What if our own ethnicity doesn’t give us the same courtesy?
Your argument is disingenuous. This is nothing like a black American meeting a white American. These stories have more to do with immigration and the problems of assimilation, about fighting sterotypes from outside your group and ones that your own ethnicity tries to force on you.
Koreans have a master life plan that you should follow, and it sounds like Indians have one as well. Get good grades. Go to a good college. Become a doctor/lawyer/entreprenuer. Make lots of money. Meet a nice person from a GOOD family to marry. Go back to the home country and find one there if you have to. Buy stuff to impress others in your group. Have children. Start the cycle anew.
I give every Korean I meet a fair shake. At the same time it’s awful grating to have to justify why I’m not a ‘better’ Korean, to the FOBbish
Why don’t I speak Korean? Maybe because I don’t live in Korea. Maybe because the only people I can practice with would ask the same dumb questions.
Why didn’t you marry a nice Korean girl? Maybe because it hard enough trying to find someone you love, without putting artificial restriction.
Can’t you give a fellow Korean a break/discount/favor? Why? Do I know you?
If that was in reply to me, I know and, by strict definition, I was raised as a WASP but, by popular usage as I’m familiar with it, I’m not one as my family’s lower middle class (if even that) and WASP generally has overtones of upper middle class refinement.
Not my “peeps” on the whole (they’re sort of hard to avoid) but there is this bar in my neighborhood that I used to love going to, and now I don’t like to go there anymore. Someone once asked me why, and I said “Eh, it got too white for me.”
Stupid New York Magazine, writing up bars proclaiming them to be great little out of the way authentic dives frequented by colorful neighborhood characters. Well, not any more! Now it’s frequented by people who don’t know how to find decent bars without reading about them in New York Magazine.
Remember, Mrs. Further, it’s not really accurate to think of India a one homogenous culture. Certainly there are themes that run through the sub-continent’s cultures, but consider: India has a history at least as long as Europe’s and I think as much land. It’s no more difficult to think of Indian schisms than it is for me to accept that Serbs and Croats hate each other - and they even speak the same language. I may well be wrong, but my understanding is that each state in modern India is actually more analogous to a country/culture in Europe, than to a state in the US.
To get back to your question - to pick a single example (not taken at random): Asking why North and South Indians don’t get along is easier to explain historically than to explain why Scots and Brits don’t get along - after all, Scots and Brits have had far more to do with each other than the southern states in India have had to do with the Northern ones.
(If I’m putting out bad dope, please correct me, but this is the understanding I have of the history of the subcontinent.)
Bull. I tend to stay away from black people. I wasn’t raised in a black neighborhood, or in a family that was big on what is usually pushed as the black “lifestyle” (the whole ultra Christian, hip hop, AAVE, we’re all “brothas” and “sistas” deal). Just as the OP is more comfortable with Americanized Koreans, I’m more comfortable with blacks that haven’t completely immersed themselves into the black culture (which is a minority of blacks). I’m completely happy with myself and I see no good reason to change or to try to force something that doesn’t come naturally. This bothers a lot of people for some reason, but that’s their problem, not mine.
No, this is a very good description. Really, I can’t begin to explain the cultural & societal differences to someone who has no real experience of it. It’s in the heart, & the soul.
Which I guessed went to why you didn’t bring that up in your own response to Mrs Further - it’s so axiomatic to you, that it’s just as hard for you to consider that Americans think of India as a monolithic place.
It’s a puzzler to me to meet African-Americans who never grew up in black culture and don’t consider their rejection of it even a bit self-hating. I’ve never seen a denial of one’s ethnic heritage in favor of an adopted one unless it was a calculated move to gain socioeconomic advantages. Not to say that’s a bad thing – there’s lots of pathological behavior in AA culture that simple educational assimilation helps to end. But if you lump AA ultra-Christians in with AA hip-hop culture and Black Nationalists (those are usually three VERY distinct groups) I’m wondering what the heck kind of black minority you think you do fit in with. You’re not even rubbing shoulders with Lawrence Otis Graham’s set.
So those black people you feel comfortable with don’t count as black? I’m not ultra Christian, I don’t really listen to hip hop at all, and I’m neutral about the unity thing, but I wouldn’t consider myself “avoiding my peeps like the plague” just because I don’t expect to get along with every single black person. I just never thought I was special just because I didn’t fit some Hollywood stereotype. But I guess that comes from growing up around black people - knowing all my life that there’s diversity among us so that I don’t expect a God damned cookie just because I’m black and I don’t listen to rap.
AFAIK, when archmicheal talked about avoiding “peeps like the plague” that didn’t mean staying away from every person of that race/ethnic group. As he said, he avoids a certain kind of Korean, but has no problem with the Americanized Koreans. Based on the content of his post, I took the question to mean, “for the most part, do you spend a lot of time with people of your race?” The answer to that question for me is “no”. Obviously, a black person that I get along with would count as being black. As for you, pizzabrat, who knows whether or not I’d enjoy hanging out with you. I don’t know you. I do know that, I don’t mesh well with those things that are thought to be a large part of black culture. Take a look at the thread that was in GD a couple of months ago about black culture. Monstro and Askia brought up a lot of points that they felt that blacks in general would agree with. When I, and another poster disagreed, you entered the thread and said that you couldn’t understand why anyone would feel differently. So, yes, although you say that you don’t fit with a lot of the examples that I brought up, you do believe that there is a type of culture that blacks in general have. I, personally don’t feel any sort of connection to that culture, and never have. It has nothing to do with expecting cookie cutter people. It’s not like I go out of my way to avoid blacks, but it happened naturally, based on my hobbies, choice of schools, and location. On the rare occasion that I ran across other blacks, I’ve evaluated them just the same as I would anyone else. Sometimes this has blossomed into a friendship, sometimes not, just the same as it would with anyone of any other race.
Askia, I don’t feel that I’m denying my culture. My culture is a result of where I grew up, who I grew up with, and my own personal experiences. I didn’t adopt my culture, and I didn’t run from, or deny another culture. In my case, ending up in this area wasn’t a result of any self hatred on my part, or on the part of my parents. I’m here because my parents are here and were raised here. They’re here because their parents are here. No carefully planned moves to “Whiteville” for socioeconomic gain factored into it. I never said that those examples were found in all blacks. Again, read the black culture thread that you participated in for an idea of what I mean.
So which is it? Am I denying my culture, or am I boxing all blacks in and saying they’re all (excluding me of course) cut from the same mold? Either there is a culture out there for me to “deny” and feel uncomfortable in, or there’s not right?
I was wondering when the issue of black self hate would come up.
To an outsider looking in, it seems like some black people feel the same alienness, but with a higher pressure to conform.
I was born in Korea. Came to the US on my fourth birthday. For whatever reason, in the process of growing up and education, the culture I was born in came to be as foreign as culture as a white guy born in Kansas. (Maybe not that bad, but you get my point) I went through a process of trying to reconnect, but it was just too artificial. I kept what I liked and rejected the parts I did not. The problem is that FOBs and Korean culture in general do not want me to pick and choose. They would want me to be a Korean first and an American second, while I would prefer to not dwell on it evey day.
It seems to me Omega Glory goes through the same thing. He picks and chooses what he likes, but white people and black people especially would feel more comfortable if he was more ‘black’.
This was I was talking about earlier. White people might ask Omega Glory “You don’t like rap?” It is tiring to have to explain that not all black people like rap. Black people might ask “You don’t like rap, what’s kinda brotha are you?” I would imagine it is a bigger annoyance to get into the same argument with your own people.
I’ve been called a banana (yellow on the outside, white on the inside) for my disconnect with Korean culture. I would assume Omega Glory has been called worse. Self-hater, bougie, Oreo, Uncle Tom.
There’s culture, what you describe, and then there is one’s ethnic heritage. I get that you can be a product of a subculture that doesn’t quite jibe with the mainstream – what I don’t get is how in the world your ethnic heritage gets ignored, dismissed or disconnected with by your whole family unless there was a conscious choice made along the way, either by your parents or grandparents or both, to reduce the importance of the black cultural mainstream in your lives. Did you not have a subscription to “Ebony” or “Jet”? Did you not grow up in 70s and 80s listening to Grandmaster Flash, The Sugar Hill Gang, Kool Herc, Afrika Bambataa, Public Enemy and Big Daddy Kane? Dontcha at least eat watermelon, greens, black eye peas and fried chicken on Sundays and keep a little cooking grease on your stove?
Your choice of how you speak, where you live, where you go to school, where you work, whom you worship with and what your hobbies are all reinforce that initial choice that was made. I’m really not condemning you but if you’re demonstrably black in appearance but don’t feel comfortable with other blacks who are more typical embracing of black culture that’s at least partly your problem, too, although, like you said: other blacks might be much more bothered by that than you. It’s like… I dunno. Rejecting ethnic peer pressure.
So yeah, I do think you’re denying major aspects your ethnic heritage even though you might be perfectly true to your culture. I’ll ignore my own supposition whether it’s “adopted” or not.
Anyway, I’m going to take back my “self-hate” label with huge apologizes. I was out of line and you’ve been terrific. People who I would ordinarily characterize as self-hating blacks have far more extreme views and behaviors than you’ve ever demonstrated.
Well, I’m a mutt, so I can’t really avoid my ethnic background, especially since I don’t fully know what it is…But I consider myself a geek and I cannot stand other geeks.
Seriously, I fucking hate them. I think one reason is that, while I’m a very broad, general geek (computers, Star Wars, comic books, science, history, language and cultures, films, music, novels, science-fiction, fantasy, etc, etc, etc), most geeks tend to have a “specialty” and that’s all they ever want to talk about.
Not only that but a lot of them seem to have been picked on so much while growing up (not necessarily their fault, I know) that they’ve developed a very thick shell and generally come off as jerks or - even worse - uber-elitists.
Yes, there have been a few (very rare)encounters of the “kindred-spirits” type, but far more often I feel my temperature rise when I have to stand in a room with another geek for more than 5 minutes.
Another white guy "mut"with 5 nationalities that make up my heritage, all northern European.
Anyway, while avoiding white people would be difficult, untill recently, I had a thing against people my own age or younger and thought of them as young punks, mainly from having to deal with a lot of young punks growing up. To be honest, it’s about the only irrational prejudice I think I’ve ever had (and to some degree, still do).
Now that I’m 31, I don’t tend to think of other people my age, or close to it, as punks much anymore (yeah, another generalization that they’ve (hopefully) matured by now) and I don’t quiet think of younger people as punks as much as I use to, but I haven’t completely gotten over it.
I’m white, and the vast majority of my social contacts are not white. But it’s not because I’m avaoiding them. At my company and in my industry, there are a lot of Indians and Chinese; whites are the minority in my company. In my sons’ school, whites are also a minority (we chose the most academically-oriented public school in our city, and (surprise!) that one has a high concentration of first and second generation Indian and Chinese people). My wife is the child of a father born in Mexico and a jewish mother born in Germany.
By the way, I disagree with overlyverbose’s husband’s assessment of Indian programmers. There are good and bad programmers of all races, of course, but I daresay (with some experience) the percentage of good Indian coders is quite high.
