Let me lay it down as do how we Indians roll. We are, generally speaking, a conservative and traditional “tribe”. Roots are important to us. We trace our lineages back hundreds of years, some thousands. Our marriages are arranged to other Indians similar in socio-economic, educational, religious, regional and linguistic backgrounds. Even when we buck the system and go in for “love marriages” it is mostly to other Indians. Are we open to including other people in our social circles? Many of us are but that does not mean we want to marry you. If we DO want to marry you then you can be sure there will static coming from our families, which are very tight to the point of being sometimes obsessive.

We are brought up to value education and getting ahead. We don’t do divorce but very rarely. We don’t do out of wedlock births. The teen pregnancies in India are amongst rural villagers who have had their marriages arranged in their teens. We generally don’t do dating (in India) because we are an arranged marriage culture, but that is starting to change somewhat in the urban centers.

If we are going to make close friends with non-Indians it will be amongst people who have similar values. Other than that we will keep you at a respectful distance.

Expecting Indians to jump in head first with blinders on into “mixing” is an expectation that will not be met.

We are, in general, a traditional people. Most of the world was like this at one time, and much of the world still is.

The Western post-modern ideal of jumbling everyone up and coming up “olives” (shout out to RogueDC), is just that – a Post Modern Liberal Western Experiment.

Like Dr. Phil says, “how’s that workin’ for ya?”

Now before everyone starts jumping down my throat for my raw and naked treatise here, you know damn well that this is how your parents or grand-parents think.

That’s because Black men are over-represented in crime statistics. Now, much of this crime may be something as “harmless” as carrying, smoking or selling weed, which I don’t think should be against the law, but nonetheless, when you are a small percentage of the overall population yet OVER represented in crime stats, the word does get out and the public will react, even if its unwarranted in your individual case.

The struggles of different minorities are, well, different. Why would you assume that Indians who immigrate to the US have more in common with the minority population than the majority one?

We are brought up to value education and getting ahead. We don’t do divorce but very rarely. We don’t do out of wedlock births. The teen pregnancies in India are amongst rural villagers who have had their marriages arranged in their teens. We generally don’t do dating (in India) because we are an arranged marriage culture, but that is starting to change somewhat in the urban centers.

If we are going to make close friends with non-Indians it will be amongst people who have similar values. Other than that we will keep you at a respectful distance.

Expecting Indians to jump in head first with blinders on into “mixing” is an expectation that will not be met.

We are, in general, a traditional people. Most of the world was like this at one time, and much of the world still is.

The Western post-modern ideal of jumbling everyone up and coming up “olives” (shout out to RogueDC), is just that – a Post Modern Liberal Western Experiment.

Like Dr. Phil says, “how’s that workin’ for ya?”

Now before everyone starts jumping down my throat for my raw and naked treatise here, you know damn well that this is how your parents or grand-parents think.

http://www.mccullagh.org/db9/1ds2-4/olives.jpg