Fellow Indians - Do you feel this way?

thankyou4flying
Sun, 20 Mar 2011 20:27:39 +0000

So I’m an Indian guy, I live in Northern California, I’m a senior, etc etc. Anyway, over the last few years, I’ve felt embarrassed about certain aspects of Indian culture. It’s not that I’ve been necessarily “embarrassed,” exactly, but I’ve always wondered how Indians are perceived by others, especially whites. At my school, we have a SASA club (South Asian Student Association, which is basically all Indian lol) that occasionally creates certain videos and plays them over morning announcements. A lot of the recent videos have been very FOB-type Indian, I guess, and some have been so incredibly weird that I’ve seen a lot of white kids and other non-Indian kids look at each other like, “What the **** is with these Indians?”, after which my fellow Indian friends and I will look at each other and have one of those facepalm moments. I keep reminding myself to ignore it, but it’s very hard to do so at times.

I feel bad because I am proud to be Indian and I’m proud of my culture, but it’s just certain events like these videos and other things (like weird Indian films) that sort of make my stomach turn, especially when they are presented to the public. I know a lot of other people feel this way, so fellow Indians - do you feel the same way, or do you just ignore all this? This goes for others too - do you find yourselves feeling embarrassed about your culture, or are you used to it?

As a side note, please focus on this issue in your responses and don’t bash other people, thanks.