from Jay Z to Def Leppard and Guns ‘n Roses, to Broadway Musicals, world music, jazz and classical. I view dance as an art form – I don’t dance myself but I don’t mind watching any form of dance really, because I am a creative person myself. The things that many people think a “typical” Indian woman should be — I’m not (I’m a terrible cook, fairly bored with religion, don’t care much for dressing up in Indian fashions and would rather spend time on my own, pursuing my own creative interests than visiting relatives and extended family).
We have had our differences and like any other couple, we have had to work at a few things (but most marriages do take a good amount of work). Incidentally, ours is a love marriage (north-south Indian).
My point being, if you saw me at one of the “typical” Indian functions that I have to go to from time to time – you might well assume that I am a “typical” Indian woman. But I don’t think there can be a typical Indian woman or a typical Indian man for that matter – I don’t believe there is such a thing. I think your best bet is just to be open to any and everyone you meet. By not doing so — you are limiting yourself from meeting other interesting people, regardless of whether they are Indian or not. Good luck!
“there arnt that many emo desi chicks.”
I was friends with this emo desi guy and he said the same thing…at the same time he hooked up with emo girls of different races…they were out of his league but being emo and desi is a unique combo — that helped him in the ladies dept and the emo scene.
I experimented with the emo style but couldnt pull it off and had no luck with emo girls, some of whom are hot, they can tell if a guy is a legit emo or not (Lol!)
Wow, that sounds a lot like me, except I’m female. I’m also an atheist who doesn’t like Indian movies, although I’ve been getting into bhangra lately. I mostly listen to hard rock. Good to know there are others like me out there.
Increases in the relatively high marriage rates of Hispanics and Asian Americans with whites may slow as new immigrants keep arriving from their homelands. Immigration expands the marriage pools for the native-born, who are more able to find spouses in their own racial or ethnic groups. These pools are expanded further by the way the wider society categorizes Hispanics and Asian Americans. They distinguish among themselves by national origin (Cuban versus Mexican or Thai versus Chinese), but whites tend to lump them into two large groups. Common experiences of being identified as the same, along with anti-Latino and anti-Asian prejudice and discrimination, help create a sense of pan-ethnic identity. This in turn inhibits marriage with whites, fosters solidarity within the larger group, and increases marriage rates between varieties of Hispanics and Asian Americans. Interethnic marriage is frequent among American-born Asians despite small group sizes and limited opportunities for contact. For example, in 1990, 18 percent of Chinese-Americans and 15 percent of Japanese-Americans aged 20–34 married spouses of other Asian ethnic groups (compared to 39 percent and 47 percent who married whites).
uh oh, the number of private people who don’t like large groups is getting too big. what to do now? will they become typical to escape this tyranny? what will feed the angst now?
“there arnt that many emo desi chicks.”
I’ve seen one emo desi girl in my life and this was at a night club in London (Roxy or Metro). She appeared white-washed and was with some oriental/british white people.
Edit: I may have seen another one at LSE (London School of Economic) thursday night university party. I remember trying to chat her up but got no love, mind you I was intoxicated, so I’m not 100% sure she was emo.
73 · shup said
typical.
That made me LOL… But the point of my post was that I understood exactly what ShallowThinker was saying when he called himself “non-typical”. I think of myself as “non-typical” as well. Even if there are others like us out there, we’re probably still in the minority.
it’s difficult to find a nice girl. And because I’m looking for an Indian girl it’s harder. I can’t relate to Indian-American or fob girls, so where do I look? I’m sick of the white meat, asian meat, etc, I just need some spicy dosa to keep me warm at night. I’ve even opened myself to south Indian girls because they are in a abundant supply in NA; Guji girls are in huge supply as well but they have too much drama/gossip for my liking.
I’m lonely, I hope I wont have to resort to a BROWN blowup-doll or pillow for comfort…
Love,
HM
WOW! I guess Im not so atypical.
Okay, here’s one. I love going fishing and Im not talking about the card game and I once got busy in a Burger King bathroom.
That last part isnt true, but the “Humpty dance” song just popped into my head while thinking of things I like.
Judging by the comments here maybe we should make a support group for Desis who are “atheist, dislike Indian movies, music, and dance, listen to Metallica, Rammstein, Led Zepplin, and Springsteen and dislike large social gatherings and/or are emo.”
I don’t usually make a point of trying to hang out with Desis but I usually end up stumbling into them and you generally find desis in every subgroup. But since you’re in the group yourself then they’ve already met their “token Indian” quota and you’re unlikely to meet many others inside of it. If you have an ace in your hand, then the likelihood of the next card you draw being an ace becomes smaller.
Desi-specific events target primarily desis, though, so it’s easier to meet up with them there.
And here I thought it was the typical Indian that preferred white skin.
How many desi girls dreamt of a Sarah Jessica Parker life from Sex and the City but ended up like Tina Fey of 30 rock?
Hinduman, you are coming across as a bit of a D-bag. In which case I’d bet money that you are pretty typical.
I’m still confused about Abhi linking to a Bollywood song in his post. Where is the real Abhi!?!?
That’s what I’m saying! He’s changed with age and become a typical Indian guy. I liked him better when he was all emo and shit.
73 · shup said
That is why God made shaadi.com.
<
blockquote>because we have so many other options. Are you sure it’s not the BO? It could also be because of the cooties you got from the so many options.
meat? Supply? are you looking for a lady friend or planning to enter the human trafficking business?
Are you sure it’s not the BO? It could also be because of the cooties you got from the so many options.
Meat? Supply? Are you looking for a lady friend or planning to enter the human trafficking business?
36 · ShallowThinker said
wait! if you turn off a lot of Indian women, then you’re a typical indian guy.
83 · DesiInNJ said
Those who dreamt of ending up like Ms. Bradshaw should thank the fates for ending up like Liz Lemon. That’s an increase of a full 55 IQ points; a better job, mentored by the maker of the trivection oven; a wardrobe free of crippling heels and idiotic hats; and no horse face!
79 · HinduMan said
After you get bored with spicy dosas, are tacos on the dining menu next?
I mentioned this post to my 40-yo brown hubby, and he just said “well of COURSE they are [marrying within their race], there’s more of them now!” He’s said many times that his exclusively dating white women was partly to do with the lack of any funky brown girls in his scene or at his art school. (He was one of the original Anokha founders due to a white girlfriend introducing him to Talvin Singh). He says you see more brown girls out at clubs now and choosing creative careers, but that wasn’t happening when he was younger. He also says he feared brown women eventually turning into his horrible abusive mother (who he doesn’t speak to), but that’s something for a therapist to deal with rather than a statistics-hound like Razib. 😉
Judging by the comments here maybe we should make a support group for Desis who are “atheist, dislike Indian movies, music, and dance, listen to Metallica, Rammstein, Led Zepplin, and Springsteen and dislike large social gatherings and/or are emo.”
I was here first among that crowd.
I never realized some people (including Desis!) identified themselves as emo-screamo. Nothing wrong with My Chemical Romance or the others, but I thought it was a perjorative. I’m not into the scene or that kind of music, but there’s all kinds of Desis these days. It looks like Shaadi should now start the category for Metallica loving Desis. About 18 years ago (before I got married…), if Shaadi were around, I would have chosen the category for Desis who are into Bach, Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Nine Inch Nails, Beatles, Smiths, Depeche Mode, Tori Amos, most Carnatic music, some Hindustani, Miles Davis, Madonna (& now the Dresden Dolls, Jay Z & Saul Williams.) Hubby mostly listens to jazz – which is favored by both of us, and some 70’s Hindi film music (sometimes I find an occasional gem).
Although I don’t have to worry about this for another 10 or 20 years (my daughter just turned 10 in 5th grade), I’m not going to cruelly arrange her marriage, unless it’s some rich kid of a VC with an Atherton zip code. In any case, the prospective groom is guaranteed to get a proper ass whuppin’ from the brides parents. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=open%20a%20can%20of%20whup%20asngs For once, Hubby and I stand united on this issue, too. Unless the kiddo decides to play for the other team, I’m cool with that . We have close neighbor friends where there are 2 mommies or 2 daddies in the family. So that’s not an issue with us. I need to check & see if Shaadi has a classification for gay Desis seeking others. I know a cute Kannadiga Gay Desi who hooked up w/ a tall, handsome Gora. That poor Gora, he always looks overwhelmed whenever his Kannadiga partner drags him to the Desi pow wows. But I do give credit to the traditional aunties and uncles type who treat them both respectfully.
HinduMan, Please stop with the trollery. You aren’t funny.
Guys, Metallica and My Chemical Romance are NOT emo. True emo/screamo bands are like Orchid, Rites of Spring, Indian Summer etc. Check out emo on http://fourfa.com
Wow, guys! You’re all so special with your Metallica and Rammstein and emo bangs and so not like all the other Bollywood-loving, saree-wearing desis who are complete sheep. Seriously, I’m 18 years old and I figured out long ago that saying how unique you are and assuming know one else can understand your coolness is the best way to let people know you are uniquely toolish.
90 · Manju said
That’s why you are among the 2.8% who bang black dudes!
98 · Lea said
you’re cool.