Want to settle the debate on how much interracial marriage there is in the US? I know I’m tired of hearing the occasional uninformed comment on how South Asians just don’t marry people outside their ethnicity, and isn’t it downright odd that my supposedly proud-of-his-Indian-heritage husband would do so?
(Hmm, well, he is an odd, odd dude. But not because he’s married to me. Or, I mean, not ’cause he’s married to a white woman – I’ll admit you might have to be odd to voluntarily marry me. We brought matching crazy to the marriage table as dowry.)
Well, the statistics on interracial marriages in America are now here, courtesy the US Census, so we can put this baby to rest. Actually, the statistics have always been “here” since the 2000 Census information was released, but I’m not such a numbers nerd that I felt like crunching the raw data myself with SAS or STATA. Luckily for me, a pair of sociologists have already done the dirty work, and their results have been made available at Dr. C.N. Le’s Asian Nation website. I’m going to only present the South Asian related statistics here, but Dr. Le has the same sort of information available on all Asian ethnicities, and you can tease out information about other ethnicities as well.
The data on interracial marriages is broken down first into the sexes – so we can see how intermarriage varies by gender , and then into the three following groups, each of which gives us a snapshot of the whole picture:
- Marriages of ALL South Asian individuals, whether the person is an immigrant to the US or not. This data is great in one way, as it let’s you know what types of marriages the entire South Asian population have, but it’s also troublesome. The problem is that a lot of married people immigrate to the US, and they’ll be counted in this group too. That means the data captures not only the type of marriages taking place in the US, but also how prevalent interracial marriages are in India & neighboring countries (hint: it’s quite, quite low). Why does that matter? Well, it’s the difference between marriages happening in America and married people living in America – if you want to know more about former, you won’t learn it here. The information about this group of all desis, however, will let you know how likely it is that the random brown person you grab off the street in the US is married to someone of a different ethnicity.
- Marriages of South Asians where the South Asian individual in the marriage was raised in the US. To be considered “raised in the US” for this study, you must have been born & raised here, or have immigrated to the US no later than age 13. If you immigrated to the the US after 13, then your childhood was primarily spent elsewhere, and you’re considered foreign-raised. This second group serves as a sort-of proxy for marriages that take place in the US, since only the spouse may be foreign-raised, not the individual in question (remember, we’re taking the sexes separately, so for the guys, belonging to this category would mean the guy was US-raised and the woman was either US-raised or foreign-raised. This set up allows us to avoid counting couples composed of two foreign-raised individuals – which are the couples who likely immigrated here already married.
- Marriages of South Asians where both the South Asian individual and the spouse are US-raised. This third group is pretty straightforward, and is quite interesting in terms of seeing how Indian immigrants’ children are intermixing with the rest of America.
So, the data for guys, in pretty graphical form:
Clear trends can be seen here, with couples composed of a male South Asian raised in the US achieving greater percentages of interracial marriage than the group of desis as a whole. About 8.1% of all South Asian guys (group 1) marry someone of a different race (is that higher than you suspected? It is for me!), but among American-raised desi guys marrying American-raised women (group 3) 43.4% of them are marrying interracially – quite a lot! Note, however, that of all US-raised South Asian dude (group 2), only 26.7% of them married interracially. It’s only those that chose to marry other US-raised individuals that married outside of their ethnicity to such a large degree.
Now for the girls:
The intermarriage rates here are a little lower compared to the guys for the whole population (6.4%), but, surprisingly higher for the group 3 girls, with 45.7% marrying someone of a different ethnicity. The majority of the difference for group 3 between genders seems to come from marriages between South Asians and whites, as “only” 31% of South Asian men in group 3 marry white women, but 36.3% of South Asian women in group 3 marry white guys. It’s a bit curious though, that as we look at US-raised desis as a whole (i.e. group 2), we don’t see the same difference in the marrying of white folk – 18.5% of US-raised Indian guys married white woman & 18.9% of US-raised Indian gals married white men. Overall, 24.3% of US-raised desi women married out of their ethnicity, which is lower than it is for group 2 guys.
Now, you might be saying, “Wait a second – there’s no way these numbers are correct – I know a lot of South Asians, and very few of them are married interracially”. And, of course, you’d be correct. The higher percentages of interracial marriage only occur among US-raised South Asians. And only about 1 in 10 of all the married desi individuals living in the US is US-raised. There’s about 630 thousand married Indian guys, of which only 54 thousand are US-raised. It’s similar with the females, with 580 thousand married Indian gals in the US, of whom only 60 thousand are US-raised.
A few disclaimers:
- This data is drawn from the US Census, and, like all censuses, it isn’t perfect. That being said, it’s a hella a lot better than the vast majority of sociological data out there, especially when compared to similar-sized data sets.
- The data does not discriminate between citizens and non-citizens – just all people living in the US at the time of the 2000 census. So, for example, if Aditya and I had been married at that time, he would have shown up in this data, even though he’s just a green card holder.
- These percentages are based off of different sized groups, so don’t go adding and subtracting percentages willy-nilly. If you want a number calculated, just ask.
I think the number most surprising to me was the percentage of foreign-raised South Asians who marry interracially. It’s 6.3% for men and 6.0% for women. Really, I wouldn’t have expected it to be that high – and this data is from 2000, so it’s a bit outdated. I think Aditya was also surprised by what he saw as relatively high percentages. Did anything strike you guys as unexpected?
12. May 2009 at 2:21 am
The Korean data DOES support the stereotype that Korean men and White women don't mix as often as KF, WM. FR Korean men with WF 5.5%. FR Korean females with WM 23.7%. Even when you count USR for both spouses, it's 40.3% for men and 60.8% for women.
12. May 2009 at 5:53 am
Yes, if you look at the other Asian ethnicities at Asian Nation, you see the same trend popping up in most groups. It doesn't happen as much with South Asians, but that just might be 'cause they don't intermarry as much overall.
12. May 2009 at 8:49 am
I'm not that surprised. For the Indians I know in our generation (20s and 30s — almost all considered US-raised), the interracial marriage percentage is hovering somewhere around 60%. For those in our parents' generation (50s and older), it's obviously much lower — probably around 1%. If you ask them, it'd probably be higher, since they tend to see inter-community marriages (like Punjabi-Bengali) as being in the interracial category. Then it might be closer to 30% for parents and 80% for the younger set for the people I know.
12. May 2009 at 8:57 am
These numbers are indeed higher than I'd imagined, and with less of a M/F split.
What a great post – thanks!
12. May 2009 at 9:46 am
I would expect that with the desi (South Asian) community, more Muslims intermarry than non-Muslims. Just a hunch I have based upon what I know of Islam.
12. May 2009 at 9:47 am
Meaning, more Muslim desis marry more Muslim non-desis than say, Hindu desis marrying non-desis. I didn't mean more Muslims are marrying non-Muslims. I'm talking about ethnicity here, not religion.
12. May 2009 at 10:18 am
Hmm. It should be possible to test that hypothesis with the collected data, since religion is identified for each individual as well. Of course, I don't have the raw data to manipulate, but perhaps I'll see if I still have an SPSS installation cd around that I could use to play with the raw data & find out. (SPSS is yet another type of statistical software, and gives me less headaches than STATA or SAS.)
12. May 2009 at 5:57 pm
In UK, for second generation Indians, the outmarriage rate, mainly to whites is about 7%
So 8% sounds about right for the USA
Also another factor to consider,
when the US raised South asians were growing up, there were very few south asians in the US and they had to marry out
From historical record, google up Mexican Hindu
Sikh Immigrant men in 1900s, married 100% to mexican women
( due to miscegenation laws )
For the current generation growing up in the US, there are south asian enclaves all around
and I expect the outmarriage rate to settle at 8%
16. May 2009 at 4:39 pm
The reason for much less south asian women marrying white men as compared to east asian men is as follows
When I was in California, about 25% of east asian women married white men
Often the drive to marry white men was so strong that in many cases, I have seen college educated east asian women marry white carpenters, gym instructors ( blue collar, high school only )
Whereas south asian women are unlikely to be interested in any man who is not a college graduate. This rules out 75% of white men
In addition, the parental pressure in the case of daughters marrying out is much more than
in the case of sons marrying out
There is much more caste stigma in the case of daughters marrying out of religion, than in the case of sons marrying out
18. May 2009 at 12:03 pm
Yes, it's a pretty common occurrence that as the size of a minority group grows & enclaves develop, outmarriage rates decrease. However, eventually intermarriage becomes more common – it's getting more and more rare to see a “full-blooded” Japanese-American, for instance. I only had a couple of friends in California who were 4th (or in some cases 5th) generation Japanese and didn't have a grandparent or parent who married out – and both of those friends aren't dating Japanese people either.
27. May 2009 at 9:31 pm
With over 100K Indians legally immigrating each year, the enclaves are growing
For the last 20 years, I can see in the local Indian newspapers, in the matrimonial columns, caste being specified
Meaning the population is high enough to screen by specific caste
There are several large caste associations in the US, and one of their main
functions is match making
Another change that has happened in the last 10 years is that now
there are hindu sunday schools in virtually every city run by Chinmaya etc,
Almost every hindu temple seems to have a weekly bal vihar
and one of the subtle messages is to encourage marrying within the religion
7. June 2009 at 8:11 pm
Moderate Indians and Indians raised in open minded families are open to marrying a girl outside their race but of late such acts in USA could invite us lots of unnecessary trouble, as everyone knows it is necessary to date a girl before you marry her and often these days most of the American women know that Indian guys are intelligent, hardworking and polite but sometimes if we start dating the wrong kind of a girl unknowingly because of lack of foreign cultural awareness, they socialize with us and some time it becomes hard to desist from making love during courtship days and these girls bring criminal cases against us stating that we raped them and start extorting money as its has happened recently in the case of Anand Jon ,Visit the website to know the full story (http://www.anandjon.com/) and many other cases and then American judges who either are racist or want to abuse the power along with a prosecutor who wants to create an image of being tough on crime and a jury that is equally eager to take out all its frustration of joblessness and immigration sentiment on a foreign guy overlooks the whole situation and convicts an Indian guy and so the Indian guys instead of getting a Gori Girl get a 100 year sentence because the laws in United states have mandatory minimum sentences which are frequent misused on minorities.
visit the website
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisons_in_the_Uni...) up to 60% of the incarcerated people are minorities who constitute only 20% of the American population. “The United States has the highest documented incarceration rate, and total documented prison population in the world. As of year-end 2007, a record 7.2 million people were behind bars, on probation or on parole. Of the total, 2.3 million were incarcerated. More than 1 in 100 American adults were incarcerated at the start of 2008. The People's Republic of China ranks second with 1.5 million, while having four times the population, thus having only about 18% per the US incarceration rate.see the website
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandatory_sentenci...
Notable cases:
“Weldon Angelos – 55 years for possessing a handgun while he sold $350 worth of marijuana to a police informant on three separate occasions, Billy Ochoa – 326 years to life for 13 counts of welfare fraud totaling $2,100 and there are lots of black people like troy Davis who have been given death sentence even though the prosecution does not have any forensic evidence against them of any wrong doing”.
So how do you expect any minority to marry a Gori Ladki(Girl).
8. June 2009 at 12:23 am
“”So how do you expect any minority to marry a Gori Ladki(Girl).”"
Its not desi dudes in American jails, its black dudes. But more white dudes are in jail than black dudes anyway.
Anand Jon's case is isolated. Can you bring forth at least 10 cases of desi dudes who are languishing in American jails due to false rape allegations put forth by gori girls????
And if your so worried about gori girls throwing false cases against you, why not go for kali girls?
31. July 2009 at 4:12 am
Well we ALL know Indians won't just marry ANYbody outside of their race.I mean, for Blacks…it could be deadly:
http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/jun/27black.htm
31. July 2009 at 6:24 am
I don't think it's fair to generalize across 1.2 billion people based on one incident.
I think we all know that every country has the “crazies”.
31. July 2009 at 11:02 am
I don’t think I made a generalization. After all, just review the statistics that were posted.
Crazy is context-specific. What he did was crazy…for the US in 2009. After being in India for a few months, and receiving a brand of “hospitality” that would make any neo-nazi blush, I’m realizing that in the killer’s mind his actions were necessary and I am positive that plenty of people here in India would have done the very same thing, considered it, or at the very least found his behavior to be within reason. When you show me an article in which an Indian family was so ashamed of the marriage between their son and a White woman that they had her murdered in the most brutal fashion, and the husband of that woman thinking little to nothing of it despite having a child with the woman, perhaps I would reconsider my position. You would sooner find an article with an Indian woman suffering that fate under those circumstances.
All this is to say that I hope no one here believes that the mere *presence* of interracial union is sign of any sort of racial progressiveness. Who they are marrying and why they’re inclined to marry them should be critically considered as well. The god-like admiration that White people in India receive for absolutely no reason at all has lead me to believe that that this “discomfort” is a farce, and secretly many people welcome the unions.
20. August 2009 at 7:20 pm
Replying to gloria83
In the Indian caste matrix, lighter skin is often associated with higher caste
In traditional India ( over 95% ) marriage to a non-Hindu is grounds for outcasting by the family
That being said, a white xtian would have a higher chance of acceptance than an Indian xtian, provided certain sops to the parents are provided
These sops include change of religion and / or change of diet and / or agreeing to raise the kids in the Hindu faith
In cases where the white person is a staunch xtian or is not capable of having children, parental acceptance is extremely unlikely
23. August 2009 at 2:51 pm
I guess crazies are on the roll with stereotyping again, eh?
24. August 2009 at 1:18 pm
Awesome attempt at deflection Amreekan (that’s sarcasm,in case you missed it).
But can you tell me exactly where the stereotypes are made? This would be WAY more interesting if you actualyl *attempted* to engage what was written, rather than just decinding that anything positive is the truth and anything negative is a stereotype.
24. August 2009 at 1:19 pm
Yikes, sorry for the typos….
25. August 2009 at 8:31 am
“After being in India for a few months, and receiving a brand of “hospitality” that would make any neo-nazi blush, I’m realizing that in the killer’s mind his actions were necessary and I am positive that plenty of people here in India would have done the very same thing, considered it, or at the very least found his behavior to be within reason”
Any particular statistic that might back up this claim? Or did you mean a handful of people when you said plenty of people? I think Aditya is right that there are crazies everywhere and the story is an exception rather than a rule. (I personally know two Desi-African American couples and in their case the resistance was mostly from the non-Desi side of the families. Both sides of the families are happy with them now. However, these are only two cases and not nearly enough data to conclude anything reasonable.) Some how your suggestion that most Desis will contemplate murder in the event of an interracial union seems rather unlikely to me.
In any event I was responding to Shyamsunder’s comment.
25. August 2009 at 7:36 pm
Article from outlookindia.com
Brownian Notions
“Our women don’t drive BMWs,” the Gujarati mum told me some time back. Meaning they’re supposed not to go for men who may be “Black, Muslim or White”. And of the few who do slip? She thought that would be a family calamity of varying shades. Going out with a black man would bring shame, but with a white chap also some embarrassment. We like fairness in our species, not the whiteness of the other; there’s such a world of difference between the two, a whole other language of being. Whiteness works best for an Indian when it informs a lighter shade of your own kind.
In home after home, the Indian in London loves to show off white friends, but never quite a white spouse.
But he’d want for a daughter-in-law a fair Patel, not a white Brit. White in marriage is not quite a derailment, but it is off the approved track, which for a woman is to remain virgin until at 22 she marries her own sort of Indian with property, prospects and a BMW of the motoring kind.
For the Indian male, to sleep with a white woman—do it to a white woman rather, speaking of the feel of it—is a mandatory conquest without which the migration experience is never complete.
26. August 2009 at 8:54 am
Any particular statistic that might back up this claim? >>>
Any statistic on violence against women (and girl children for that matter) will do. The reality is, a woman’s life in India is not valued nearly as much as a man’s, and add the racial/color hierarchy, it’s quite easy to see how some women’s lives become even LESS valuable under that cultural frame than others. Which is why I said, I’m not surprised. And I would sooner here an Indian woman meet that fate than a White one. I meant plenty when I said plenty. I would even go further and say a whole lot. I couldn’t say most. But I would say a lot.
My bottom line was simply that I don’t take IR statistics to mean much. Especially involving a post-colonial nation still grappling with their relationship to White power structures (internationally and domestically). When finally afforded the opportunity to have proximity to what they seem to openly value at home (whiteness or near whiteness), why *wouldn’t* they go for it?
Just an outsider’s opinion.
26. August 2009 at 10:33 pm
There is plenty of violence against women in India, I do agree. However, as far as I know those very unfortunate incidents doesn’t have much to do with race.
27. August 2009 at 9:20 am
The point I made previously was that the likelihood of that sort of violence taking place increases or decreases according to the perceived value of the woman. And because one can accurately conclude that near whiteness (and logically, whiteness) are of high value in India, I think my initial conclusion isn’t so far fetched.
28. August 2009 at 10:42 am
And my point is that extrapolating even a little when there is no data is only going to lead to conclusions that might be wrong. I am just saying, as an insider that is.
28. August 2009 at 9:30 pm
The murderer in this case is a Punjabi
Punjabis in India, esp Jats do a lot of honor killings
in India, and to a lesser extent, UK, Canada and some even in the USA for out of caste marriages.
Punjabis even despise the darker south Indians
And you are right in one aspect, a white woman would likely not be murdered
However, it is far removed from reality to say that white women will be welcomed
The correct answer is that there will be less opposition
Indians prefer fairer Indians of their own caste, not white people
Since the time of Alexander the Great, Indians are aware of white people, who are classified in derogatory terms as Yavan, Mlech etc
In my caste, I have seen Indian parents offer a lot of money to white women to leave their son and go away
2. September 2009 at 3:07 pm
Extrapolating a little? Is that not what we ALWAYS do when we interpret statistics???
2. September 2009 at 4:29 pm
@Gloria – The original quote was: “extrapolating even a little when there is no data”… this is vastly different from interpreting statistics.
Your original statement was: “Well we ALL know Indians won’t just marry ANYbody outside of their race.I mean, for Blacks…it could be deadly”
Where is the data to suggest that it is deadly for black people marrying Indians?
You cited only one incident – which is a single data point…
@Shyamsundar: You are also making sweeping generalizations without providing an iota of evidence supporting any of your claims…
27. September 2009 at 6:49 pm
I forgot about this thread, lol
Aditya, look at the statistic posted here. When Indians marry out, they overwhelming choose a particular group and overwhelming disregard another. Sure, ONE incident that we know of ended in death, which is why I said it COULD be deadly, not it IS deadly. The inferences I’ve made based on those statistics, my personal observations of Indian attitudes towards Blacks/African in India and throughout the diaspora, and things I’ve read throughout the internet has led me to an understanding that (no offense) I’m positive you know but simply don’t want to admit. Again, I am not implying that ALL of those relationships will end tragically. But as I said, it’s no secret that Indians put a shameless premium on whiteness.
2. September 2009 at 11:15 pm
Hindus are becoming more and more passive about their religion and culture therefore without a clear-cut adherence to the religion it will just fade away. While you “celebrate” the Christian festivals but your children are merely “exposed” to Hindu festivals says a ton about where this is headed. You are the last of your lineage as a Hindu, for all practical purposes it has ended with you.
Self-esteem in having a Hindu identity in America is pitiable and on the wane even more as they “marry out” — Hindus in America have inherited their heritage — mostly from good parents — and are now often passively willing to let it all go away (because they take it for granted in their own lives) and not really pass on a solid self-esteem of being Hindu to future generations. End result: no more Hindus in America among, only assimilated Christians or non-religious people. Religion is not so important, but Hindu is an identity,practicing certain kinds of behavior without shame and also upholding the values of an ancient heritage. Intermarriage is fine but isn’t it possible and good to raise interracial/interfaith 3rd generation children with a solid Hindu identity. They will need it because the 2nd generation took it for granted and their parents made sure they assimilated well and got good jobs. Will Hindus become another in the line of cultural/religious corpses in the graveyard/melting pot that is America? And there is a power relationship here: the passive, undefined get assimilated and whole lines of culture are lost to the world. Why are Jews so concerned? Or Christians and Mulsims about “preserving culture”? Where is this in our Hindu community?
2. September 2009 at 11:28 pm
She will in no way raise your child in same way Hindu moms raise theirs- the strictness, modesty, aartis in home, temple going constantly. You threw away everything from thousands of years literally…how sad.
The good news is when Indian men marry these women…your dark skin is the dominant gene.
The kids come out same skin tone as you. We know 7 families who had average 3 kids each. Each single family (for interracial) the kids came out looking like father whether white father or Indian father.
We were at Ikea the other day and it was so depressing: white blond was with Indian dark prince & had 3 dark Indian girls: for 45 minutes the Mom did nt say one thing.
In India : in thousands of years hve you seen circus shows of mothers, daughters, sisters being nude in public and glamorizing their prostitution for $5? why only in US?
because it is their culture, their fashion…their religion is separate from all this. Your daughters &sons religion & culture will be same as hers not your Hindu mothers.
50% divorce rate within 7 years and 80% divorce rate after.
5. December 2009 at 10:57 am
radha,
first of all i do not think you are a girl and if you are a girl then i pity you. let me tell you some facts.
1. indian women especially modern women never go to temples. they have no love for their religion. they have lost all their modesty and culture in the name of freedom. look at bollywood and life in general. you yourself have added lots of videos of characterless indian girls from bollywood in youtube or favored them. are you proud of them? if yes, then shame on you if you are a girl.
2. there are lots of prostitutes in india also like everywhere in the world. so indian girls are not clean as pure water. Indian women have became the most characterless and greedy women in the world. they are also not much good -looking and intelligent.
indian women are doing literally anything for money.
3 so you should not feel bad or jealous if an indian man marries a foreign girl whether european or usa or paki or arab. there are lots of indian men who have married foreign women but only a few negligible indian women may have married foreign men. those indian men who marry foreign women their children are HINDUS only. They raise their children as HINDU children only inspite of their wife being non-hindu. I have seen it. so you should not worry
4. regarding indian fathers they are generally very strict and religious and care for the family. but i cannot say the same thing for indian women now-a-days sadly.
so you should keep this facts in mind instead of posting usless comments.
5. December 2009 at 12:20 pm
suresh, please do not generalize in your statements. Some Indians may be the way you suggest, but certainly not all.
12. August 2010 at 8:51 pm
“Indian women have became the most characterless and greedy women in the world. they are also not much good -looking and intelligent.”
For intelligence and good-looks, are you blind and mentally ill? I mean that completely seriously. Take group of girls from Delhi and group of girls from London; I guarantee the Delhi batch will far-more better educated and way, way, way more good-looking and beautiful; I live in Delhi myself, and have lived in London and New York for a few months and I have a hard time believing that anyone could consider white women more intelligent and good-looking than Indian women, (especially the latter!) that too coming from an Indian man.
2. September 2009 at 11:30 pm
for American families. It is a wonder they are dying to wear Hindu women fashion and Hindu husbands? who were raised by their HIndu mothers & fathers!! & how is it possible that they all send their parents to nursing homes? Indian parents do not do that!! What a slap to your own parents face and the suffering of your Mom and Dad both.
2. September 2009 at 11:46 pm
Your children, I repeat, will be raised nothing like you, especially your daughters.
18. February 2010 at 6:06 pm
You are a disgrace to india and indian people. @ D. i am so sorry for this hypocrtical bull radha is spreading. I was born in scoltand of an indian background, i like both the family, kind, polite culture of india but also the individual freedom, equal gender, racial etc liberty of the west.You, repeat, are a disgrace.
3. September 2009 at 9:31 am
“She will in no way raise your child in same way Hindu moms raise theirs- the strictness, modesty, aartis in home, temple going constantly. You threw away everything from thousands of years literally…how sad.”
Funny, my Hindu MIL doesn’t do any of those things. Except for maybe the modesty, but probably not to the extent that you’re thinking.
“It is a wonder they are dying to wear Hindu women fashion and Hindu husbands? who were raised by their HIndu mothers & fathers!!”
I wasn’t dying for a Hindu husband. It happened to work out that way.
“Your children, I repeat, will be raised nothing like you, especially your daughters.”
I’m personally planning to raise my kids a lot like how my husband was raised, because my husband’s family is warm, loving, and open-minded. If they were like you, RADHA, I think it would be perfectly reasonable to not raise them that way.
3. September 2009 at 9:33 am
I think I’ve done my troll-feeding for the day, there.
5. September 2009 at 2:01 am
5.5 – 7% of ASIAN INDIANS MARRIED OUT IN US!
http://www.asian-nation.org/interracial.shtml
Your graph is funny, map taken from US Census Bureau Website, but guess what, they don’t publish on their website! It’s only available via credible sources! I know this because my sister works for government in law! Which publication did you get yours from because the site I provided gives completely different numbers
Note from Gorigirl – the data represented in the graphs in my post come from the US Census via Asian Nation.org. I simply produced them in graphical form for easier interpretation. Oh, and (almost) all US Census data is available to anyone requesting it, although it often comes in forms that require a lot of cleaning. Been there, done that in my grad student days.
5. September 2009 at 7:33 pm
Two black British dancers sparked a massive race row after they were called “n*****s” and banned from performing at a major cricket match in India.
Cheerleaders Ellesha Newton and Sherinne Anderson were stopped by an Indian organiser as they were about to go on stage before the India Premier League Twenty-20 tournament in Mumbai.
Ellesha, 22, told The Sun, “An organiser said the people here don’t want to see dark people. The n***** word was used and they said they only wanted beautiful white girls.”
–
The snub came ahead of Kings XI Punjab’s opening match at Mohali last month
–
The punjabi audience booed the black cheerleaders.
Indian Hindu / Sikh Punjabis often call South Indians as Kallus ( N word ) and in the USA, prefer to socialise with muslim Punjabis from Pakistan, than with hindu South Indians
-
But there is a very big difference from preferring white cheerleaders to actually marrying white ( which disrupts the caste network )
Many of bollywoods early actresses were very fair muslims of Persian descent, but actually marrying a muslim woman would lead to outcasting all over India.
Indian parents worry that the white daughter in law will put them into a nursing home / divorce their son and walk away with a lot of alimony / not raise their grandkids as hindus
8. December 2009 at 2:44 am
your comments about the perception of south indians by “Punjabis” is
somewhat ironic. Punjabis and other north indians, to a great extend,
are the by products of thousands of years of foreign invasions (greeks, persians, mongols, etc…)So basically, they already are racially mixed.
South indians, to a great extend, remain racially pure. The comment that punjabis refer to south indians as “kallus” and there by feel some sort of superiority, well, south indians have some interesting language they refer to when they talk about ignorant north indians aswell. I think it goes both ways!! If I am not mistaken, many of the most beautiful women in hindi cinema (north india) are south indians, in fact
Dravidians by blood (ex Aishwarya rai, vidya balan, deepika, hema malini, sri devi, etc…). Its important not to generalise and alienate
a significant part of india that is the very driving force of the economic growth that india is enjoying these days !
Finally, as far as interracial marriages are concerned, the main cause is simple, a lack of exposure to ones own culture. There is nothing wrong, atlest in my mind with white girls or others, its a matter of what you want and what you value, hurting/ killing thats wrong, plain and simple!! In my mind, if parents properly exposed their children (expecially girls) to indian culture and made that a part of their daily lives, their kids, when they grow, will choose to stick to their own kind. If a child growing up in western countries doesn’t know what their culture is and why its important, whats to hold them back from dating people outside their own race (Its so easy to find girls to date!). You cant expect people to be loyal to something they don’t know!! If people feel the need to fault someone, then I think its the parents that should be blamed, not the son/ daughter or the,to be, inter racial spouse.
5. September 2009 at 8:06 pm
About the parents, They’re so heartbroken over the inter cultural/religious/race relationship that they won’t even come to the states. They have a right to their worries &their heartbreak. I know of many of those situations. Every other ethnicity is same as us but we still have “conquered mentality” and think we will be exploited by uk all over again if they don’t put their foot down. Our families personally know of Catholic, Baptist sons from varying ethnicities who refuse to marry any thing other than their fellow gene pool or religion/both. Indians r passive & conquerable that is all. About the black girls that is really horrible…-Indians here we know when blacks were in majority were harrasesed & abused daily ; same thing by whites; your examples are miniscule when compared to the global scale. can anyone stop 50 black people in work setting from harrassing Indian coworkers when the manager is black? absolutely not….so put it in context. It happens for all races. Trust me though we don’t have a preference for white marriages. See the link http://www.asian-nation.org/interracial.shtml
Which brings me back to point about marrying within: these kids from Indian man &white woman will produce Indian color kids with a colonial minded mom, it will not be easy for them at all.
5. September 2009 at 8:49 pm
Deleted for abusive comments to another poster. First strike, RADHA – GG
6. September 2009 at 12:01 am
Indian parents are aware that Indian Americans are twice as rich as native whites, and are afraid that their sons are targeted by white women for their money ( and future alimony )
6. September 2009 at 1:41 am
“There are literally millions of millionaires in the United States. In fact, according to this 2005 article from MarketWatch, 8.9% of Americans are millionaires. That translates to roughly 2.6 million people” I don’t think that’s accurate…I read somewhere else its alot more.. the successful ones here are taxed 35% just like everyone else &their income after taxes is like $50,000!
India has only 100,000 millionairies(we just reached 1 lakh mark)
http://www.financialexpress.com/old/latest_full_story.php?content_id=168475
Richer than native whites, what a joke.
6. September 2009 at 7:56 am
Whoa, I don’t have time to read all of that ranting. Someone needs to learn to be concise! But to clear things up from the 3-4 sentences I did catch as I scrolled down:
1. I’m white and not Hindu (never said I was). Try to keep your posters straight and address the correct ones instead of latching onto the handle of the last poster.
2. In my old post that you quoted, I said that figure was from the Indians I know, who are mainly my husband’s family. My husband’s family/community seems to be very different than a lot of the ones discussed here or that you may be familiar with. They are very open minded and fine with people marrying outside their community — even the older generation has welcomed me and the other “outsiders” lovingly.
3. I met my husband our freshman year of college. Neither of us was in any way looking for a spouse at the time. We dated for many years before deciding to get married. This whole “white women marry Indian men to avoid divorce” arguement is ludicrous. The way to avoid divorce is to have a good marriage, not to marry into a culture that has a low divorce rate.
Wait…didn’t I say I was finished feeding trolls? No sense in arguing with the crazies because they don’t listen anyway!
6. September 2009 at 5:58 pm
Per the Pew 2008 report,
in the over $100k per year family income
for US residents
Jews = 46%
Hindus = 43%
Muslims, Buddhists, Xtians all = 17%
Add to this the 1% divorce rate,
6. September 2009 at 6:13 pm
Excerpts from ‘Desi Land’ by Shalini Shankar
The author investigated from 1998 – 2002, on the Indian community in San Jose, California
Most of her subjects were middle class, non-techie parent, Punjabis from India ( non-muslim ) in several High Schools
About 20% of Indians in USA are Punjabis
Some Highlights
*There are half a million Hindus and Sikhs in the area
and the caste sytem of arranged marriage is well established
*Very few marriages happen out of caste
*Almost every Desi parent has drilled into their kids
- no muslims ( religious enmity ), no blacks ( racism ),
and no hispanics ( socio-economic reasons )
*Most Indian kids in high school obey their parents on this
since other Indian kids will rat out on them to their parents
*Girls especially who violate these rules get sent back to India
*Out of the several hundred Indian kids the author followed, just a handful violated the parental rules and there were severe consequences
A girl who married a black got outcasted
A girl who married a muslim got outcasted and her family got ostracised for several years at the local gurudwara ( sikh temple )
6. September 2009 at 10:54 pm
our families thousands of us have married within India;s borders, not caste..& millions of Catholics&Christians&Protestants say the same here- marry own. Our families know of quite a few, do I need to give you their names??? We KNOW PERSONALLY THOUSANDS OF FAMLIIES WHO PROHIBIT OUTSIDE RACE/RELIGION MARRIAGES! The conquered India mentality comes to play obviously doesn’t it, for every other ethnicitiy is okay but not for ours!In either case, if she is really Hindu daughter in law as she would like to be….then y not follow real customs of letting in-laws stay with them…there is not a single actual HIndu daughter in law who would say no to that. She wants to know under the wedding pics what are all the real customs. There are alot of them that her Hindu mother in law can teach her….but in OUR CUSTOM the in laws stay with us.
WHERE’S THE STUDY on millions of white Catholic famlilies that PROHIBIT! Or Jewish families? Or Muslim families? Or Mexican families! Using your bullshit UK conquering mentality doesn’t work for the thousands of families here who prefer to marry their own…or for all the other ethnic groups that do the same whether Chinese, black, white, Mexican or whatever other religion.
On Cheaters episode, there were some white girls and black girls who were using men for meal tickets while cheating on “their conquered husbands”. Do you have the study on how many do that?? or how about the study again, that for “American families” it is 50% div. rate within 7 yrs &80% after 7 yrs. See Hoffman &Averett Women &The Economy 2004
&y she is giving her own interpretation for the statistics? The graph explains 5% marry out. Not 40%. It means 40% of the 5%…
We know of white families who took sons out of wills, where even the men said from age of 17 on they can only marry fellow white Catholics or whichever…..
and for millions of us, we have arranged marriages. Respect the differences! It is not our right to tell the millions of White Catholic, Chinese, Blacks, or Mexicans they have to marry African or Chinese! It’s their right to prefer their own!!!
7. September 2009 at 9:52 pm
How to be aware of Indian men who are scoundrels
It is rather simple, if the foreign woman, has not met the in-laws within three months, and discussed the critical topics like nursing home and grand kids religion, then the man is simply trying to have a good time
Among a lot of Indian men, many have a cheater attitude to have a good time with a gori and go back to an arranged marriage with a lot of dowry
8. September 2009 at 12:00 am
Indiacurrents
Desi by Marriage
CRISTINA CHOPALLI
Eight months ago, O’Hare Airport; Prashant checks two enormous suitcases at the counter. Our embrace is too short. I watch him walk toward the international gate—toward the unknown, the absolute, and the inevitable: go to India and tell your parents you want to get married to an American girl. I don’t know how Prashant’s parents are going to react when he explains that the reason he can’t marry an Archana, a Priya, or a Sruthi is that he’s in love with a Cristina. South Indian-Brahmin parents don’t expect their sons to fall in love with American girls.
…
8. September 2009 at 3:25 am
Re: heartbreaks and respecting cultura/religious/race differences, at age of 17 I dated Italian white Catholic, I have known quite a few Christian men. The parents would not allow me to attend his swim meet being his non white girlfriend and I ended the relationship, he was saddened by it but he respected his parents wishes, and I respected that.
If him and I were completely in love and much older- then making the marriage work entails doing what a Jewish woman did. She conducted herself in all the ways Indian women do including letting parents live with her and making every effort to do so..she also let the parents stay with them for several years. She allowed the children to stay with relatives in India for a couple years and loved visiting India herself. Their two very Indian looking sons are married to fellow Indian brides and happy. She made every concerted effort to be Indian Hindu wife, whether ordering India’s paper, India Abroad, giving children access to India’s channels; attending the temple weekly especially in teens; allowing the children from young age to attend Chinmaya mission (many activities for children growing up pertaining to our thousands years history).
Happy Story. The other foreign wife we know disliked India and all the horrible things about India the mother taught the children from a young age,how backwards it was during Moghul area, how ‘dirty’ whatever. All three kids today are popular culture mutts so to speak and married other mutts and the relationships have not worked out, and more difficult even, there are kids involved. The ones who are not divorced here are the Orthodox Jewish, Orthodox Catholic, Orthodox Muslims, Orthodox Hindus, Orthodox Atheist. The homegenous solid upbringing creates 2 very well adjusted and happy children. Last scenario, an Indian Hindu cousin married to Christian male: the kids are learning all the Hindu customs, the parents of course of either side are living with them whenever they choose, and it is the Hinduism on daily basis and temple events as well as church going. The husband loves and worships India, loves Indian food, makes it himself even, and all the HIndu customs. So happy stories can be had but the kids have to reach out persistently to the parents, and bringing up India’s negative points, well I guess the purpose would be to make sure the parents never come to America a day in their life…heart break for everyone except the wife.
5. December 2009 at 11:51 am
Edited by Admin: suresh, the comments policy here does not allow you to attack or abuse other commenters. First strike. (3 & you’re banned). Also, please refrain from making stereotypical or generalized statements.
radha,
for your kind information There are lots of indian Hindu men who have married foreign women and they allow them to practice their religion but their children are HINDUS only.
there are lots of Indian HINDU males who are happily married to foreign women.
If a hindu girl marries a foreign boy(there may be very few) then she does not remain hindu and the children or also not hindu. her relationship with hindu religion is over.
her children turn out to be of other religion only. hindu girl’s marriage with hindu boy only is successful. hindu girl’s marriage with boy from other religion has never been successful. On the contrary Indian hindu boy’s marriage with a christian or muslim girl has always been successful mostly. that is called a happy story.
Hindu girl can marry only a hindu boy , if she marries a boy from other religion then she does not remain hindu. Hindu boy can marry a girl from other religion. you should keep this in mind.
i do not think you have dated any white man. if you by chance , then shame on you.
that shows your poor choice.
i myself have dated lots of white christian women and also few pakistani muslim women. so i know better than you. my friend’s wife is a white british girl. he is hindu. and both of them are very happily married since last 5 years. that is called happy story.
8. September 2009 at 12:42 pm
Radha/Prem/John/Dan, you’re not fooling anyone by changing your handle to post the same crazy things over and over again.
8. September 2009 at 1:04 pm
Comments on this post are going to be temporarily suspended until I clear out the crazy. Thanks to everyone who stepped up while I was out on vacation.
Edited September 8th, 2:31 pm:
I’m sorry to see the comments of a few spun out of control on this thread.
RADHA, please note that abusive comments towards other poster are not allowed, and will get you banned – hiding behind different names will not keep you safe. Also, please do not go on crazy-ass rants here. If you feel the need, try starting your own blog at blogger or wordpress.com. This is not the place for it.
Shyamsunder, the plural of anecdote is not data. While qualitative information can indicate some social trend is afoot, and can help in generating hypotheses, it does not prove anything in particular. I appreciate that you’re trying to add information to the dialogue, but I think posting of snippets of articles would be best done in the forum section where a more detailed discussion can take place than here in older posts, where fewer eyes see it.
D, thanks for not feeding the trolls anymore than you did.
9. September 2009 at 11:42 am
Haha, no problem GG. This one was pretty amusing once I went back and actually read the whole rant. Welcome back!
9. September 2009 at 2:00 pm
Unfortunately I don’t have a happy ending story, was married to an American woman for 5 years and she was betraying me for 3 years out of the 5 while we were married. I knew this woman for almost a decade now and it was really hard for me to take the betrayal, it came from nowhere and I honestly never thought we had a problem. I am divorced now , rebuilding my life , I am not judging anyone here nor passing blame , just wanted to share my piece of my struggle .
9. May 2010 at 11:00 am
Nandhu, this isn’t an issue of White Girls vs Asian Girls, who cheats more? It only proved one thing that women are also equally capable of cheating like men and, women tend to get away with it more easily. I sympathize with you because I am divorced from my ex-wife for the same reason and circumstances (out of nowhere with a new colleagues she barely knew for a month in new working place) too.
I understand how tough it is.
Great to read you’re rebuilding your life. I am too, without a woman that is. One thing I can assure you though, you will never look at women the same way again. In the past, perhaps it’s easier to give the benefit of doubts. After such an experience, you will find trusting a woman not as easy anymore regardless of how sincere a woman may sound or behaves towards you.
No doubt there have been women hoping to have a casual date with me and see what may be brewing, they usually get a hard time from me. Not because I am putting my anger and betrayal on them, but we have all learned that “talk is cheap”. And most of them, don’t really bother to understand the kind of circumstances we have lived through. Our perceptions change, our expectations (of a woman) and criterias change too.
It’s a struggle, but it will all get better when you figure your way out of it. I did, and alive and kicking still.
9. June 2010 at 2:53 pm
fine advice. I’m going to post a link of this podcast on my blackboard website for my students. Everything you said works for discussion boards too. Thanks !