In the photo thread, Anaamika mentioned in passing that she doesn’t hang around other Indians.
I am a Korean, and I generally avoid other Koreans as well. Americanized Koreans I’m fine with, but I generally avoid FOBs for the following reasons:
I am plain spoken. If I don’t like you, I will tell you. Koreans hide it all under a layer of politeness. Of course I find it of great irony that I am living in the South, where they basically do the same things.
I don’t understand all the social rules nor do I believe in them. In Korean culture, there is honored speech that you use with your superiors or elders as a sign of respect. So if you meet someone who is a month older than you, you should be using the honorable form of speech.
Of course the big kicker now is the fact that I am married to a black woman. Let’s just say that Koreans don’t really ‘get’ the race-mixing thing.
I knew an Indian woman here at work who told that she disliked working with other Indians (I think it was actually Indian men). She never did tell me why.
This woman did hang around other Indians during her free time, and she lived all her life until college in India. So I don’t have any insight into what caused her to feel that way.
(Archmichael – I can probably throw a tennis ball at your house from my location.)
Not being snarky in the least. I’m in full agreement.
I just don’t know why I avoid my “peeps” except that I feel like the majority (especially in groups) are a complete embarassment to me. It’s not logical that they would be outside a societal norm so it leads me to believe that I must have some kind of over reaction or hyper awareness of some trivial trait.
Well, as a West Indian (Guyanese) born and raised in NYC, and now transplanted to the middle of Arkansas, I’d have to go pretty far out of my way to find my ‘peeps’ here.
As for when i lived up north, I will confess that I did avoid them. It was a combination of two factors that i can think of. It was hard to find West indians outside of my ‘home’ neighborhood- i went away to school, both high school and college, and there were few there.
Unfortunately, a lot of it is class issues- despite living in a very low income area, my family has done very well, and it was always hard to find someone in our ethnic group that matched us socio-economically. My parents, who value class distinctions more than they should, were pretty well resigned to us marrying outside of our ethnic group due to this.
As for East Indians, there has always been some friction between the groups, though I confess i don’t know why. I think it was more resentment that we were all considered ‘peeps’ by outsiders, while there was a huge culture gap.
Well. I’m a student in the UK now, and pretty much mix only with my people, except for my Go society (which is a pretty diverse place). I tend to attribute this to the fact that Singaporeans are a generally less rowdy (you could say dull) bunch*, who don’t go clubbing, get piss drunk etc. So there’s hardly anything I have in common with the “others”.
That said, there are some odd Singaporeans that try their best to avoid their kind, but they generally are the international school educated kind. One of them in particular seems to look down on the rest of us shrug Those that like clubbing tend to mix around more, though.
I mean, when the Singapore society rents a club, and the bouncer goes “hey, you guys are a pretty tame bunch” and nobody even so much as looks drunk… yeah.
Hi Stonebow – don’t mean to hijack the thread too much, but I’ve wondered before how relations were in general between Indians and their Guyanese and Fijian cousins. A housemate of mine was Indo-Fijian, but she was adopted and raised by whites, and didn’t have much to do with other Fijians.
And shoutout to archmichael, from another MSippian.
Well, in college, first meetings almost uniformly went like this:
RI (random Indian): Hey man!
me: hey, what’s up?
RI: not much. You Indian?
me: Grandparents, yes.
RI: Cool! which part?
me: Actually, not sure. They emigrated to Guyana as kids, my folks were born and raised there.
(awkward silence)
RI: Oh… well, see you around. (never to be seen again)
Now, these weren’t all FOB trying to reconnect with the motherland- some were, like me, born and raised in the states. I’d not go so far as to say there was a superiority thing going on, but West Indians were certainly not allowed into East Indian cliques. I don’t know whether it was vice versa, because I knew of very few west Indians there.
I used to be a total Anti but I realise now that I am not so much Anti as I am Anti-Indian Thug Liferz…which is a term of art I might come back to explain later. I belong to the Asian club at school but I’m not terribly active in it. The only context in which I actively seek out other Indians is in my love life…I want to marry someone Indian.
With the exception of my family, a twice a decade trip to Oktoberfest and the (not too) occasional weissbier, I tend to avoid German people. But similar to the (often accurate) stereotypes about Germans; that they’re:cold,
cheap,
stubborn, and
suffer from a superiority complex,I make exceptions to the rule.
Back in 1995, I spent 2 weeks aboard a 40’ sailboat with 5 German nationals. On the nights we didn’t moor, after countless hours of ‘we’re great/they suck’, I vivdly recall thinking to myself, ‘If I jump overboard and swim to shore, the Florida Keys are only 12 miles to the north and Cuba’s a mere 80 miles away. The fact I considered drowning, shark attack or Fidel’s gulag’ over sleepness nights with peeps pretty much sums up my point.
Some groups / ethnicities tend to be more clanish than others. For example: I seriously doubt we’ll see many Italians or Jews posting agreement with the OP.
Hey, I’m Korean too, except that I don’t avoid other Koreans. FOBs… well, they’re like a whole different breed of Korean. They’re more Korean than the people who live in Korea.
In some ways I find other Korean people to be more easily relate-able on first contact. If nothing else, you can do the stupid Korean jokes (“What did the bread say when it hit the wall? Bbang!”). But I’ll be the first to admit that it’s a very tenuous connection. In school I never joined any Korean/Asian student societies for this very reason - I don’t feel I can base a friendship around a shared yen for kimchi.
One more thing to make this post just that much longer: I’ve found that Korean people may seem polite on the surface, but man, once they get to know you, they are the epitome of directness. Got a zit? They’ll delight in pointing it out. Gained some weight? They’ll let you know in case you didn’t realize.
Small nitpick: if somebody’s only a month older than you, you don’t really have to use the -yo endings and such. It’s not comletely based just on age; social status, relationship status, etc all are important as well.
I hear you on the mixed relation thing. I used to joke about how I’d marry a black Muslim girl when I was younger. My parents were not pleased.
