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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   17320 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026

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Ask Sahaj: Isn’t it racist to insist your kids marry within their race?

This article posits it's OK to demand your kids marry another Indian (or South Asian), due to, uh, racism or something, while it's not OK for whites to do this.

Cultural context matters here, too. In many collectivist cultures, where the group is prioritized over the individual, the norm around marriage is that it’s a family affair. Love is not between two individuals but a joining of families, so things such as what the partner’s parents do, or social standing, can matter more because each family is inheriting the other family’s reputation. The first questions my parents asked when I told them about my now-husband was what did his parents and brothers do, how did they spend their time. What they were really asking was: Can they protect you? Will they be able to provide for you? Will they tarnish your name? When a daughter gets married to someone else’s son, tangible proof of stability, or security, can matter in a way that may not be as relevant here. It took time to challenge this narrative and given the context in which they grew up — with their gendered roles and marriage norms — I can understand their concern.

Well, but the point is you left your collectivist culture. Marriage in the modern west is an individualist thing. Also note the shameless promotion of family honour ("tarnish your name")

In the process of immigration, a lot is lost that cannot be seen. Things such as family roles that are left behind, access to general and family support, cultural norms from how to get money from a bank to the social etiquette at the park or school. Because so many strands are broken along the journey, the ones that remain — such as cultural traditions/rituals and language — are held on to even tighter. There’s often a fear that a culture will end with the next generation, and even an anxiety around being misunderstood or even isolated within one’s own family. Add to this a historical expectation that immigrants will assimilate, and, in order to challenge this, many may hold on even tighter to parts of their identity and culture to maintain a semblance of who they are.

I mean I get that it sucks that you don't get to keep your culture as such, but it's a good deal. You get to often 10-20x your resources after all. I guess the presupposition is that you should keep your culture and all it entails. Which is a bit disrespectful to the host country in my opinion. Do they not get a say at all about all this?

I don't care too much about the article or the premise itself, but I work with a lot of Indians. I don't generally dislike them at all. But I do notice certain behavioural patterns. I have also been to the place. I know people who spent a lot of time there. One thing that came up is that they can be very racist themselves. Almost fractally so in fact, it's quite incredible. Casteism is also still a thing, though less so in the big cities.

I guess it's also notable how they act as immigrants. Indians care a lot about honour. They are quite irredentist, think they are heirs to a great civilisation state, if only it weren't for the pernicious English they'd split the world in two with China or something. Many a time when I spent time with one I was lectured about how the west is in decline, how it's going to be an Indian century, etc. (insert 2025 superpower meme) They are quite protective of their culture, they don't change their names when they emigrate, don't outmarry as much (though WMIF is a thing) and are generally quite quick to jump on the whole AA grift.

Even as a tourist, when I'm in a foreign country, I generally try to be polite, I certainly don't serenade people with some weird nationalist screed about how my civilisation used to better than theirs etc. So this is quite foreign to me. Hindu nationalism can be very funny though as an outsider. It's a bit whimsical, a bit like Balkan nationalism.

There are a lot of allegations that they like hiring their own and well, I have seen this more or less first hand. Though Russians and others also do that (viz. "thick" vs. thin cultures, I think people from "thin" cultures make better immigrants). They generally don't want to assimilate. Assimilation is out now anyway I guess. You can contrast this with East Asians. They generally still tend to have more of a 2000s classroom globalism view, where everyone ought to work together etc., they change their names and they often try to intermarry. Even though China is irredentist even recent Chinese immigrants tend to shut up about this while IME Indian ones generally don't.

They may be very good for GDP etc. but I am not sure that mass Indian immigration is a good thing in the long term. Do you want a group in your country that will quite openly have split loyalties? People used to fuss about this in the US with Catholics. I guess we have a natural experiment with Canada and Australia to a lesser extent. We shall see. Indian emigration is continuing apace anyway, they have dreadful youth unemployment rates.

As a South Asian, daughter of immigrants and granddaughter of refugees, who is also married to a White man

The “SJW in the streets, KKK in the sheets” trope strikes again.

We have to consider that the difference in how we label these behaviors between a “White family” and “non-White family” isn’t arbitrary; it’s shaped by history, power and context. Racism and prejudice are about privilege and advantage. When White families insist on “staying within their race,” it’s often tied to a long history of exclusion, segregation and maintaining dominance or supremacy. When immigrant or non-White families express similar preferences, it’s often rooted in something else — survival, cultural preservation and fear of loss.

Shaped by history, power and context, got it. That is, shaped by just-so stories for justifying Who? Whom? The paragraph feels like Poe's Law.

Just like how white people staying where they are is segregation and white people moving out is colonialism: white men choosing to date/marry white women is racist and Problematic, and white men choosing to date/marry non-white women is exploitative and betrays a colonialist, fetishist mindset. The implied solution for where white people should live is that they shouldn't live; the implied solution for who white men should date/marry is that they shouldn't date/marry.

It's somewhat more mixed for white women though. While white women choosing to date/marry white men is similarly racist and Problematic—and white women choosing to date/marry men from high-performing minority groups is weird—in contrast white women choosing to date/marry men from low-performing minority groups is Stunning and Brave and should be encouraged for all. Some pesky wrongthinker further illustrated the Intersectionality with a table.

There are a lot of allegations that they like hiring their own and well, I have seen this more or less first hand. Though Russians and others also do that (viz. "thick" vs. thin cultures, I think people from "thin" cultures make better immigrants). They generally don't want to assimilate. Assimilation is out now anyway I guess.

Assimilation typically doesn't happen as much with the first generation immigrants, it's a second generation, and even more so a third generation thing. It's a common trope about like Chinese grandparents dismayed that their grandkids don't understand Chinese and only know American traditions and behave like American kids.

The youth who actually grow up in the US, immersed around American culture and people and aren't in hard racial enclaves become very similar to everyone else. Even when you're very clearly an "outsider" like this white guy raised in singapore for 9 years you pick up a lot of yourself from there. Like he has a very Chinese accent when he speaks English despite looking like a typical American white kid.

Heck some rates of assimilation are better than they were historically. As Noah Smith had pointed out a while back

About 20% of American-born Muslims marry non-Muslims. A century ago, for Catholics, the number was 10%, and for Jews ~3%. So Muslims are assimilating MUCH faster than historical religious minorities.

And that's despite roughly 1 in 4 American born Muslims no longer being Muslim to begin with.. So almost half of US born Muslims are in non Muslim marriages, either because they marry out or have themselves left the religion. This sort of thing compounds too, the roughly 1in4 who leave, their children aren't very likely to become Muslim again. The children to split religion relationships are going to have higher rates of leaving Islamic faith as well. But even that half who are still Muslim who only marry Muslims will continue to dilute themselves into American culture and their next generation will be even less.

Muslims in America are vastly more educated and affluent than they are in the current European wave. It's pretty apples to oranges when you're managing to effectively skim the absolute cosmopolitan cream of Islamic countries and also can stop critical mass forming in localities.

I'd be interested to see the exit rate for populations like Minnesota's Somalis in a century as they seem to have formed more of a parallel society/economy and therefore I'd expect have less pressure to drift or opportunity to marry out. This is also generally an issue with a lot of backward looking studies of immigrants since it's very much apples to oranges in the selective pressures and ability to retain connection to external cultures than it was even 25 years ago

In the last year or two I’ve pretty much decided I only want to marry within race. Preferably an Argentinian because I’m Italian. I would be a little Jew curious if they would be open to converting. Because I tend to have a lot in common with Jews and most share a lot of Italian ancestry.

I don’t want to have kids who are mystery meat and also lack a culture they are from and only have whatever modernist garbage is currently in vogue. I think it’s important to have young people who can connect to something far older than themselves.

The youth who actually grow up in the US, immersed around American culture and people and aren't in hard racial enclaves become very similar to everyone else.

They are similar in that they wear blue jeans and speak with an American accent, but the number of Indian kids I grew up with who ended up marrying Indians is staggering.

(I am a 1.5 gen immigrant to the US from South Asia)

Honestly I think this is not entirely due to South Asian insularity/clannishness. The bigger reason is that South Asian men are the least desirable on the dating market, plus in all races (except perhaps East/Southeast Asians), women generally prefer their own; moreover, white men seem markedly less likely to date and marry South Asian women as compared to East Asians. This nets out in South Asian men pretty much only being able to pull South Asian women, hence the phenomenon you notice.

I will admit, though, that South Asian parents/older relatives are much more into playing matchmaker for the younger generation than East Asian parents. Also, South Asian parents heavily stress the importance of marriage, especially for daughters, whereas East Asian parents stress the importance of being skinny/good looking and seem to be less vocal about marriage specifically (though of course they generally don’t want their daughters to end up as spinsters)

From my experience (i.e. the outside looking in), the women do date white guys with some regularity. But when it comes to settling down, Mother and Father have strong opinions about the need to find a good [insert intersection of 2-10 ethnic, religious, and/or astrological criteria] boy to marry. Frequently, the women seem to go along with it, or aren't disagreeable enough to tell the parents to stuff it.

For the men, the pattern I tend to see is little success in the dating market so I assume they maybe meet a girl that matches the criteria above to settle down with via some kind of guided parental arrangement. But this is speculation on my part.

So yeah, I do think that the arranged marriage/matchmaking thing still exists for 2nd gen South Asian Americans to a far greater extent than for (e.g.) East Asians. This plays a big role in finding matches for the men, who are the least desirable demographic out there and face a terrible slog on the apps.

But it takes two to tango, as they say, and I suspect the primary reason why the women are also available to be matched in the quasi-arranged marriage market is that white men are much less eager to snap them up as compared to East Asian women. IME the rates of WMIF dating relationships and marriages are roughly the same, so it’s not so much that South Asian women are fooling around with white dudes in their early 20s before settling down with a parentally-approved Nice Jewish Indian Boy From A Good Family right as the Wall approaches. It’s just that white guys aren’t asking them out all that much in the first place, and from my (single straight male) perspective it’s pretty easy to see why: East Asian women have more of the traits that men generally find attractive, viz. petite and slim build even after marriage/children, fair-but-not-ghostly-pale skin, and lack of body hair/body odor.

I also don’t think that 2nd gen South Asian Americans are that much more susceptible to parental pressures re: choice of spouse than East Asians. In both cases, the parents would prefer that their children (especially daughters) marry within the race and grumble but usually grudgingly accept if and when that doesn’t happen; and in both cases, at roughly equal rates in my anecdotal experience, sometimes the children acquiesce and sometimes they go their own way. The degree of submission to the parents depends mostly on the strength of the relationship with the parents, which again I think is not vastly different on average between East and South Asians.

Though if I had to hazard a guess, I suppose I would agree that South Asians (even 2nd gen) tend to defer to their parents somewhat more so than do East Asians, and both groups defer far more so than do whites.

IME the rates of WMIF dating relationships and marriages are roughly the same,

I haven't really found this to be the case. I think you are from the East Coast? Maybe things are different over there.

I did my time (twelve_years_of_it_in_azkaban.gif) in the Bay Area and things didn’t seem vastly different there. The biggest difference I noticed is that nerdy white male/East Asian female was always an extremely common pairing in the Bay but only recently (post-pandemic, roughly) became comparably prevalent on the East Coast.

I used to think it was just a matter of the gender ratios; even a mid white guy in NYC can easily find (white) BPD art hoes, struggling musicians, or fashion/publishing/journalism girlboss types, while mid white guys in the Bay are SOL without the boost they get in the eyes of East Asian women. But the gender ratios are the same as ever, if not even more lopsided than before, and yet WM(E)AF has only trended upward in NYC for the past half decade.

The biggest difference I noticed is that nerdy white male/East Asian female was always an extremely common pairing in the Bay

You know where this pairing is amusingly common? Outdoors. I do lots of hiking and have to stifle my laughter every time I see yet another WMAF couple out hiking.

Twelve years? My next explanation is that you are unc and things are different among the zillennials and zoomers.

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I'm not sure what proportion of Western-born Indians are still engaging in arranged marriages/very encouraged familial introductions but having seen had several close friends/housemates who were Indian-born and did eventually get partners through that system it does seem to be incredibly alive and well.

Plus also combination of South Asian dating market woes + hardcore parental educational expectations + lack of real role models meant that a lot of said friends weren't going anywhere at all left to their own devices so it was essentially a panacea to just get somebody dropped on them in their mid twenties who passed whatever social checks. I'm happily married now to somebody I met through grinding the dating apps, but if in an alternate universe there were an equivalent system of arranged marriages amongst the broader Anglo community I'd imagine I'd be adequately happy with an arranged match assuming similar levels of vetting and 'spirit of making things work'

Assimilation typically doesn't happen as much with the first generation immigrants, it's a second generation, and even more so a third generation thing.

Depends on the specific situation, host culture and immigrant culture, etc.

German immigrants after the war were, uh, highly motivated to assimilate as quickly as possible, but that's an almost-unique scenario. British and French immigration issues have had bouts of first-gens that really want to adopt British culture, but then drift over time- there's a bimodal issue with second/third gen can become either more assimilated or more radicalized.

I am skeptical that Hindu and Muslim immigrants will remain homogenous over time. Muslims seem to marry other Muslims from wherever (see Mamdami) and Hinduism may be uniquely weak when transported (Brahamical prohibitions on traveling overseas are for a reason: it’s one thing to persuade your kid to worship the gods in front of a three thousand-year-old temple ground where everything has lore and pedigree, another when it was built 10 years ago across from a Burger King in a town named after the wrong kind of Indian). Sikhs will probably be a bit more resilient as they have an ethnireligious component, and “Sahaj” is indeed Sikh. The issue I see with Indian migration is rather that the country seems dysfunctional, corrupt, and unaesthetic, and it’s not wise to bring its population into America when the relationship between quality of country and quality of immigrant seems to track well in most cases. The addition of a high IQ individual is not necessarily good if it comes with other bad traits as the history of American corruption attests (Elizabeth Holmes, Adam Neumann, etc). It’s probably the case that a high-trust and high-empathy 90iq is better than a corrupt 110iq. And this will be an even worse problem in the AI age as meritocracy becomes increasingly difficult to instantiate. At the same time, India is so diverse that I imagine there are probably sub-populations that are the highest trust in the world (what are the Jains doing? Can we bring Parsis here?) but I doubt anyone is looking into that properly.

Love is not between two individuals but a joining of families, so things such as what the partner’s parents do, or social standing, can matter more because each family is inheriting the other family’s reputation. The first questions my parents asked when I told them about my now-husband was what did his parents and brothers do, how did they spend their time. What they were really asking was: Can they protect you? Will they be able to provide for you? Will they tarnish your name?

That was also in the West up until quite recently, though mostly amongst rural people. In my parents' generation, they too would have wondered about any possible husbands I brought home; the joke is/was that what parents ask is "Who is he? What does he do? What does his father do?"

So the whole "marry for romantic love as individuals without any family input" thing is (1) urban and (2) still relatively new.

I stopped reading the article when I reached this point:

shaped by history, power and context.

I interpret this to mean "What follows is a bunch of Leftist sophistry in defense of double-standards, hypocrisy, and general dunking on one or more of the outgroups of progressives"

Anyway, one thing that's interesting to me about Indians in the United States is that they are facing a similar issue to Orientals (i.e. East Asians). Which is that by and large, their daughters seem to have little problem dating white guys and in many cases actually prefer white guys over men from their own race. At the same time, white women seem to have comparatively little interest in dating Indian-American guys. It seems some Indian guys are able to overcome the negative stereotypes around Indian men -- for example if the guy is tall, strong, assimilated, and works as an analyst for Goldman Sachs. In that case, there's a good chance he will go for a white girl.

In other words, there seems to be kind of a self-hating element in Indian behavior when it comes to dating and mating. From that perspective, it does make sense for Indian parents to urge their children to marry other Indians. I myself don't have a problem with it, I just wish people would be more tolerant of whites who prefer to maintain their European heritage.

As a side note, it does seem that generally speaking white people more or less represent the standard of attractiveness/desirability in the world and have for some time. With respect to white women, I recall reading somewhere that during the days of African piracy, lighter skinned women carried a higher price in slave markets. I'm not sure about men. Perhaps after Europeans conquered and dominated the world, women of all races started associating white men with power and status.

As a side note, it does seem that generally speaking white people more or less represent the standard of attractiveness/desirability in the world and have for some time. With respect to white women, I recall reading somewhere that during the days of African piracy, lighter skinned women carried a higher price in slave markets. I'm not sure about men. Perhaps after Europeans conquered and dominated the world, women of all races started associating white men with power and status.

I think it's even more soft than hard power, nowadays. In my observations, those who prefer East Asian media over American media also tend to value partners of the corresponding ethnicity higher, which is relevant as the bubbles in which this preference has reached fixation keep getting bigger and more mainstream. I have already seen social groups in which the (comparatively handsome, successful) white guys quietly mald as the resident loose girls openly prefer to chase mediocre Japanese and Korean guys.

Which is that by and large, their daughters seem to have little problem dating white guys and in many cases actually prefer white guys over men from their own race.

Really? South Asian female spaces frequently complain about lack of interest from non-South Asian men relative to East/Southeast Asian women. And while they're probably doing better than the guys, dating =/= marriage, which is an important distinction. Actual intermarriage rates are the lowest out of all Asian American groups, across both sexes.

Really? South Asian female spaces frequently complain about lack of interest from non-South Asian men relative to East/Southeast Asian women.

Yeah, when I said "little problem," I mainly meant "little objection to" That being said, my sense is that in the United States, a South Asian woman who is otherwise attractive will not have much difficulty attracting a white man. Although perhaps an Oriental (East Asian) or white woman would have even less difficulty.

Actual intermarriage rates are the lowest out of all Asian American groups, across both sexes.

I'm not surprised about that at all. I think young South-Asians in the US are -- generally speaking -- put under a great deal of family pressure to refrain from marrying out.

Yeah I'd agree with this. All things equal, South Asian men are dealing with a -5 modifier in the market and South Asian women are probably dealing with a -1 modifier. The market skews female controlled, though

Precisely this. East Asian men, by contrast, have something like a -2 or -3 handicap on average* while the women have a +5 buff

*though these days it is very context-dependent; e.g., Korean men have a big advantage with white female K-pop fans

It's quite the gambit to move to a foreign country for a better life and then extoll the virtues of your former society whilst being loudly racist against the majority of your new one. Bold move Cotton.

"Yes, I moved to China for a six-figure salary, but I would never let one of these chinks marry my son or daughter, they're racists!" - op-ed in a chinese newspaper

Of course, it says something about US culture that our "respectable" media organs are gagging to print this sort of slop.

I would be in favor of deporting every person, immigrant or citizen, who extols the virtues of their prior living place and condemns the new one. Perhaps deporting them to Liberia, but I'm open to ideas. If the new one is so bad and the old one is so great, then you need to go.

Of course, this would disproportionately effect former New Yorkers. If I never hear "this place [I moved to in an attempt to escape crime, taxes, noise, disorder, filth and a dozen other bad things] is a cultureless shithole, NYC was so great" again, it would be too soon.

Not necessarily. I can see it for instance in a context where somebody moves into a high trust society let's say from Russia, and all he sees is quokkas waiting to be slaughtered and harvested. It is just pure mercenary outlook - I came here to exploit your weakness you morons before it all burns down. While your country turns to shit for you wimps, I can still return to my homeland with my riches if necessary. I guess Somali fraudsters in Michigan or any other tribal society members have this outlook.

By the way it is not as if they can do anything about it even if they wanted, they often cannot even vote. It is what it is and they are just navigating the waters they were given access to. Plus their children are often thought that their host countries are shit, so why not embrace that?

They are quite irredentist, think they are heirs to a great civilisation state, if only it weren't for the pernicious English they'd split the world in two with China or something.

I also work with a lot of Indians and they're generally quite positive about the British empire. The ones I know are mostly Christians though with easily pronouncable names or nicknames.

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