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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   19325 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.

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.

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.

It's the conceit of specific cultures that you need race to have ethnic belonging and heritage.

If you've from such a culture, fair enough. Depends which kind of Italian you are I guess.

But take it from someone whose ancestors have been weird worldwide intermarriages for 5 generations but still remain hopelessly and unmistakably French, it's not universal.

The cultural distance of your ancestors is not nearly as great as you might be envisioning. Different prayer traditions and meal sacrements are not as large a cleave as the demand for female genital mutiliation or expectation that women must be slaves to the mans household. Exit from oppression is legit, but the oppression must be clearly identified. Refusal to admit that some cultures, coincidentally largely brown ones, are shit cultures is what drives most of this taxonomical arbitrage ailing the west now.

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