andamu

Here are some vast over-generalizations to get everyone up in arms.

Everyone knows that one of the worst mistakes is for an FOB (Fresh Off Boat for the non-Desi (Desi = (fellow) country man, used to indicate someone from the Indian subcontinent) readership) to marry an ABCD (American Born Confused Desi).

I would speculate that the reason lies tied up in the fact that both have certain expectations and fail to make allowances for the differences. I think, in fact, that an FOB-gori/gora (white girl/white guy, or in this case just generic American) marriage have a far greater chance to succeed (once the parents get over the shock, of course).
When two people of vastly different cultures get married they expect that there are going to be differences, and they prepare for the fact that they will have to work on communication and accommodation.
When two people of (ostensibly) the same culture get married, there is no preparation for such allowances to be made: the FOB expects that the ABCD will "get" everything culturally expected of them, and the ABCD who always thought that they were raised in quite a traditional Bengali/Tamil/Gujurati etc. home is shocked to discover that to a large extent they have no clue.

Having thoroughly ruffled everyone's feathers, on to topic two.

I wonder how many people (desi or non) understand how vastly different the Indian experience is in the US from that of the UK and of Canada. Yes, Canada is much more like the UK in that respect than the US.

Most of the desis that Americans between thirty and ten years ago came into contact with were either doctors or professors. Within the past ten years (give or take) add software professionals to the list. While there are some locals who might not like the foreign-ness or the color, the fact remains that most of their exposure to Indians have been with highly educated people in well-respected jobs.

In the UK and Canada, many (NOT all, of course) of the desi population had arrived as immigrants, many with little or no English and either not well-educated, or educated but without the language skills to make the education work for them in those countries. They came prepared to work their fingers to the bone to ensure a better and safer future for their children, who are now in many cases in similar positions as the typical US desi. But within the context of their situation, the parents have worked in mostly menial positions.

To draw the parallel within the States, in Canada and the UK many of the jobs that are performed here by either Latinos or African Americans (depending on the part of the country you're in) are there performed by desis. And people treat them with the same dismissive, patronizing disdain or fear or hatred as those other two population groups are treated in the US.

And just to get everyone completely discombobulated, I wonder whether the difference in desi political affiliations (both on the local front and in India) can be traced back to the fact that desis in the UK and Canada have experienced discrimination far beyond that which an average desi in the US has.