The Melting Pot

It wasn’t a surprise to find out that the groom was not of Indian or Pakistani descent. My wife and I had been invited to a cousin’s daughter’s wedding reception and we had been too indifferent to ask about the ethnicity of the groom, but we had been told that following the reception the couple would be leaving for an Eastern European location. So we weren’t surprised when we went to the reception and the guests sitting next to us asked us if the groom was Muslim or not, if we thought this was a ‘real’ marriage, if we knew how long the couple had been together, and so on. It wasn’t exactly uplifting conversation, because my cousin is an excellent person and his kids are fine, upstanding citizens. He had been nice enough to invite all these folks to his daughters’ wedding reception, and now some of these people were commenting on his family’s morality and their values.

It is interesting how folks from South Asia discriminate between their sons and daughters when it comes to relationships. It is usually not a problem when a guy dates a woman who is not of the same ethnicity and religion as himself, but it is a major issue when a girl does the same. This leads some parents to put the best spin on what would otherwise be a difficult situation. A friend of my brother-in-law is well settled here in the states and his family is generally well regarded. So when his sister married a white guy, we called him and congratulated him and his reaction was well we are so happy because the groom is a new convert to Islam and you know how great a deed that is. I hear this ‘conversion’ argument a lot, and I feel sad because these are nice people who have done nothing wrong and they are being forced into telling disingenuous half-truths and lies, all because they want to keep face in their communities. America is a melting pot, where people are judged by their deeds and not by their ethnicity, except that people who are fortunate enough to come to this country and make it their home bring with them the prejudices of their former homeland.

A friend of mine (now happily married and the father of two kids) who had a very traditional upbringing was uncomfortable with dating when he was single and looking. He thought it would be difficult to meet women and go out because parents of single girls in his community would not approve of that kind of thing. His brother set him straight by telling him how parents go to incredible lengths in this country to find a suitable mate for their daughters. They would be happy if their daughter went out with a nice young man from their community, because they are scared if she goes out with a white guy, or (heavens forbid) an African-American male! This presumes that there is something inherently superior about the culture that we all came from, and that there is something not so nice about African-American identity, culture and mores. The irony is that if it weren’t for African-Americans there would not be very many South Asians in the United States. We owe it to the civil rights movement, to Dr King and others in the African-American community, who forced changes in federal law that made it race-neutral in many respects, including immigration.

What will the future bring? Perhaps the best guide is the past. Some of the earliest South Asians who came to this country were folks from Punjab who settled in Southern California. They were called “Mexican Hindus” because they looked like Mexicans to the local population and they married Hispanic women (since it was difficult for non-Caucasian races to bring their wives to this country). Fast forward almost a century and the descendants of these pioneers are not distinguishable from other Californians, although they may take pride in their Indian and Hispanic origins.