Originally posted by trevster2k
Thanks for the thoughtful response, and I'm deeply sorry you've had so many of those kinds of experiences in your lifetime. Experiencing that kind of social isolation has got to be intensely painful. I completely agree with you about the importance of having positive images of your racial group out there, and the difference that can make when you've encountered so many disparaging remarks ranging from racial slurs to more "benign, innocent" kinds of assumptions.
In my previous post I was more reacting to the classification of this, particularly the "looks alone" aspect, as "a natural thing" and what I took that to imply, than I was trying to define what the experience of "racial preferences" is "really" like (from both sides). I brought up India not because I see 'Indian society' as some extraordinary exemplar of racial harmony, I certainly wouldn't say that, but rather because it comes to mind as an example of a country where 'race' as we understand it plays a much less salient role in social hierarchies. And they are most definitely not 'homogeneous' in the way most Western countries are; take a look sometime at late-19th-through-to-mid-20th-century (Western) ethnographers' byzantine breakdowns of Indians by 'race,' then consider the enormous numbers of Indians who belong to each of those categories and how readily they intermarry "despite" that, because *as a generalization*, for them, caste--not the color of your prospective spouse's skin or the shape of their facial features, which vary
tremendously throughout India--is the distinction that matters there. Of course it's significant that it was Western ethnographers mapping those distinctions out, but that was kind of my point. I can accept the idea that institutionalized hierarchies of some form or another
are 'human nature', and that bona fide cultural gaps can be tough to negotiate is just common sense; but I don't accept that institutionalized racism as we know it is 'natural', and it seems to me that the experiences you're recounting are precisely that.
At the risk of doggedly belaboring my point, I'll try expanding this a little further...
I imagine any children who are not Indian growing up in India would have similar experiences as myself being the minority in a different culture.
Children who are unfamiliar and unconversant with whatever the local version of Indian culture is would certainly encounter many adverse experiences, yes. And children of certain racial groups per our definitions, especially 'black' and 'white', would likely encounter significant prejudice based on that alone. But is this really analogous to being a native-born racial minority in a country like the US, Australia or Canada? I suppose for many, if you're first-generation and your parent(')s(') native culture was the predominant influence in your home, then yes, it could well be. It just seems to me like adverse experiences based on appearance alone are something different, though. Maybe it's just naive on my part to perceive any distinction between negative attitudes towards Canadians of Asian ancestry and negative attitudes towards Asian immigrants some Canadians may have, but this has always been a type of racism that incenses me, and I do agree Asians are often among the hardest-hit by it, that 'foreignness' is somehow inheritable and that stigma (which of course shouldn't exist to begin with, but that's another story--I *think*) gets passed on to subsequent generations based on looks alone. I realize this may sound nonsensical, it even sounds contradictory to me just rereading that sentence, but at the point where we're talking about people assuming you know karate or dropping racial slurs simply because you look Asian, then it seems to me we're crossing the threshold from xenophobia to institutionalized racism. And they're interrelated, granted, but...put it this way, if I hear someone I know making disparaging comments about some Indian immigrants they know--based on accent or expressive gestures or other aspects of communicative style, say--then that upsets me, but I 'understand' it to the point that, OK, here's social behavior that reads as disconcerting and unexpected, I can kind of understand where that reaction comes from, and here are some explanations I can attempt to offer from experience that might help them make better sense of what they're seeing. Whereas if they're making disparaging comments about a fellow, born-and-raised American of Indian ancestry, someone who speaks with their accent and was socialized through the same school system and is conversant with all the same 'standard American' cultural references they are, even if they're also actively engaged with their Indian cultural heritage in various ways...well, in that case there's really nothing I have to say to them, other than Frankly, you're just being bigoted here, and no I don't understand why you're endorsing these ugly ideas at all.
Having difficulty fitting in a group because you feel out of place is something everyone deals with in life whether it be for your personality or likes or dislikes. Dealing with it just based on race which is a permanent trait is a different experience.
I certainly agree with this, though for clarification's sake, that wasn't the kind of thing I meant with regard to my own upbringing. Things I would stop short of labeling 'race'-related, as in many ways that's inaccurate, but racialized thinking most definitely played a role in it.