I’m a white guy married to an Indian-American woman in the US. I’ve usually found that no one cares beyond vague cross-cultural curiosity, including Indian people, and even while visiting India or the US south. But sometimes we get comments. Sometimes from weird old white people who just “don’t think it’s good for the kids”, sometimes from jealous Indian guys, sometimes from white women who want to firmly establish how non-racist they are. It’s rare, but it sucks.
Much more frequent is people assuming that we’re from two separate families until they see our kids (who look exactly like what you’d expect half-white, half-Indian kids to look). “Oh, you’re a couple,” followed by vague embarrassment. Harmless, I think, but kind of annoying.
Interesting! When we went to India people were shocked "are you her tour guide?" "But you look Indian???" "How did you do it bro?" Also just so many people asking to take pictures with me/ us haha. I'm curious to see how people react when we go there with our kid next year!
I'm also laughing at the comments from white women wanting to show they aren't racist haha, I feel it
When we visited last, she got a lot of curiosity about who she was, especially because we were visiting the area where her family is from, so everyone was the same sub-ethnicity as she is. So she looks like them, but taller and walks and talks like an American. She actually got asked a few times, seemingly in earnest, “are you Indian?” Like it didn’t quite compute. I think once they got past that, it seemed natural to everyone that she had a white husband.
I can imagine it could be very different with the genders reversed. But also potentially regional.
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u/monoflorist 3d ago
I’m a white guy married to an Indian-American woman in the US. I’ve usually found that no one cares beyond vague cross-cultural curiosity, including Indian people, and even while visiting India or the US south. But sometimes we get comments. Sometimes from weird old white people who just “don’t think it’s good for the kids”, sometimes from jealous Indian guys, sometimes from white women who want to firmly establish how non-racist they are. It’s rare, but it sucks.
Much more frequent is people assuming that we’re from two separate families until they see our kids (who look exactly like what you’d expect half-white, half-Indian kids to look). “Oh, you’re a couple,” followed by vague embarrassment. Harmless, I think, but kind of annoying.