On Interracial Dating – The South Asian Panel (1 of 3)

There were a couple of uncles who’d married white women in our community–one, a German immigrant, and the other a Jewish American. I bet those two aunties would have an interesting perspective in this forum…but to us kids, at least in our family, there were regular aunties (and even a bit cooler than “authentic” aunties because they were a little more laid back). They made efforts to assimilate and, as far as I could tell as a child, were treated as full members of the community. The kids from those two families were fully integrated into our community, but I have no knowledge of their lives in their respective German-immigrant and Jewish communities or their mothers’ sides of their families. I know that at least some of those kids have gone on to marry South Asian spouses from various parts of South Asia, but I can’t tell you about all of them (lots of kids in those families!)

There were other uncles who married Chicanas and African-American women–for love or for papers or both, I couldn’t tell you, because those women were not present in any public spaces that I can recall, nor were any aunties who may have married outside the Punjabi Sikh ethnicity present. There were some inter-caste couples, to be sure, but that’s about as crazy as it got.

Oh, wait! There was another couple that sometimes came to our gurudwara–but they were a special exception altogether! They were a Punjabi Jatt Sikh man and a white Sikh convert woman–both followers of Yogi Bhajan’s branch of Sikhi. Because they were so orthodox in their beliefs and practices (not to mention their all-white clothes, including turbans on both!) they were almost mythical, idealized creatures. Theirs seemed to be held up as an angelic, holy union.

There was always some kind of background noise about how it would be hard for your children if you married out. I had one secret girlfriend in high school–she was from a different state in India. My mother found out about her later and acts now like she knew all along–she still asks about her and regrets that we hadn’t lasted and will still say things like “She was such a nice girl,” even though she made no effort to get to know her when we were “friends” (i.e.dating).

How does culture factor into conversations about interracial dating? Essentially, are all South Asians seen as equal and fair game for dating, or do most people have a specific nationality based preference? How does ethnicity factor in, and is there a hierarchy of aceptable to non acceptable dating options?

Rohin: There definitely is the preference among Bengalis to settle down with other Bengalis. But again, growing up in the U.S. has made it so narrowing my dating pool down by cultural background, caste, religion, or any other attribute that a person really has no control over counterproductive to my end goal of not wanting to end up like Little Edie in Grey Gardens.

I always count it as an added blessing if I’m dating a man who I can converse with in Bengali, but never a dealbreaker otherwise.

RB: Like I said above, we view South India as basically its own country. North Indians are OK, but no more preferable most other Asian countries. There is an exception for Hindus, since my family is fairly religious. Faith would likely take precedence over race with regards to a future partner. I have an uncle married to a Sri Lankan Tamil lady and her background fits almost perfectly in Chennai, given the similarities in language and food among other things. I was warned by my grandmother to never marry a Muslim, but I think that would be more of a problem for a woman seeking a husband than myself.

Anna: My parents were very specific about what they wanted for us– Malayalee, Orthodox Christian husbands. Not Catholic, not Protestant, Orthodox. Considering the granularity of their religious preference, someone outside of our community was out of the question. Other South Asians were not an option. Other Indians, especially North Indians were not an option; “what do we have in common with them?”, my parents would ask. The four states which make up South India are linguistically, “culinarily”–yeah, I totes just made that up– and culturally similar, but that was irrelevant. My parents wanted someone exactly like us. Their respective families had been endogamous for centuries. Who the hell were we to deviate from that?

Once my father passed away, a hierarchy did emerge. “Orthodox Malayalee” was still top-gun, but Catholics and Protestants (Mar Thomas) came next. Pentecostal Christians were last. Interestingly enough, Tamil or other Christians from different Indian states were never considered.

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