Interracial Hate Crime in Elkhart, Indiana
I’ve finished up with dreadful exams just in time to hear about a dreadful incident in northwest Indiana. According to the AP report:
An interracial couple who awoke to find a burning cross in their front yard in Elkhart are praying for peace and asking for privacy.
Maggie Williams says the cross burning took her and her husband, Adam, by surprise.
The FBI is investigating the cross burning, which police are calling a hate crime. Elkhart police say the 5 1/2 by 3 1/2 foot wooden cross was left burning against a tree about 15 feet from the couple’s front door about 2:30 a.m. May 2.
The Williamses have met with Mayor Dick Moore and representatives from the police department, the FBI and the NAACP. Bradley Vite, a family friend, says they also expect to meet with a Department of Justice official.
I haven’t been able to find any more detailed information, which is probably a good thing for the couple’s privacy. I’m incredibly dismayed by this news story, but not completely surprised - sadly, there are still places in the US where interracial relationships are not accepted.
Aditya and I actually attended college fairly close to Elkhart, which makes this story all the more scary for me. We personally didn’t experience too much prejudice or racism due to our interracial relationship during our time in the Midwest, but the few times it did occur - angry stares, shouts from passing cars - were pretty upsetting for me (and Aditya, although his skin tone always marked him as different). I have no idea what I would do if we woke up one morning to a burning cross on our front yard, although my reactions would probably include a lot of cussing and righteous crusading in the local community. This type of bullshit just shouldn’t be happening anywhere. What would your reactions be? Have any of you had any similar or lower-level racist reactions to your intercultural relationship?
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On a slightly more cheerful note, the 11th (today, technically) is my birthday. We’ll be celebrating by having a day of light adventures with friends - hiking in the morning, Indian buffet for lunch, and then hanging out at home, eating cake and playing video games. Our group will be a bunch of white & Indian folk, including a couple of guys from Indiana, so I’ll see what they think about this incident. I’ll also take a bunch of pictures while at the Indian buffet food, so that I can get on with the next installment of “How to Eat Indian Food.”
[?] Share ThisInitial Family Resistance to your Intercultural Relationship
I’m hoisting up from the comments a request for advice from a reader, Travelergal, who’s run into a bit of a sticky situation with her Indian boyfriend’s family. Her boyfriend, R- just informed his family about her, and, well, the response was not as enthusiastic as one might hope. R- has emailed her about their responses, and now Travelergal is trying to figure out the best course of action:
I need your advice so here goes…my boyfriend recently told his parents about me (he is in India right now so of course he sent me this by email). I am a white American girl and he is a South Indian man. Are their comments normal? What can I do at this point to begin the process of “Slow Acclimation”? I want them to eventually accept me but I have no idea where to begin or what I should do at this point! Any advice would be great!!
Travelergal included her boyfriend’s email, which I’ve put below the fold, along with my responses (in red). I’m sure she’d appreciate all of you chiming in with suggestions, advice, or sympathy as well.
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A Cougar in the Backyard: Dispatches from My First Indian Wedding
In this guest post, NeoKalypso of Doings & Undoings give us her thoughts on the first Indian wedding she attended.
Igniting the fear and fascination of city dwellers, a cougar recently turned up roaming around my highly metropolitan area. The cat was a fairly big dude, about 5 feet in length 150lbs, and eventually made its way into the tiny backyard of a resident who described seeing the animal roam by his window as “surreal.” When the police came they tried to contain the beast, but when it lunged at a policeman it was shot and killed. Turns out, shooting the cougar was really the only option given how ill fitted the city is for large, wild animals. The cougar could have killed someone, and there was no easy access to vets or tranquilizers to entertain any other safe idea. This is an example of an ecotone: when two different ecosystems collide and cause tension. The cougar and the city dwellers were just doing what they knew to survive, unfortunately both could not survive together.
Fortunately, I made it out of my first Indian wedding alive, and though my experience isn’t as dramatic as the poor cougar’s fate, I certainly felt out of my element. After having traveled plenty of strange places, visiting Buddhist Mongolian homes, sleeping in $3 hostels, and not to mention my general love for Indian culture, one would think I could handle any kind of situation, any kind of pressure… right? In almost any other contexts and as a seasoned, brave explorer, I think I would have found The Indian Wedding a smörgåsbord of fascination and wonder. However, let me tell you, The Indian Wedding is a much different experience when you are dating one of their own.
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Michael Jackson + Bhangra = Awesome
I’m sorry I haven’t been posting much lately, but I’m in the middle of finals - things will be calmer in a week or so, and I’ll get back to my regular posting schedule. In the meantime, here’s an amazing video from Britain’s Got Talent. Be sure to watch it all the way through!
Tomorrow there’ll be another great guest post up from NeoKalypso, and Aditya will be writing something over the weekend, so be sure to check back. Thank goodness they’re willing to pick up the slack from me! Also, by popular request I’ve made some minor improvements to the blog: the email option for subscribing now works, and there’s an rss feed for the comments if you’d like to keep track that way.
[?] Share ThisGuess Who’s Coming to Diwali?
Slate’s Dear Prudence column has dipped its toe into the intercultural relationship waters with a advice on how to deal with Indian parents refusing to meet their boy’s girlfriend. The situation is one that a number of readers here have seen - or are currently in - so I thought I’d link to this timely advice. Personally, I think that Prudie’s advice on what to do is pretty spot on: insist on having the parents meet the girl at the next chance. However, I don’t think Prudie understands all of the intricacies involved in an intercultural relationship - especially one where the parent-child relationship of one partner’s culture is so different from the other’s.
Septia Mutiny has a brief post on the same article - and while the post itself isn’t much to write home about, the comments section has a lot of interesting stories and discussions on it. Check it out when you have the time.
[?] Share ThisIndian Wedding Story: Part Three
This is Part Three of a continuing series on my Indian wedding adventure. If you’re new to Gori Girl, try checking out Part One and Part Two.
Lunchtime! Tomorrow the real wedding pictures start, but today was super hectic, so you’ll be getting the pictures from the lunch before the big night, and the story of bridal preparation and nerves.
After our pre-lunch siesta, everyone returned to the community center where the wedding ceremony would be held for lunch. All I can say is yum - the caterers were very, very good!
I continued to catch up with my mom and uncle - Aditya and I enjoyed hearing about their adventures so far while traveling in India. As you can see, they both really “took” to the land, including the traditional way of eating. I stuck to using a fork - I don’t mind eating with my hands, but if I try it with rice, well, let’s just say the results are rather messy.
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He’s soooo Indian!
In this guest post, NeoKalypso of Doings & Undoings writes about her understanding of “Indian-ness.”
“You are too prejudiced. You do not let your eyes see nor your ears hear, and that which is outside your daily life is not of account to you. Do you not think that there are things which you cannot understand, and yet which are? That some people see things that others cannot? … There are always mysteries in life.” - Abraham Van Helsing, metaphysician and scientist from Bram Stoker’s Dracula
I knew my Indian boyfriend was pretty down with his culture, but after meeting his brother-in-law I just looked at R amusedly and said, “Wow. He’s sooo Indian.” R knew exactly what I meant, smiled and said, “Oh, he totally is. You should see him in India. He’s absolutely in his element.”
Later I will unpack this exchange for Gori Girl readers. But first, some background. I’m a white American woman and my R is from a very traditional, South Indian (Telugu) family. Of the Indian families I have had the pleasure of knowing, I feel at liberty to say R’s is the “most hardcore” (i.e. traditional) I’ve known. 
For example, out of his 200 family members, only one ventured outside of Telugu culture to marry…a Gujarati. R’s little niece and nephew speak Telugu. His mom, pop, sister, brother-in-law, and their kids have often lived in the same house, sharing family responsibilities (which is very common for more traditional families). It has worked well for them.
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A Couple of Great Resources
In my internet browsing I’ve found a couple of sites that might be of interest to yah’ll.
First, of there’s a pretty active forum at Indiebride.com (which is a good resource in-and-of-itself), called Intermarriage, where people pretty much just discuss intercultural relationships. Different races, different religions, different nationalities - it looks like it pretty much all is represented there. The archives are massive too.
Then there’s a livejournal community, called Masala Couples, which focuses on intercultural relationships where one partner is South Indian. Again, the community looks pretty active, and there’s a lot of history to browse. And everyone is super-duper friendly.
Enjoy!
[?] Share ThisWhy the Gori of Gori Girl?
There’s been some talk in the comments about the word gori, which, given the blog name, is probably a term you’ll hear thrown around here from time to time. So I thought I’d explain what it means, some of the connotations it can carry, and why I chose it for the name of this blog - as well as my pen name.
What does gori mean?
The following was derived from Aditya’s lengthy comments on the etymology of the word gori – be thankful that I’m sparing you all of the tangential diatribes that developed during our conversation.
Gori is a Hindi adjective that literally means “fair” or “light-complexioned”. The i at the end of the word is a feminine conjugation, so gori is often used as a noun, with the subject being understood without explicit reference. In this slightly looser interpretation of the word, gori can mean “pale female”, “fair woman”, or even “white girl”. The masculine version of gori is gora, which can be translated as white man. Since I’m awfully pale-skinned, at least in the winter, gori can be rightly used as an adjective to describe me, or as a noun in reference me.
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Indian Wedding Story: Part Two
Part one of this Indian wedding story can be found here.
The wedding ceremony took place in the evening, so Aditya and I were pretty free to do what we’d like the morning of the big day. His family had been planning the event all along - all we did was show up - so if there had there been any last minute catering disasters, for instance they were primed to take care of them. I was still a little jetlagged when I rolled out of bed, but figuring out how to operate the bucket-based showering system woke me up.
When I emerged dripping from the bathroom, Maa politely inquired whether I’d like to wear a sari, a salvar kameez, or whatever clothes I’d brought with me from the US. Now, as I’d never been to India before (and my inlaws refuse to purchase the high priced imported Indian clothes in the US), this was going to be my first time wearing Indian clothes. I decided to go all out, and start with a sari.
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