Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have many South Asian acquaintances and friends. We are in Fairfax County. A few friends have quirks regarding other South Asians (from dark skin/light skin to where someone's family is from exactly), these few also have trouble making South Asian friends but it is due to these quirks mostly. We as you can see discuss this every time we get together.

I think it's now considered kind of old-school and trashy to talk about skin tone these days. None of our friends make comments on that sort of thing. When the older people make comments, most people just roll their eyes. Where do you find this South Asians?

Anonymous wrote:I am first generation; DH grew up in India (but has been in the United States for about 15 years). None of his friends or mine have made racist comments about black people in our presence. Every group has its racists, though - a guy I went on one date with before I met DH made such a comment. I called him out on it and obviously never spoke to him again. If I were at the dinner party you attended I would have said something immediately and wouldn't have hung out with them again.

It's too much to go into here, but look into the model minority myth. Historically, Indians and black people[b] have been pitted against each other in the United States. (I especially recommend The Karma of Brown Folk by Vijay Prashad)

OP Here. I am not a troll. This experience actually happened and DH and I were both surprised that this kind of behavior was tolerated in a group. Fortuantely our children are not old enough to understand the conversation but there were older elementary school age children that were in the room and could have easily heard what was being said. To answer the question above these were first generation. I will be more specific and say that they all had a very common south asian last name that began with P and grew up in New Jersey. The K word was being used over and over again.

Anonymous wrote:Patels saying kracker? What "k" word?

Anonymous wrote:I have many South Asian acquaintances and friends. We are in Fairfax County. A few friends have quirks regarding other South Asians (from dark skin/light skin to where someone's family is from exactly), these few also have trouble making South Asian friends but it is due to these quirks mostly. We as you can see discuss this every time we get together.

Anonymous wrote:My husband is 1st generation (1st born here, parents immigrated) and his parents use a word in their language to mean African American, pronounced like "cul-LOO"

He said multiple times he was horribly embarrassed because they just felt like they could say it anywhere since they were speaking another language. Have no clue that people have enough sense to know they are talking about you even if they don't know the language. They did the same to me once and it was super obvious (talking about why I wasn't eating a particular thing)

Anonymous wrote:My husband is 1st generation (1st born here, parents immigrated) and his parents use a word in their language to mean African American, pronounced like "cul-LOO"

He said multiple times he was horribly embarrassed because they just felt like they could say it anywhere since they were speaking another language. Have no clue that people have enough sense to know they are talking about you even if they don't know the language. They did the same to me once and it was super obvious (talking about why I wasn't eating a particular thing)

Anonymous wrote:Patels saying kracker? What "k" word?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'll bite, and hope that you are not one of the many trolls on this forum that doesn't like South Asian people.

I am a South Asian woman (but my husband is not South Asian and most of my friends are not). Regardless, I've never had this problem with South Asian people of my generation (I assume you mean you are first generation - your parents immigrated from India? If you are second generation, it would be your grandparents).

Were the people you were with from India/Pakistan, or did they grow up here? The lack of familiarity with other races could contribute to their racist comments (that is not to say I am justifying their behavior, but an observation based on other from-India-Indians that I have met). If they are first generation (the children of immigrants), then no, I've never experienced this among my friends or relatives and you just got stuck with a bunch of racist assholes that you should avoid in the future.


And also, so what if you didn't really know them? You should have spoken up.

OP Here. I am not a troll. This experience actually happened and DH and I were both surprised that this kind of behavior was tolerated in a group. Fortuantely our children are not old enough to understand the conversation but there were older elementary school age children that were in the room and could have easily heard what was being said. To answer the question above these were first generation. I will be more specific and say that they all had a very common south asian last name that began with P and grew up in New Jersey. The K word was being used over and over again.

Anonymous wrote:13:39 - First generation means YOU immigrated; 2nd generation means your parents did. 3rd generation is if your grandparents did.

OP, I have truly never heard that kind of racist talk from South Asians who grew up here. (DH and I are lawyers, and our Indian friends tend to be in public service; most of our friends aren't the traditional doctor/engineer. It's more of a liberal group, so maybe that has something to do with it.)

I have definitely heard that kind of language from my parents' friends (though not my parents, thank goodness). It's a little ridiculous. The immigrants I spend time with are older, so I don't know how much of that is a function of when they came here.

I do know that my cousins and family in India do hold some racist ideas. They probably have interacted with 1 black person in their lives (collectively!), so there definitely seems to be more of a media bias than we think there is. I'm not sure what to do about that. I do set them straight whenever they say anything obnoxious.

You should call them on it! It's not ok to talk like that.