Photo Credit: nattu

Friday Connections: a time when I give links and a bit of commentary to things I’d blog about if I had the time. This week the categories are mixed families, cross-cultural food, and gender inequality issues in India (with a really sweet video).

Mixed Families and the Larger Community

• Mixed and Happy (.com)
  After hearing about the  Louisiana judge who refused to marry an interracial couple – on the grounds that  mixed couples make unhappy families and unhappy children – Suzy Richardson decided to combat such ignorant racist thinking in a manner much more gracious and classy way than I ever could. She’s collecting photographs of happy interracial families to send to the now-ex judge as a Christmas present. They’re also posted on her blog for the project. If you’re comfortable submitting your photographs, I encourage you help her meet her goal of 100 families by the 15th – I believe there’s 15 to go.
• It’s a wonderful, mixed up world
  Dr. Aarathi Prasad discusses the science behind the possibility of mixed children being healthier or better looking than the average population. For more on the genetic take on “interbreeding” see here or here.
• The Great Melting Pot: “Edging” Us out with Interracial Families
  In part of the lovely interconnectivity of the internet, Catherine of Hyphen magazine responds to a Racialious blogger responding to a New York Times article of an incredibly unaware an unreflective white woman raising a mixed-race child. Good stuff for thought on the way some value whiteness and white culture (while liking an “exotic look”).

Cross-Cultural Food Issues

• Some Like It Hot
  A really fascinating article on how different cultures think – and talk about – food, especially what English speakers refer to as “hot” food. Hindi speakers, of course, refer to it with the word “masala”, and Germans talk about food being “scharf” aka sharp. Also of interest is an earlier blog post at the same site asking Is a universal Michelin guide possible?
• Hajmola: A Love/Hate Relationship
  Continuing on the topic of cultural idiosyncrasies in food, Heather of IndianTies has a post wondering if the Indian “candy” of Hajmola can ever be appreciated by someone who didn’t grow up with it. (I’m in the “this is so totally not a candy” camp.)
• Cranberries and Thanksgiving Dinner
  C at American-Nepali Household held Thanksgiving dinner with some of her Nepalese friends – and is a bit sad that they would rather have Nepalese substitutes for traditional Thanksgiving dishes rather than the originials. She’s still bringing the traditional can of cranberry sauce, though!

(Mostly) Negative Gender Issues in India

• Part-Liberated Woman
  Heartcrossings blogs about the difficulty of being an expat Indian woman considering a move back home – where she feels she won’t have the same freedom of existence that she – and her young daughter – have in the Western world.
• Answeres to Questions about My Life in India
  Sharell at White Indian Housewife answers some questions her readers have about her experiences living in India. This set of questions is regarding the different way Indian men and women seem to respond to her.
• India Among the Worst in Man-Woman Equality
  India was ranked 114 out of 134 countries in man-woman equality, according to the World Economic Forum. You can find the entire report here. The summary reports regarding South Asia that

While Bangladesh, India and Pakistan perform very poorly on the economic, education and health subindexes, their overall scores are partially bolstered by relatively good performances on political empowerment (Bangladesh ranks 17th, India 21st and Pakistan 43rd on this subindex). Relative to their own performances in 2006, Bangladesh, Iran and Pakistan register small increases in scores, while India’s sex ratio at birth fell to 0.89 girls for every boy, causing its overall score to decrease.

• Did affirmative action work for Indian women?
  In positive news, however, it looks like using affirmative action – i.e. quotas – requiring certain Indian districts to elect women leaders has led to an increase in the chances of a woman leader being elected in the same district after the quota ended. At least so far.
• Finally, I leave you with this heart-warming video about young, articulate women getting the chance to become Hindu priests:

Overall Impressions

I think that Your Intercultural Marriage is a good book – for the niche that the author, Marla Alupoaicei, is trying to serve: Christian intercultural couples.  With over half of the pages mentioning Christianity, the Bible, or God, I am obviously not the target audience. Nonetheless, I did enjoy the book, and I found useful material in here that I believe could appeal to anyone. I’d highly recommend the book to any Christian intercultural couple whose faith is a large part of their lives. For the more general intercultural couples, this book would not be among my top selections but it’s worth a pick-up if you see it in your local library, or if you’re comfortable picking and choosing from what’s written to find valuable information for your situation. The first chapter of Your Intercultural Marriage can be downloaded here (pdf).

More Details on Your Intercultural Marriage

The book is broken down into twelve chapters: the first half focuses on general topics of interest to any (Christian) intercultural couple, with topics such as “Surviving (and Enjoying) Your Engagement, Wedding, and Honeymoon” and “Building Strong Verbal and Nonverbal Communication Skills”. The second half of the book discusses more specific concerns that intercultural couples often have: time-orientation, food, finances, children, and so forth.  Each chapter starts and ends with a quote, and is followed by a suggested list of movies to watch (a feature which I fear will date the book in a few years time).

Alupoaicei’s breezy, friendly style of writing – with lots of pointers towards other resources  and questions to consider on your own – gives her book a feeling similar to a well-edited blog. You aren’t going to find any deeply thought-provoking passages here (other than the quoted Biblical ones, perhaps), but you  are going to find plenty of ideas that could lead to an ah-ha moment or a  great discussion with your significant other.

The amount of information presented, while great,  is also the book’s main weakness: with so much research and anecdotes from other sources (such as Romano’s Intercultural Marriage: Promises and Pitfalls) some chapters seem to have little of Alupoaicei’s own analysis, ideas, and self-reflection. However, other chapters, such as “Coming to Terms with Faith and Values” do pull together theoretical research, the author’s personal experience, list of questions, and the like to create a strong – albeit very Christian-oriented – chapter that will guide an intercultural couple through potential issues. I also appreciated the detailed chapter on intercultural marriage in the Bible, which I suspect could be particularly helpful if you have conservative (or bigoted) family members who believe that intercultural or interracial marriage are prohibited by God and/or the Bible.

Bottom line: If you are in the demographic Your Intercultural Marriage targets, I suspect that you’ll find this book pretty valuable.  If you aren’t, the constant discussion of the Bible & Christianity could grate, but if you can look past it, then you’ll find some good information and fun stories of other intercultural couples. I came away satisfied with the amount I got for the time I gave the book.

Giveaway!

If you’d like to be entered into the giveaway contest for Your Intercultural Marriage, just leave a comment here by Friday morning, Eastern Standard -  and include at least one fact or sentence about something intercultural, marriage, or book-related in your life in your comment. (Detailed & unique entries get bonus cool points, but everyone will have an equal chance to win.) I’ll draw the names randomly, and then contact you for shipping information if you win one of the copies of the book.

Disclaimer: I was provided with a free review copy of this book by the publisher.

This is Part Six of a continuing series on my Indian wedding adventure. If you’re new to Gori Girl, try checking out Part One, where the story starts.

After we started the fire (think Agni Pradipan, not Billy Joel), I fed Aditya some pre-made Laddu, which is a common Indian sweet used in pujas and other ceremonies. After this Aditya stood up and promised to provide for me for the rest of my life, so, really, I didn’t begrudge him the sweet. (Also: it was way too hot to do much but sweat beside that fire. Doesn’t look like it? Read on.)

To stay hydrated in the face of the fire (or, you know, for religious religions) we were both given some water from the Ganges to drink. From our cupped hands. This may have been the only water I drank during my entire time in India that was not personally verified by Aditya or another family member as safe for my oh-so-delicate American stomach. For the record, by the way, despite a complete lack of regard on my part, I never had the slightest stomach ache while in India.

After drinking the Ganges water – most of which ended dribbled onto my sari – the whole marriage “team” started to work to get the fire roaring. The younger priest – the one who wasn’t reciting Vedic hymns to music throughout – placed pieces of kindling into the fire. Maa, Baba, and my uncle tossed in mixtures of herbs in time to the drum beat. (Uncle Mark took a few minutes to get the beat properly.) Aditya and I spooned in oil from special spoons, held in a special manner. It was all very serious, of course. Well, except for the fact that Baba appeared to be aiming his herbal throws to cover our special spoons. And Aditya kept knocking his spoon into mine in (he says) an effort to dislodge the herbs covering his spoon – I suspect he was just being a brat. The end result, of course was predictable:

It got really hot and the fire got really high. And my flowers wilted. Which made me pout. Also, people were continuing to look at me, which will make any introvert pout. Then I remembered that it was my wedding and I got to play with fire! And life suddenly seemed better.

The majority of the wedding ceremony, as I recall, was playing with fire. As I mentioned earlier, as we fed the fire our Arya Samaj head priest recited Vedic hymns. Because the Araya Samajis believe that you should know what you’re promising, every part was first paraphrased by the priest in English (Maa & Baba hunted high & low for an English-speaking priest for me) before being recited in Sanskrit. The offerings we made were meant to symbolize our joint responsibility – along with that of our families’ – to maintain the love, duty, and dignity of the marriage.

After the fire was good and roaring, Aditya’s brother, Dada, stepped in to help us pour an offering of puffed rice into the fire. Traditionally this would be done by the brother or brother-cousin of the bride, but my brother was unable to make the trip to India.

In case you were wondering, the fire at the center of the Hindu wedding ritual is considered a god in and of itself – Lord Agni, God of Fire. Agni, for Arya Samjis, serves to dispel darkness and ignorance while brining light and knowledge.

After pouring the puffed rice (three times), we were on to the final – and most important stages of the wedding: the vows and steps around the fire. Which is where I made my largest mistake of the entire wedding…

Part Seven – the final post on my Indian Wedding – can be found here.

A new commenter, Lurker frequent, brought up this interesting topic in regards to intercultural marriages in the comments section of my last post.

As an Indian in the USA; the only reason I would not want to marry a local is to not “lose” my own traditions and culture. Minds meeting , and matching interests and hearts are more important, but certainly , coming from an old and rich tradition, one would want to preserve it by having a completely Indian family, no? Thoughts?

It seems to me that there are several issues in play here, some of which Aditya and I discussed in the comments section when Lf first wrote out his comment (do check it out).

1. What is meant by cultural continuity? Is it something we should value, and if so, why? Does intercultural marriage (which often leads to Third Culture Kids) automatically mean that the cultures of the parents is ending?
2. What does it mean to say that India has an “old and rich tradition” (compared, presumably, against America or other Western cultures’ younger and poorer traditions)? Is it something we should value? What exactly do we mean by tradition, anyways?
3. What sort of culture – or cultures – do we want to have in our own lives? For those of us in intercultural relationships, what (if anything) are we losing by not creating a monocultural family? Will our lives be richer for it? Poorer? What about extended families?

Well, that’s a lot of questions! Enough for a book or three, certainly, so I’ll just give a simplified sketch of my own views on this matter, than open it up to the rest of you.

What is cultural continuity?

Let’s get one thing straight: cultures – all cultures – are constantly changing. And by culture here, I mean “the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes a society” – i.e. culture is the sum of all learned human behaviors in a particular society. What one generation learns from the previous will change as a society adapts to different conditions. The rate of the change that a culture goes through will generally vary based on the internal and external conditions or pressures a society faces, such as technological innovation, changing resources, and contact with other cultures.

For example, most Americans today would not be able to survive for very long in the wild, but the pioneers in the early days of our nation certainly could and did. As “frontier America” transformed into towns and cities knowing how to live off the land became a less important skill than those that allowed you to work in an office or factory in town.

So what is cultural continuity, if all cultures are constantly in a state of flux? Well, while everything in a culture can change, certain societal structures and beliefs – often embedded in religion or religious belief itself – are resistant to change and experience it more slowly. Hinduism in India, and the caste system which has become entwined to some extent with Hinduism, are both good examples of long-standing cultural traditions. But even they have changed over time to stay relevant, as my husband, Aditya, mentioned in his original response to Lurker frequent:

The survival of traditions is in being able to remain relevant with changing times. Even following Hindu traditions & scriptures, you can see clear evidence of the evolution of Hinduism when it responds to new “challengers” like Buddhism (Bhagavad Gita), Islam (Vedanta revival) and Christianity (Vivekananda).

So it’s not that culture continuity requires that a culture stays the same – that’s impossible – just that certain central aspects of a culture, such as particular beliefs or traditions, remain. To return to the example of “living off the land” in the US, while most Americans can’t survive out in the wild, there remains an ethos of individuality in American culture: a belief that a person should be able to stand on his own two feet without help from others or the government, just as pioneers were required to do.

Should we value cultural continuity?

I personally think that a part of the human mind craves traditions, rituals, and continuity, although this need is expressed to a greater or lesser extent in individuals. So, yes – to some degree cultural continuity is a desirable feature to have, both in society at large and in our individual lives. That being said, it isn’t the end all and be all: “tradition for tradition’s sake” is an argument easily overrode by more pressing “goods” such as freedom of choice, happiness, justice, and so forth. By that I mean that traditions cannot justify actions that hurt people or deny them their basic human rights.

As Aditya said in his comment:

I do think that the argument (or preserving traditions) are well intentioned, but the fact of the matter is that traditions must be revisited constantly to remain relevant. If we froze our traditions as they were in the 16th century, we’d still have women locked in the kitchen.
Unfortunately, this argument is also being made all over the world today to deny basic human rights to minorities and oppressed groups… from the denial of political rights to women, to outlawing gay marriage, the mantra of “this is not how it has always been” has become the central “argument” against progress of society.

Leaving aside the moral argument, which I hope all of you understand without my expanding upon it, following some traditions in the modern age is simply irrational. Traditions, after all, were formed to help societies function well – but societies today don’t exactly look like (or require the same things) as they did when these traditions were developed. Consider, for example, the traditionally arranged economy (the Indian caste system is one version of this), where a child follows in the work of his father. This system only functions as a good tradition in societies where

1. The work doesn’t change much from one generation to another.  Otherwise, there’s no point in having the child learn a skill at the knee of his father that will be antiquated by the time child is old enough to enter the workforce, and
2. The work isn’t specialized enough that only some people have the particular skill set, mental abilities, and personality to do it well. Otherwise children will be trained from childhood to do a job that they aren’t well-suited for – there’s no reason to expect my future kids will rock out as product managers just because Aditya does.

In today’s economy, neither of these points holds true, and thus the traditionally-arranged economy should be abandoned purely on utility grounds – a society that practices it won’t do as well as a society that doesn’t.

So for a tradition to be continued today, it should:

1. be rational – actually help the society & people that practice it
2. be moral – not hurt individuals or their free practice of their basic human rights

With the increased pace of technological innovation today, many long-standing traditions have been ending, amid outcries from critics that capitalism or globalization or American cultural imperialism are ruining cultures left and right, leading to a homogenization of the world. This is largely bullshit.

Yes, societies around the world are becoming more similar – there is more of world-wide culture today than ever before. But subcultures and individuals’ choices within cultures are more diverse than ever before as well. People today have (more of) a choice of whether they want to follow a tradition that isn’t actually rational in today’s world – or one that violates people’s human rights, such as the caste system. Moreover, today we are able to witness some amazing creative efforts as people combine two traditions to make a completely new – and wonderful – tradition or art form. See, for example, my post on Michael Jackson and bhangra. (Now, while I’d like to move the focus back to intercultural relationships, if you’d like to read more on this topic I recommend starting off with economist Tyler Cowen’s article Creative Destruction, which can be found here as a word document.)

Intercultural marriage and creative destruction

Intercultural marriage is a perfect example of the creative destruction that, when successful, leads to both great innovation and happy, meaningful lives. Every marriage consists of the creation of a new family culture – but with intercultural marriages each individual is bringing a completely distinct culture and set of traditions to the table to be combined. Yes, there will almost certainly be fewer pieces of a Indian culture or Bengali culture in Aditya’s and my “family culture” than there would be if he had married another Indian – but we can choose to keep the worthwhile traditions while eliminating the rest.

We can keep statues of the gods around the house to remind us of our values, we can play and watch cricket on the weekends, remember that our home is also the home of our family, and have lovely saris and Indian tunics in the closets. We can also keep the best of American traditions and culture. We celebrate a secular family Christmas with an exchange of presents, watch (too much) great tv programming that comes out of Hollywood, train our dogs following Western methods like crating, and have (fasionably) torn jeans in the dressers.

It takes effort to combine two cultures successfully, and a willing attitude to learn from both partners. But I personally feel the effort is more than paid back by the results. Is it worthwhile for everyone? Of course not! Intercultural relationships are hard work. (All relationships require hard work, of course, but there tend to be more difficult variables in an intercultural marriage than a monocultural one.)

If you really want all of the traditions you grew up with to be part of your adult life, then you should probably choose something other than an intercultural match, since that’s unlikely to happen in an intercultural marriage unless your partner is willing to give up all of his or her cultural traditions. Of course, given the speed of cultural and technological change, it’s unlikely that all of the traditions you grew up with will be a part of your adult life anyways. As Aditya said,

In the reality of the globalized world of today, intercultural relationships give us a glimpse of a future where the free flow of information and people have broken down meaningless antiquated boundaries.

(And no, it’s not all small stuff – but there’s more small stuff than the amount of complaining would suggest.)

I was inspired to write this rant piece after reading a blog post over at Diary of a White Indian Housewife called Indian Men Being Hand Fed By Mummy, that, well, surprised me with the attitude of cultural bias or ethnocentrism it seemed to be expressing:

I’m fully aware that Indian mothers often hand feed their sons until they are quite old. However, I was shocked (and even a little appalled) that an adult man could still be getting hand fed by his mother!
…
Now, I’m wondering what is normal in India in relation to this kind of behaviour. What will happen when the 30 year old Peter Pan man, who’s still being hand fed, gets married. Will his wife be expected to take over feeding duties? Or will his mother keep doing it? Or, will he finally become a grown up and start feeding himself?

I generally love Sharell’s posts, which is why I was so surprised at the overtones of ethnocentrism in the words above (do be sure to over to her site to read the full post in context – and note that the post is tagged “culture shock”). Ethnocentrism, by the way, can most simply be seen as an attitude that judges other cultures relative to your own. And while it can be very difficult to shake these sort of prejudices and generalizations – as I’ve blogged about before – I do think it’s important to constantly evaluate our thoughts on other cultures to see if we’re letting our natural ethnocentrism run a bit too wild.

In this case, before you go all, “Dude, who does that?” on me about the hand feeding thing, take a deep breath, and run through the three point checklist of the official Intercultural Quirks Harm Test:

1. Does the behavior itself hurt anyone?
2. If you didn’t know the behavior was occurring, would it affect you in any way?
3. Is the behavior a significant disruption in your relationship?

This checklist works pretty well in helping me, at least, figure out when I’m being a bit too judgmental about a cultural behavior that really isn’t worth being bugged about.  (Of course, there are bigger, more problematic intercultural differences that you do need to address to keep your relationship running smoothly, but that’s not the topic of discussion today.)

So, being hand-fed by your mom after puberty. That’s the topic of discussion, especially since when I asked Aditya whether he still got this treatment, he got a goofy little happy grin on his face, and said “sometimes.” And, to just keep things fair and balanced, I’ll admit to behavior that shocked Aditya when I first told him: I only talked to my parents on the phone once during the nine months I lived and worked in Germany. And that once was on my 18th birthday. Yeah, my family kinda takes the whole American “adult child is independent from parents” thing to a bit of an extreme.

Is anyone being harmed by the action?

This is the key question you should ask yourself first – and no coping out by complaining about the psychic pain you feel when you see your spouse being hand-fed by his mother. Is anyone getting really hurt – either physically or emotionally? Remember to step outside of yourself and your cultural framework and look to see if there’s actual harm occurring or just your own assumptions about what is and isn’t harmful.

Americans might look at an adult being hand-fed, and think that he’s emotionally stunted and immature – while I’m pretty certain that Aditya and his mother just see it as way to be close and show love and affection. On the other hand, I’m pretty certain my parents thought they were showing their love by letting me stand on my own two feet while I lived in Germany, without them breathing down my neck with phone calls all the time. The lack of phone calls suited me just fine – but Aditya was horrified when he found out how little we spoke to one another. His family would be extremely hurt if he called them so rarely.

If you didn’t know it was happening, would the ripple effects still bug you?

Obviously, if you’re in a position to get your knickers in a knot about an intercultural quirk, you know about the behavior. But let’s go hypothetical for a moment, and imagine you didn’t know. Would the behavior still matter? Clearly, there are cases where it would – Aditya could expect me to feed him like his mother does, which would affect our relationship (negatively) even if I never knew his mother still hand feeds him. Or I could upset his family by talking with them on the phone as little as I do with my own parents.

However, if this odd cultural behavior of your significant other doesn’t clearly affect your life – if you wouldn’t know about it if you hadn’t seen or heard about it yourself – then it’s a bit silly to let your ethnocentric perception of the behavior to rule over your relationship.  In other words, I shouldn’t think Aditya is childish or immature just because his mother still feeds him – unless his actions in our relationship give me reason to think otherwise. Likewise, Aditya would be wrong to judge me as unloving or uncaring about family members just because I don’t speak to my family that often on the phone – it’s just that we don’t feel the need to talk much on the phone.

Is it something that irritates you, regardless?

Okay – so the behavior isn’t damaging or hurting anyone, and the behavior alone doesn’t affect your relationship – so how could it still be causing a significant disruption in your relationship? Well… people are funny creatures. Sometimes certain things just bug us, even if there’s no actual harm that they cause.

This isn’t a cultural quirk – just a personal one – but, for example, Aditya has a remarkable ability to hide his socks around the house in the process of taking them off at the end of a long day. I don’t know how he manages to end up with them wedged between the two bookcases, or bunched in the technology odds & ends basket, or in a feat of what must be magic, hidden beneath the 50-pound bag of dog food in the closet, but, somehow, he does it every night after coming home from work. It drives me spare! It’s not like it harms anything, since, really, what’s one more misplaced item in the mess of dog toys and papers strewn across our chaotic household? It’s completely irrational for me to be bugged about it, especially since he’s quick to pick it up when I point out a misplaced sock to him. But, nonetheless, it’s one of his most irritating habits to me – and so it’s one he’s working on changing, simply because I’ve let him know how much it happens to bug me.

So, far be it for me to say that you should never get your knickers in a twist over something irrational. But don’t let yourself pretend that a dislike of a particular difference – cultural or not – is based on something rational when it’s not. You might really dislike seeing your spouse hand-fed by his mother; maybe it just weirds you the heck out. That’s fine – I’m not going to judge you on that. But just because something weirds you out doesn’t mean that it’s wrong. And so, if you can, just ignore those little things that irritate or worry you. (Obviously I can’t with The Misplaced Socks. Proof #3152 that I am still not a demigoddess. But we should all keep trying.) If there’s no harm – either to the people doing it or to your relationship through the ripple effect – then just take a deep breath (spend it ranting for a few minutes in the forums, then take another deep breath), straighten out those underoos, and live and let live.

Anyway, I’m informed that most people don’t think about romantic relationships in terms of intertwined, interdependent utility functions. But I do. And I think you should consider the idea too. Think of it as practice in learning how a subculture (a geeky, mathematically-inclined subculture) thinks about love and romance.

Economics – quick & dirty

Economics isn’t an inherently sexy subject. Most people, in fact, think that economists only study things like banking and capital flows and, well, money-stuff (and that we’re incompetent at it, too, what with the whole financial crises “thing”). However, at its roots economics is all about happiness – except that economists call happiness “utility” to keep you common folk clueless. How do people, given all of the constraints of mortal life – time, energy, physical resources, limited attention spans – best make themselves happy? And when you have a bunch of people engaged in trying to be happy, how do they interact as a group – as an economy? When you go back to this basic view of economics, you (or, at least, I) realize that it should have a heck of a lot to say about personal relationships and marriage – after all, that’s one of the key things that most people need to live a happy life.

So how does the economic approach to happiness differ from, say, psychology or sociology? Well, economists do it with models. (Heh.) That is, economists try to sketch out the underlying key features of a situation  in much the same way a map tries to sketch out the key features of an area. And just like you could have several different maps (topological, major roads, sites of interest, etc) of the same region, you can several different economic models of the same sort of situation, with each emphasizing a different facet of human behavior. For example, a model describing how you and your spouse decide which restaurant to eat out at tomorrow could focus on the process of bargaining between spouses to be that night’s “restaurant decider”, or it could focus on how the emphasis on the price of the meal changes compared to how you two would decide to weigh costs if you were dining individually, or it could focus on the strategy each person uses in suggesting restaurants to reach a solution satisfactory to both parties (with Aditya, my strategy is to say ‘sushi’ if I’m in a sushi mood, and otherwise chant “channa, channa, channa” until he gives in and we go get kabobs and chickpeas).  Most of these economic models are written out in a mathematical manner in order to make clear exactly what the model is assuming and what its predictions are. Which leads us to…

Fun, exciting utility functions!

Utility functions are the way economists describe what makes an individual happy – remember how utility means happiness in economic nerd speak? And, as you may have guessed, utility functions are often pretty mathematical in nature. However, I’ll be keeping the discussion light & easy for the less math-inclined amongst you.

A very basic, general utility function looks like this:

U = (a, b, c, d, e, …)

where U stands for the total utility (happiness) a person has, and the letters stand for various things you can have and experience that bring you joy. So, for example, “a” could be the experience of watching the sun set on the beach, and “b” could be the experience of watching the sun set from the top of the Eiffel Tower (and “c” could be the experience of sitting in Kabob Palace at sunset & would very likely be combined with “d” – eating channa).  You’ll note that in the utility function I didn’t spell out exactly how much happiness each one of these items could bring me. That’s because I, like most economists, am lazy.

Paired with every utility function is a cost function, describing how much of various resources it’ll cost me to get each item that might bring me happiness. So, for instance, sitting on a beach is free, but it’ll still take gas money to get there, and, of course, that precious resource of time. Flying to Paris, obviously, takes even more money and time – perhaps enough that I prefer the trip to the beach, at least right now. Sitting in Kabob Palace at sunset might not bring me much happiness – but it does make the cost of achieving “channa eating” a lot lower, since I’m already right there in the restaurant. No travel time at all!

Intertwined utility functions

So what does this all have to do with relationships and intercultural marriages and such? Well, like I said at the start, lots!

Economics gets a bad rap as only considering selfish efforts to maximize one’s own happiness as “rational” You have a utility function, and you try to choose all your stuff so that your end result is a really big number for your utility. And, yes, there are a lot of simple models of relationships and marriage that take this approach. But nuanced economics is none of that. Instead, we have an interdependent utility function, where your partner’s happiness is incorporated into your own. And that’s what partnership is really about, right? So my utility function might look something like this:

Gori Girl’s Utility = [a, b, c, d, e, ... , Aditya's Utility (a, b, c, d, e, ...)]

Now, for me, this is a really romantic notion – this is what love is all about (remember, we established that I might be insane at the top of this post).

It’s not a matter of “well, if he’s happy, my life is easier and less stressful, and thus I’m happier”. It’s not a matter of simply adding together his happiness and my happiness and coming up with a value for our family’s happiness. And it’s certainly not a matter of wanting to please him just because we’re partners or because he’s another human being deserving of happiness. Please – I’m not that good a person to be able to incorporate every one’s utility function into my own. No human is. Instead, it’s just love, plain and simple. A world where Aditya’s happiness is 253 oodles of joy is a better one than where he only has 252 oodles of joy (yes, joy is counted in units of oodles. Because oodles is a happy word.)

And it gets better! Imagine if Aditya’s utility function looks like this:

Aditya’s Utility = [a, b, c, d, e, ... , Gori Girl's Utility (a, b, c, d, e, ... , Aditya's Utility)]

Well, now we have a recurrsive function, where his utility is based off in part my utility, which is based off in part of his utility, which is… This is the absolute brillance of human relationships – our joy is compounded by the joy of those around us, forming a gestalt of happiness where the sum of the whole is greater than each individual piece broken out. And all this just from a couple of simple formulas!

Of course, this economic framework to not just made to be awesome – it’s also a very good way in my mind to frame relationship issues. There’s still tradeoffs to be made (and as we all know from the stand-up economist, this is not a good thing), since the things that make Aditya and I happy aren’t identical. But when we choose to do something he really wants – like get a pingpong table rather than an, ahem, way more useful outdoor table for the deck – I can remind myself in moments of frustration that, hey, Aditya’s utility matters quite a bit too. This reframing of the issue is particularly important for me, because, frankly, by nature I’m a pretty independent self-centered person.

I suspect that this framework can also give one insights into the extended family of Indian and other “Eastern” cultures as well. To grossly simplify a complex matter (remember, models are about simplifying to key components, even if that leaves out some important details & exceptions), we’re taught in the US that, ultimately, your life is yours to lead – and you should make your decisions based on your own desires and happiness. Basically, it’s okay for your utility function to not include other individuals, beyond the  basic respect you should give all people. On the other hand, in cultures where your family members’ utility functions are considered a key component of your utility function, it’s simply not rational to ignore their desires and happiness, or to try to place those on an order below your own – after all, their happiness is a core component of your own happiness. You can’t separate the two.

Obviously, like all simplifications – or all models overall – intertwined, interdependent utility functions aren’t a perfect representation of our relationships. They’re simply one way of looking at the world, and considering certain aspects of it, just like a poet might look at it another way. Of course, as a trained economist, this is the way I’m most comfortable thinking about the world – all math and analytics and no conventional romanatic leanings to speak of. But, then Aditya knew it when he married me – and in our cross-cultural marriage, I have it worse: he’s studied (and liked) post-modernism.

(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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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?

When I last left off on the story of our wedding in India (see part three), I had just arrived, as the picture above shows.

The lovely lady trailing behind me is a friend of the family (and Aditya’s childhood math tutor), who’d been helping me with all the preparations – it was like she was an older aunt of mine for the day. There were flowers ALL OVER the place as I arrived – from where the car dropped me off to the second floor hall where the ceremony would be, I was surrounded by sheets of flowers, while walking under flower arches (spelling Aditya’s and my names in flowers) and over a red carpet, just like you see at movie premiers. Of course, the only person who took pictures of this wonder was my uncle, who, of course, has not yet gotten around to sending me his photos.

Guests

After I climbed the stairs I was presented with the hall itself, and everyone decked out to the nines:

This is one of Aditya’s cousins and his wife and daughter. Isn’t she adorable? This couple were always around helping out during the wedding planning, wedding ceremony, and reception. You’ll notice that most (but not all) of the men are in Western suits, not traditional Indian outfits, altho either are acceptable for formal wear. Women almost always wear saris. In fact, here’s a picture of my mom in one she borrowed:

When Maa offered that sari for me to take home after the wedding, I did a little happy dance inside. Man, that jewel-toned turquoise is gorgeous!

Although it wasn’t too late in the evening (maybe seven or eight?), some of the smaller kids were becoming a bit tired. Here’s Bappada in another turquoise outfit with his slightly sleepy son:

This kid (let’s call him R, for red) was an absolute hoot – so friendly & talkative – and he had a decent ability in English, although he didn’t always remember that I didn’t speak Hindi or Bengali. Later that night, while we were driving home, R started babbling out complete nonsense – things he’d overheard adults saying during the day. He was so tired! Just a random, running stream of English/Bengali/Hindi phrases, over and over again.

I’m not sure how many of you are familiar with Indian weddings, so I’ll be discussing some of the very basics. One thing that confuses most Westerners is how the ceremony isn’t absolutely the center of attention for all guests at all times. Everyone is serious about the wedding, but there typically isn’t a “formal” vibe during them. People get up, grab food, chat to each other in quiet voices, children ask questions and move around, and so forth. I guess the best way to describe it as a celebration of family with the bride and groom as the star attractions, rather than a celebration of the bride and groom, period. Personally, I liked the philosophy – less stress because there wasn’t a feeling of “it’s the big day and everything has to be perfectly perfect because everyone is here just to see you.” Instead, everyone is there to celebrate the newly expanded family.

Anyways, the less formal feeling leads scenes like this:

These two boys are cousins, but don’t get to see each other often. The boy in yellow, Y, is about six months older than R. Y took his “older cousin” position very seriously, and wanted to have R sit down on his lap, or at least on the couch next to him. R wasn’t having any of it. The tussle ended with R victorious:

Can you tell I absolutely adored these kids? Well, I love pretty much all kids – as long as I can return them at the end of the day. That’s the great thing about being an aunt – spoil them, then give them back to their parents. We’ve got five little munchkins (one EXTREMELY small – he was born just a few days ago) running around in the immediate family on both sides, and one more expected in the fall.

Aditya

There are more pictures of the guests up at my flickr page, but I suppose you’ll are wondering what happened to the bride and groom? Well, Aditya had arrived at the hall first, and was chilling with his cousin:

The maroon color of his outfit (and mine too!) is Maa’s favorite color, apparently, and since she picked the outfits… Traditionally, I think the groom wears white. That factoid has always struck me as a bit odd, given that white is the color of mourning in Hinduism. Of course, Western grooms wear black suits or tuxes, which is the West’s mourning color – so perhaps this is just a cross-cultural, um, acknowledgment of men’s view of matrimony? Anyways, Aditya was grinning too much for me to suspect he was getting cold feet.

Some of you who are more familiar with Indian weddings might be wondering why Aditya hadn’t shown up on the traditional horse or elephant, or why I wasn’t carried in by my brothers or whatever. Well, Aditya and I aren’t big on massive events, and neither one of us were interested in the days-long series of ceremonies you see in a traditional Bengali wedding. Instead, we wanted something short and sweet, while still celebrating Adiya’s culture and religion.

We opted for an Arya Samaj wedding, which is sort of back-to-the-Vedic-basics wedding. The Arya Samaj reformation movement wedding ceremony incorporates the fundamentals of Hindu beliefs, but in a pan-India manner – no regional or ethnic quirks. The ceremony is much shorter than a traditional Hindu wedding, and has no wildly elaborate (again, compared to the Hindu norm) rituals. Furthermore, the priests believe very strongly that the participants should understand exactly what they’re doing, and why. Most Hindu religious events are conducted in the ancient language of Sanskrit, which very few Indians actually understand (it’s as dead as Latin). Aditya has studied Sanskrit for eight years, but Maa and Baba searched out an Arya Samaj priest who was fluent in English for me. During the wedding, Aditya and I recited our vows in Sanskrit, but the priest first translated everything for me (and most of the guests).

After my arrival

Rather than making a big arrival (dum dum dee dum), and starting the ceremony off with a bang, we eased into things a bit by first greeting guests, which is typical for Bengali weddings. Aditya and I sat on our awesome thrones while guests came up to say hello. I also managed to catch a few minutes to tell Aditya that he cleans up well:

I look a little taller than Aditya here, but that’s because my throne was set a few inches higher, and he slouches.

Aditya’s sister, who was 8.5 months pregnant at the time, wasn’t able to travel to Calcutta for the wedding. Instead she called to wish us both well. I love the juxtaposition of a cell phone with traditional Indian attire in this photo:

Can I take a moment to sigh over the sari, jewelry, and accessories that made up my bridal outfit (I actually just ran upstairs to look at it again!)? The sari was so, so gorgeous – a deep red silk, with dark maroon detailing, and gold thread embroidery. It’s also a color that doesn’t scream bridal sari so I’ll be wearing it again next chance I get. The jewelry was given to me by Maa, and was equally fabulous. And by fabulous, I mean “this looks like something out of a movie or museum” amazing. I also haven’t had much chance to wear it again (clearly, Aditya and I need to go to more formal events where you can wear rubies and diamonds and stuff) – but I get it out every now and then just to look at. Maybe with the new job I’ll be able to wear a piece or two to work – they’re a little less overpowering when not worn as a whole. And then there’s the golden veil that CaliforniaTransplant envied (hope your wedding planning is going well!) – while I found it a little too, um, shiny when I first saw it, the veil ended up fitting into the whole outfit very well. It was pinned into my hair along with those three roses and the tikka (thing on forehead) that matched the sari perfectly. Ah… playing princess for an evening was so much more fun than I expected it to be. Aditya was looking like the proper prince, too, but boy clothes aren’t as much fun to discuss. Less bling, donchaknow?

Let’s get this party rolling

While Aditya and I were greeting guests – and in my case, quietly freaking the heck out from the otherworldly-ness of it all – the priests were finishing up setting things up at the mandap. The wedding ceremony takes place at the mandap which is an area, often a raised platform, with four pillars and a canopy. Ours had four pillars of flowers curving in to meet together in the middle. From left to right, here’s Bhabhi (sister-in-law), Dada (brother) and two family friends in front of it, pre-wedding:

I really like this picture, especially, the lighting! Behind them, the younger priest was in charge of the fire pit:

The young man was a full Arya Samaji priest, but still in training. Their outfits were pretty neat – just as colorful as the rest of Hindu weddings. He took care of the fire during the ceremony, and passed out the tools and other things when needed. I like how he arranged flower petals around the fire pit, which was placed right in the center of the mandap.

“Officially” an Arya Samaji priest can only marry two Hindus, since the movement believes that Hinduism – as embodied in the Vedas – is the way to go. Our priest was a bit more relaxed, though, and didn’t require any formal conversion from me, although I do consider myself a Hindu at this point (more on this in another blog post!). I do admire the Arya Samaji movement quite a bit – among other things, they take a firm stance against child marriage, the caste system, and untouchability. I don’t think that most Westerners realize that these things were developed culturally in India, and don’t have an actual basis in the fundamental Hindu texts.

Anyways, back to the wedding. We also had a set of religious musicians for the ceremony. They accompanied the head priest as he chanted the different Sanskrit mantras, which transformed the chanting into almost a song. It was pretty awesome. There was a drummer, a wind instrumentalist, and a musician on a keyboard:

Once everything was ready, and the guests were greeted, Aditya and I walked over to the mandap, taking off our shoes before we stepped onto it. It was time to get going!

Exchanging garlands

This was the first ceremony we did, and marked the start of the whole official wedding ceremony business. The garlands were absolutely beautiful, but I didn’t realize how heavy they were until the head priest handed me one:

The flowers were carnations and roses, I think, and strung on a thick, strong cloth cord. Little did I know that the flowers would seem to get heavier and heavier – and the cord sharper and more razor-like against my neck- as the wedding ceremony continued. Still, it was totally worth it.

You can see how the light’s changing in these next few shots, as we exchange garlands.

I was so nervous! And happy! Ah, weddings… I’ve got a big grin on just remembering this. First I gave him a garland, stretching a bit to get it over his head… then it was Aditya’s turn, with me ducking to facilitate the effort while keeping my hair & veil straight.

And that’s how we started our wedding ceremony. I think I’ll leave off here, for now. Be sure to check out my flickr page for more photos of the wedding.

This is a pretty sensitive topic. In talking about cultural differences, I’m careful to not make too strict generalizations – I’ll hedge what I say by emphasizing I’m talking about my own, personal experiences, or suggest that a group seems to act in a certain way, or that some (but not all!) people from a particular culture do a particular thing. But it’s impossible to avoid making any generalizations at all about cultures or to keep from categorizing people – and silly to even try.

Human beings thrive on making categories and developing generalizations. Evolution equipped us with these abilities for our own good. Any caveman hunter who couldn’t figure out that the grazing animals & the sharp-toothed animals belonged in different categories, one labeled hunt and the other avoid wouldn’t last very long. And the gatherer who used his experience with the different categories of plants to generalize about what was tasty and what was poisonous tended to survive a bit longer. This is a good thing! We’re talking about the beginning of science!

So we can’t avoid making generalizations, and, anyways, they seem pretty darn helpful. However, when we move onto categorizing and generalizing people & cultures, we run into a bit more of a problem. People are just so… complicated. And there’s so many of ‘em! Do you really think that any of us can easily make a generalization that will, for example, apply to all one billion Indians in the world? Really? Even Indians have major trouble with it – most anthologies about the subcontinent have at least one or two essays devoted to just trying to describe what, besides birthplace, connects this vast, diverse group of people. (My money’s on cricket, but I’m just guessing from my personal experience.)

The rest of this post is on how we can use our little analytical minds for the forces of good generalizations, rather than for the evils of stereotypes. How can we create useful categories for the different people we meet? And then how can we accurately and fairly generalize about these groups, given that we’re going to generalize some anyways? And finally, how can we avoid from moving from a generalization to an unfair stereotype?

Creating categories – blonds & brunettes should suffice, right?

When my Indian husband, Aditya, first came to the US, he had difficulty identifying differences in white faces, particularly with girls. To solve this problem, he ended up lumping all the young women on his dorm room floor first semester into one of two categories: “blond” or “brunette”, and leaving it at that. I’m not sure if there weren’t any redheads on his floor, or if there were so few that he could manage to tell them apart without the need for another category. Either way, he was definitely missing out on, oh, about 95% of the “subtle” differences that any American who’d lived through high school could see in his floormates – that one dresses preppy, this one is the classic girl-next-door, here’s a girl jock. Forget about noticing the “tells” of each type – Aditya didn’t know half these social categories existed!

Of course, he can pick out a North Indian from a South Indian with ease. And he’s very good about guessing which caste an Indian belongs to, just off of a person’s name, language, clothing, and the like. See, these are the categories that often matter in India, so these are the ones he learned about. We all make categories based off of our needs in the society we live in. Or, to put it another way, the sociologist Joel Charon*** says

… we isolate a chunk out of our environment, distinguish that chunk from all other parts of the environment, give it a name, and associate certain ideas with it. Our chunks — or categories — arise in interaction; they are socially created… Much of our learning is simply aimed at understanding what various categories mean, and this involves understanding the qualities that make up those categories and the ideas associated with them.

So what does this mean for those of us who discuss cultural differences?

1. We should be aware of the limitations – and strengths – of our personal categories. When I first started dating Aditya I didn’t realize just how diverse Indian culture is – Indians, Nepalis, Pakistanis, and Bangladeshis were all pretty much the same group of people in my mind. And it’s not just me: consider the use of the pejorative Paki used in Great Britain for all South Asians.
2. Categories are not absolute things; instead they develop as our social needs change. Since meeting Aditya, I don’t group all South Asians together. Instead, I have many different categories for Indians – Calcuttans, Bengalis, Mumbaiers, urban folk, village folk, the different castes, and so forth. I’m not saying that I know all about these groups, or that I can even distinguish between one and another, but I do know enough to recognize that they’re different enough to need separate mental categories.
3. A category is a tool for understanding & organizing knowledge, and nothing more. You shouldn’t judge a person based on which category he does or does not fit into. Duh! Categorizing is only a good thing if you use it to understand why people have different qualities. Knowing that Aditya was an Army brat who moved around a lot, for instance, helps me understand both his need for travel, and his desire to put down roots somewhere.
4. Categories are unlikely to all-important for understanding any individual. This is basic statistics – even if you develop good categories, and accurate generalizations about that category, that information will likely be of only some help in understanding any particular individual. Sure, most people who grow up moving from place to place (like Army brats) tend to enjoy travel – but I’m sure there’s a decent number who hate it. And, when dealing with any one specific individual, how are you to know which type you’ve got on your hands? Everyone belongs to multiple categories, and even the sum of all those categories doesn’t tell you everything about a person. (I suspect there’s a whole post just in this point.)

Generalizing about generalizations – the good, the bad, and the ugly

We’re all individuals, right? So isn’t generalizing about people always a bad thing, since it denies people’s individuality?

Well, yes and no.

Bad generalizations - aka stereotypes – are worse than plain ignorance. Accurate, nonjudgmental generalizations can be a useful tool in understanding others.

The problem with generalizations based on categories is that it is very, very difficult to do them right. As I pointed out above, humans are so complicated, and humanity is so diverse that it will never be possible to make an absolute claim about any group of people. And it’s difficult for individuals to even make a fairly accurate generalizations, given their limited personal experiences with any particular group. I think Dr. Charon goes to the heart of the matter when he defines what, exactly, a generalization is:

A generalization describes the category. It is a statement that characterizes objects within the category and defines similarities and differences with other categories. “This is what an educated person is!” (in contrast to an uneducated person)… When it comes to people, generalization is very difficult to do well. The principle reason for this is that we are judgmental, and too often it is much easier for us to generalize for the purpose of evaluating (condemning or praising) others than for the purpose of understanding them.

So how should you deal with cultural generalizations?

1. Never, never, never use them to judge, only to understand. The moment you start to view a cultural generalization as a good or bad thing is the moment you fall into stereotyping. This doesn’t mean you can’t judge actions that other cultures sometimes take: I have no problem taking a firm stance against female infanticide (a fairly major problem in some Indian states), and I’ll condemn any Indian that does such a horrible act. However, it’s a big jump from saying “Indians who commit infanticide are horrible” to saying “Since Indian culture in some circles encourages female infanticide, Indian culture is horrible and all Indians are horrible.” Doing so would be ignoring the numerous Indians who speaks out against this social problem.
2. Try not to base your generalizations on personal experience alone. There are a million and one reasons why you shouldn’t try to make cultural generalizations from personal experiences, but they mostly boil down to the fact that people are biased. You’re biased, I’m biased, all the children of the world are biased. As I point out in my About Page, I’ve had significant contact with exactly one extended Indian family of one ethnicity from one region (and I have a few good Indian friends, but still…). I’m lucky if I can predict what Aditya will be doing tomorrow – I’ve got a snowball’s chance in heck of making any accurate sweeping pronouncements about Indian culture in general. I do have some mental generalizations, of course – as I pointed out above, it’s impossible not to. But, whenever possible, I try to base my generalizations on things other than just personal experience…
3. Look to the social sciences for accurate generalizations. There’s a whole army of sociologists, anthropologists, economists, and the like who make it their lives’ work to scientifically study different nations and cultures. While they don’t always get it right, as an insider I can tell you that most of ‘em try awfully hard to develop theories based off of accurate, unbiased data. I don’t expect you to read academic journals to understand everything the world, but if you’re really interested in a subject, try, say, reading blogs by the experts in those fields to make sure your generalizations have at least a passing familiarity with the real world.
4. Recognize that any generalization is tentative and subject to reevaluation as new evidence comes in. There’s an economist at Harvard, Emily Oster, who made her career a few years back by showing that some of the “missing girls” in Asian countries – suspected of being the victims of female infanticide – were actually “missing” because of the effect of Hepatitis B on the reproduction system. It was suggested that the virus changed the expected gender balance of fetuses, although the exact biological connection was unknown. Well, the big story in economic circles this week is Dr. Oster’s newest paper, where she shows that Hep B actually can’t be a major factor in the “missing girls” problem. I say major kudos to Emily Oster for admitting her error, and changing her stance in light of the new evidence. Try to emulate her, and accept that all generalizations are subject to change with new data.

Stereotypes – how to recognize them

I think that you all are smart enough (and I’ve harped on it long enough) that I don’t need to tell you why stereotyping is a bad thing. But because I’m really the type to harp on these things – and I want everyone to be absolutely clear on this matter, I’ll give it one more go, by once again using the clear prose of Joel Charon:

Stereotypes are highly oversimplified, exaggerated views of reality. They are especially attractive to people who are judgmental of others and who are quick to condemn people who are different from them. They have been used to justify ethnic discrimination, war, and systematic murder of whole categories of people. Far from arising out of careful and systematic analysis, stereotypes arise out of hearsay and culture, and instead of aiding our understanding of the human being, they always stand in the way of accurate understanding.

Okay, that’s the last time I talk about why stereotypes are bad (in this post, at least!). But now that we all know exactly why they’re so horrible, let’s discuss exactly what is a stereotype. As Charon points out, a stereotype is a specific kind of generalization, one that is likely to lead to bad & inaccurate beliefs about the category being generalized. The things that separate out the s-word from regular generalizations include the following:

1. A stereotype is judgmental. The person who holds a stereotype about a category believes that people belonging to that category are somehow better or worse than others because of certain characteristics they hold. If I said “Asians are generally shorter than other ethnicities” I’m not indulging in a stereotype unless I’m somehow attaching a badness or goodness to this fact.
2. A stereotype tends to be an absolute category. By this what I (and Charon) mean is that people who hold stereotypes rarely recognize that there are exceptions – perhaps many exceptions – to the rule. Rather than using a generalization as a tool to understanding, they use a stereotype as an ultimate statement.
3. The stereotype tends to be a category that overshadows all others in the mind of the observer. That is, the sterotyper fails to recognize that we all belong to many categories, some of which are more important to our personal identity than others.
4. A stereotype doesn’t change with new evidence. This goes back to bullet point number 2 – even when you point out many counterexamples to the stereotype, the person holding it will still believe that the stereotype is generally true & useful. It’s like arguing with a wall.
5. The stereotype wasn’t created carefully in the first place. Most people who hold stereotypes base them off of limited personal experience, or what they’ve learned from others who aren’t informed by data either.
6. The stereotype doesn’t encourage a search for understanding why human beings are different from each other. Stereotypes focus on increasing the chasms between people, rather than making bridging the differences through understanding. Obviously, this sort of attitude does not bode well for intercultural communication and relationships.

The bottom line

You can’t help generalizing about cultural differences, as it’s the main way humans organize knowledge. What you can do is recognize how and when you’re generalizing, and take steps to make them as accurate and useful as possible.

Think about the way you categorize different groups of people. Are there big swaths of populations that you group under one heading? Why? You can’t break every population down into tiny categories, but recognize where you have good, distinct categories, and where they’re a bit fuzzier. Be open to developing more categories as you learn that what you thought was one large group is actually a number of small, interrelated groups. And be aware that others have different categories from you – so they’re understanding the world in a fundamentally different way from you.

Think about the way you form generalizations. Always question them. If you don’t know much about a group, consider doing a little scientific research, rather than relying on what you heard a few years ago from some dude at a party. Emulate Emily Oster, and be open to reevaluation as new data & experiences come in. Remember that your generalizations are only one small tool when dealing with individuals.

And, finally, always challenge stereotypes. That’s the only way progress happens in intercultural understanding.

*** A great deal of the theory behind this post should be credited to Dr. Charon, and his excellent essay Should We Generalize about People? from his introductory sociology textbook Ten Questions (1995).

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.

By this time the hall was decorated, at least in the area where the guests were eating. While the wedding ceremony wouldn’t be until much later in the day, all of the people who had traveled from outside Calcutta were already hanging around. Baba (sitting on the far left) enjoyed catching up with all his Army buddies. After lunch everyone dispersed to get dressed in their wedding finery, but right now we’ll all pretty low key.

Here’s another picture of some of my new family – from left to right, Bappa-da (a cousin), Maa (Aditya’s mother), and Jijoo (Didi’s husband – so Aditya’s brother-in-law). There were so many different family members and friends to meet that I lost track of who was who very early on. But I do remember meeting Aditya’s former math tutor and family friend, M. Auntie, who told me of his very sorry study habits as a child. I

He tried to excuse them, but neither of us were having any of it. A few more pictures of lunch are up at my flickr site, but let’s move on to the evening.

After lunch was over, I continued to hang out with Aditya, my mom and uncle, and close family members of Aditya’s. We wandered around the neighborhood, and Aditya pointed out places he had played cricket as a child. Then I began to develop a rather painful knot in my neck from a combination of nerves and awkward sari draping – the pallu (one end that hangs) was pinned in such a way that it felt like it was always about to slide down my shoulder, so I was unconsciously hitching one shoulder up higher than normal. For anyone planning on wearing a sari: try not to do this. It hurts. (Mom gave me a good back rub, which helped.)

After a suitable post-lunch siesta – ah, how wonderful it is to not have to worry about any sort of wedding planning! – it was determined that it was Time To Get Ready. I was whisked away by Bhabi and Auntie to a beauty parlor, along with all of my wedding clothes and jewelry. My only contribution to the set were some black, sandal-esque dress shoes that I had purchased in the US. I’m not the most enthusiastic shopper at the best of times, but searching for sandals in the winter during the Christmas rush for an outfit you’ve never seen when you’re not sure what look you’re suppose to be shooting for, anyways? Pure hell.

I was the big star at the beauty parlor – I don’t think they’d ever had a white client before. No one spoke English, but we got along well enough between Bhabi’s translations and hand gestures. First my hair was done up into a bun thingy, which involved a lot of pulling, hairspray, pins and glitter. (Red glitter – subtle, yet shiny!) A few red roses were also pinned in.

After that my nails & toes were done up in red polish (sensing a theme yet?). At first try the woman put on something blood red – it looked like I had attacked someone with my bare hands. I wasn’t quite sure how to communicate that I wasn’t thrilled with the color, since my hands were being pinned down, but Bhabi turned around from her own preparations, saw the color, and immediately requested a switch to something a bit darker and less, uh, violent. Given our timetable, there was simply not enough time to have Mehndi done on my hands and feet, sadly, so the nails would have to suffice.

Once the nails were done drying, I was hustled into a private room, where I put on my wedding petticoat and blouse. Then the salon’s professional sari-wrapper came in to make the perfect draping. She was pretty much The Awesome at it – I was dressed in no time with a fancy draping and perfect pleats. Then the various pieces of jewelry – anklets, bangles, bracelets, rings, necklaces, earrings, and a tikli in my hair were added to the look, along with a veil over the hair. Done!

Well, not quite. We left the salon for a family friend’s house, where I met up with my mom again – now looking pretty in a sari – and yet another family friend who would help me with my bindi decoration. After I put on my own makeup – white skin requires different products and styling than brown skin – I sat down to have bindis and bits of sandlewood paint put on my forehead and face. Perfect stillness is not easy to maintain when you’re a bundle of nerves – especially with a ticklish brush moving all over your face.

This series is continued in Indian Wedding Story: Part Four.

Getting in the night before the wedding

We arrived in Calcutta the night before the wedding, on December 24th. Yes, the night before. I’m not in the photo above because, by that point, I think I’d fallen to the ground as a puddle of exhausted jetlagged organic matter.

We’d flown into Bombay the night of the 23rd (after exactly 22 hours of travel) to meet Aditya’s very pregnant sister, Didi. It was my first meeting with her; due to said pregnant state she wasn’t going to be at the wedding, so we had scheduled this stopover in Bombay to say a quick hello. The 18 or so hours we spent in Bombay mostly consisted of me trying to fall asleep during India’s night with little success, then nodding off the next day during, let’s see, breakfast, lunch, a brief car tour of Bombay, and dinner.

When we finally arrived in Calcutta I was greeted by lovely, warm weather and Bengalis galore in skullcaps (called monkey caps by the locals) and thick sweaters & coats. Winter in Calcutta seems cold only to those who deal with the city’s summer heat – to the rest of us it’s t-shirt & shorts weather. After a drive through mostly-deserted streets (it was late, but Indian cities never completely close down), we arrived in Aditya’s family’s home in Calcutta. The house was made for the extended family, but Maa and Baba have a wing of their own in it.

In the picture above you can see the flowers decking out the entrance from the street to the interior courtyard. The flowers, besides being very beautiful, announce to all the neighbors that a marriage is taking place in the family. Every time I emerged onto the street from the house everyone nearby would congregate to look at the bride. This wasn’t because I was white – new brides are considered very lucky generally in India, and everyone wants a look – but I’m sure being white added to my entertainment value.

There were also flowers all over the house in general, and about a million in the bedroom Aditya and I were sharing. Traditionally, of course, I wouldn’t go to my husband’s family’s house until after the marriage, but since we’d been legally married for over a year at the time, and I didn’t have any place else to crash, the bridal suite it was.

Through the courtyard and on to bed!

Here’s a picture of the indoor courtyard of the family house, before we entered the wing that Aditya’s parents occupy. Aditya’s older brother, Dada (who’d been in India for some weeks at that time), is helping out his poor, tired-out little brother with the luggage. Earlier that day my mother and uncle had stopped by the house to hang out with Baba and Maa – like Dada, Mom and Uncle Mark had already been in India for a couple of weeks. Uncle Mark tried his hand at cricket in the courtyard, and promptly broke a window.

Stop by tomorrow for pictures of the morning of the wedding! It’ll get more exciting, I promise.

The next part of this series can be found here.