<p>She could not have been more serious.</p>
<p>I think the sentiment of caring the MOST about your own child is completely human. Given her circumstances of course this was natural.</p>
<p>It was that she chose to articulate to me that as an Indian mother this was in fact her only concern which was note-worthy.</p>
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<p>S’s friend, adopted by Caucasian mom from Asia, has been a bottle blonde, pink, blue, orange, etc… Haven’t seen her for a while, but I’ll see her today and can’t wait to find out what color hair she’s sporting.</p>
<p>Anitaw, I am sure you are not to let this one outburst to convince yourself that all Indians are like this.</p>
<p>I have heard many parents out on the athletic fields whose words and actions say the same thing, that they care only about how well their children played but not about the team. Should I infer that all white are like this? Of course not.</p>
<p>I have one close Jewish friend who always said this type of things to me, prefacing with " I am a Jewish mother…" " I am a Jewish mother.Jewish mothers are controlling." or “I am a Jewish mother, we do everything for our kids…”</p>
<p>I suggest you get to know another Indian mother.</p>
<p>"He reached out, and got snubbed several times, and I am sure that he would not reach out to a group of Asian students again. He won’t judge everyone who is Asian based on these experiences, but would prefer to avoid his hs experiences regarding this, because it was not pleasant for him. "</p>
<p>I’m genuinely sorry for what your son went through. At the same time, as a URM who has spent much of my life in overwhelmingly white environments and also environments in which I have been one of the only women, I can’t support your son’s deciding not to reach out to Asians because of his unfortunate experiences in h.s.</p>
<p>If I were to do similarly, I would have missed having a lot of wonderful relationships with males, whites, Asians and a variety of other people who come from groups that have snubbed me sometimes. That also includes my fellow African Americans. </p>
<p>To the person who described the comment by the Indian mother: There are people from all cultures and races who use their backgrounds as excuses for being selfish and self centered. Don’t allow those people to cause you to reject a whole culture or race.</p>
<p>There is a pretty strong cult of The Mother in south Asian culture, but it’s not terribly different from our own view of Mom and Apple Pie. The Mother is fiercely devoted to and protective of her children, and endlessly giving, loving, and sacrificing herself. It’s often a little ironic, like the Jewish Mother stereotype here. I have trouble believing that the mother’s reference to being an “Indian mother” with anitaw was completely free of self-criticism. I think she meant to tip you off that she understood your point, but it was not her role to accept it. I will sometimes respond to a great argument against me by saying “Well, as [my client]'s lawyer, I can’t agree with that.”</p>
<p>Socializing: Surely it isn’t monolithic. My son goes to a multi-enthnic high school where many of the parents are suspicious of kids from other ethnic groups and attempt to keep their kids away. They fail, most of the time. There is a hilarious amount of sneaking-around-behind-parents’-backs. Also, it’s hardly limited to Asians. Eastern European immigrants have this issue, too. (Honestly, some of them come from situations where life-long friends of other ethnicities suddenly turned on them and tried to kill or rob them. It will take more time than some of them have left to get over that.)</p>
<p>". Also, it’s hardly limited to Asians. Eastern European immigrants have this issue, too. "</p>
<p>And probably historically, this has been true of all racial/cultural groups in this country. I grew up in an overwhelmingly white northeastern city with lots of immigrants, and I know that back then, Italians didn’t want their kids to date Irish even though both families were Catholic. There were all sorts of dating concerns even though most of the people involved were white, and many also were of the same religion.</p>
<p>Fascinating thread- I think it takes courage to be open on this issue- most people I know would be fearful to address this as it wouldn’t be “PC”. So I applaud all of you and appreciate knowing your perspective. Maybe thats part of the benefit of a forum like this, being a bit more open.
The comments about the self-selection of Caucasian and Asian students between UCSB and UCI were illuminating. My d is very open-minded /liberal/accepting of diversity, but she surprised me when she expressed that, although she woud like to socialize with them, she felt generally Asian students “keep to themselves”, and that she felt a bit intimidated by these groups at some of the colleges she’s considering. She attends a small public HS in coastal So Cal, where there are relatively few Asian students, but she is involved in Speech and Debate tournaments where she has been in contact with this group and made these observations. I’m sorry she has had this experience/perception. I hope things will be better in college; she has been raised to value all people’s cultures and be open-minded to all.
We all have to listen to each other; let’s face it, it can be uncomfortable to some of us when we find we are not the “majority” we used to be, or thought we were. I’ve done a fair amount of traveling around the US this year with my son’s “extreme sports” team to various venues that are not necessarily located in places I would have visited otherwise. Its a very consciousness-raising experience to get out of one’s little bubble sometimes.
CAn anyone explain to me the comment above “another bigot is born”, in reference to the quote “Asians are the new Jews”? Seems to me the writer intended it as a compliment, not a bigoted statement?</p>
<p>“I’m genuinely sorry for what your son went through. At the same time, as a URM who has spent much of my life in overwhelmingly white environments and also environments in which I have been one of the only women, I can’t support your son’s deciding not to reach out to Asians because of his unfortunate experiences in h.s.”</p>
<p>NSM, I have spent several years of my life as one of only a few women, and I found that to be a very positive experience.</p>
<p>Perhaps he will reach out again, and perhaps not. I really don’t know, but you don’t have to be a brainsurgeon to realize that you don’t want to go back for more punishment after you have been negatively rewarded for a behavior.</p>
<p>The dating concern holds true for many Jews. One of my son’s close friends, who is politically very liberal but fairly observant, has decided that he cannot “date” non-Jews, although he socializes extensively with everyone.</p>
<p>Toward the end of college, I – I am Jewish – resolved that I was going to try to date more Jewish women, because maybe they would like me better. The problem was, it wasn’t always easy to identify actual Jewish women in a secular environment. I did manage to date some actual Jewish women, but mainly I wound up with some hilariously marginal cases of women who looked Jewish and had Jewish-sounding names, but weren’t quite: a somewhat anti-Semetic Catholic who, several years later, learned that her mother had been excommunicated from her Jewish family for running off with my friend’s Czech father; a committed Christian Scientist from a used-to-be-Jewish family; an ethnic Jew whose entire family was deeply involved in the Gurdjieff cult; a Jewish woman who had been adopted and was actively searching for her Greek birth mother; and an ethnic Jew who had been raised as a Unitarian and had only recently figured out that everyone who met her assumed she was Jewish.</p>
<p>Life in America gets complicated after a couple of generations.</p>
<p>JHS, That is funny! Your experiences in dating Jewish women who are anything but… makes for a potentially very funny comedy.</p>
<p>Wecandothis, I agree with your comments,
“Fascinating thread- I think it takes courage to be open on this issue- most people I know would be fearful to address this as it wouldn’t be “PC”. So I applaud all of you and appreciate knowing your perspective. Maybe thats part of the benefit of a forum like this, being a bit more open.”</p>
<p>JHS:</p>
<p>LOL!
My S’s only friend with a dependably Jewish surname turns out to be the adopted African-American D of a single Jewish woman. He has other Jewish friends, but their surnames do not give away their religion quite so obviously as hers.</p>
<p>JHS - your post reminds me a little of a Seinfeld episode in which Elaine is pleased with herself to be dating a man she thinks is a light-skinned black man, and he’s pleased with himself to be dating what he thinks is a light-skinned Hispanic. When they both realize they’re wrong - both are white, of course, - they instantly lose interest in each other. Somehow the thrill was gone.</p>
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<p>Oh, there’s no question that Harold Bloom considered this characterization to be a very high compliment indeed.</p>
<p>As for HB and the Jews, the question may well be, will the Asians be able to work through their “anxiety of influence.” For that matter, will admissions committees begin to view Asians–as they do Jews–as plainly white? Or will they remain “the other.”</p>
<p>“will admissions committees begin to view Asians–as they do Jews–as plainly white?”</p>
<p>There are several colleges that actively seek Jewish students. I can tell you that several years ago there was an article in the NYT that listed Vanderbilt, and TCU (just to name 2) that would like to see more Jewish students on their campuses. I assume that schools where Asian students are underrepresented would want the same, but that is just an assumption on my part. BTW, since being Jewish is a religion, not all Jews are white. Here is a publication that states that there are 56,000 Jews from Ethiopia living in Israel today:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.etv.state.ms.us/educators-guides/guides-tch-2004-2005/children-jerusalem.pdf[/url]”>http://www.etv.state.ms.us/educators-guides/guides-tch-2004-2005/children-jerusalem.pdf</a></p>
<p>FS:</p>
<p>JHS’s post is testimony that you can’t judge a Jew by his/her appearance. But the first thing one notices about Asians is their Asianness. As a matter of fact, there is a prof at Harvard with a decided Jewish surname and equally decided Asian features. He turns out to be half-Jewish half-Asian. People do do a double take when they put his face and his name togetherl</p>
<p>" But the first thing one notices about Asians is their Asianness."</p>
<p>If they have 2 Asian parents. If they are bi-racial, you may not be able to tell.</p>
<p>cbreeze- just to clarify this woman was a parent of a patient, not a friend. It is, however, my great pleasure to learn about parenting and family life from parents from many cultures and I shared the anecdote simply to indicate the point that we all are on a learning curve about what cultural diversity really means. I am sure there are members of the Jewish religion who might make a similar commment, but since I am not one of them I have to assume that there is not a monolith of ‘Indian mother opinion’ any more than there truly is one of parents from my ‘culture of birth.’.</p>
<p>From my perspective, just to reiterate, the hugest differences in the two populations being compared is simply that of numbers, and the impact that the numbers will ultimately have. Fleeing, forget it. Embrace, learn, understand.</p>
<p>So if I tell my daughter to date caucasians, of similar ancestral backgrounds and religions that’s okay?</p>
<p>I grew up in a suburb that had a relatively high percentage of Jewish people. I always felt sorry for the Jewish kids who were only allowed to date members of their faith in jh and hs, but in retrospect it makes sense.</p>
<p>Of all the issues that come up in a marriage, the one that has never arisen is religion. Neither my H’s parents or mine specifically told us or our siblings to only marry members of our faith, yet we all did. Now he is Irish and I am mainland European but somehow we have overlooked that. :)</p>
<p>NSM:</p>
<p>By Asians, I mean full Asians. Bi-racials are only half Asians if they have one Asian parent. My S has a friend whose dad is African-American and whose mom is Asian. He looks rather like Tiger Woods.</p>