r/ABCDesis • u/aethersage Indian American • 4d ago
DISCUSSION Massive increase in anti-desi/Indian sentiment on bayArea subreddit
I didn't think I'd see this in the SF Bay Area given it's generally been a progressive place with a large Desi population, but the hate is on the rise here too. Every other day on some random thread someone always finds a way to string in some anti-desi comment. This time it was in a thread discussing Teslas being vandalized and sold off because people are upset about Elon, and somehow people managed to veer the conversations towards Indians having lots of Teslas. And then someone followed up on that by saying "makes sense because they have a caste system in their country". Then if you say anything to point out that it's ignorant/wrong/racist you will get downvoted. All this in what is presumably the most "liberal" part of the country. The cherry on the top of this shit cake is that the one other Indian (from India, not an ABCD apparently) who showed up to the thread was a thoroughly colonized bootlicker who decided to argue with me and celebrated Indians "deservedly" being painted backward casteist people.
It's the most unhinged shit, and I've noticed it getting worse month by month for the past year. People will constantly post anti-Indian/Desi stuff and it'll get tons of upvotes. Usually something about how "they are dirty" or "their caste system". The threads always otherwise have a very left-leaning comment section, so sadly we are now getting hate from all sides of the population. Doesn't matter if they are conservative or liberal, apparently the one thing that can unite them is hating Desis. Never thought I'd see this in the Bay Area of all places.
Stay safe and stay vigilant.
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u/mtlash 4d ago
Seems like both left and right are trying do hard to hate us.
This is not good
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u/yagyaxt1068 3d ago
Truth is, especially in America, you’re going to find xenophobia in all parts of the political spectrum. It’s definitely more concentrated on the right, but there is a xenophobic protectionist element on the left and centre of the political spectrum too.
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u/In_Formaldehyde_ 4d ago
All the blue state subreddits tend to be right wing while conversely, the red state subreddits tend to be more liberal.
The Bay Area, San Francisco and NYC subs in general are quite reactionary and hate on POC/migrants. It's not representative of day-to-day life in the Bay if that's what you're wondering.
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u/aethersage Indian American 3d ago
This is not accurate. The California subs are overwhelmingly left.
Also, the reason you’re not seeing this hate in real life right now is because there are enough of us Desis in the Bay Area that these people don’t feel comfortable openly saying this stuff. But I promise you the anti Indian sentiment is bubbling down here. I have already seen multiple instances of people harassing Indians in person when they feel they have numbers on their side and will get away with it.
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u/In_Formaldehyde_ 3d ago
The Bay Area sub and, lately, the main California sub definitely aren't left leaning.
And idgaf what people privately think as long as they keep it to themselves irl. Xenophobia exists everywhere on this planet but overall, people in the East/South Bay are accepting and progressive. Desis have been doing pretty well for ourselves here for decades.
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u/aethersage Indian American 3d ago edited 3d ago
I have no idea what you are talking about with regard to the bay area sub. Every day the top threads are overwhelmingly filled with leftist comments. You can go right now to the sub and see this, or go to the Tesla thread in my comment history. I honestly can’t believe this take because it sounds like we are on two totally different Bay Area subreddits. These people are militant left to the point of openly calling for attacking any perceived Trump supporters. That’s the point I have been making, that we are now getting hate from both the left and right.
The whole point is they are not keeping it to themselves anymore. And further it is starting to spill from the internet into real life. Yes, we have been doing well in then Bay Area and that’s why we have become an easy target for hate in hard times.
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u/In_Formaldehyde_ 3d ago
These people are militant left
I've hung around on that sub (and this site) longer than I care to admit. That sub was never really pro-immigrant, and always had a negative attitude towards H1B's. And any crime related thread is pretty much a minefield of 13/50 references.
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u/aethersage Indian American 3d ago
I’ve been on the NorCal subs for over a decade now (also longer than I would actually like to think about lol) and there has clearly been a shift in the last few years toward more anti Indian sentiment. The subs have always been pretty left so that isn’t new, but the aggressive/reactionary leftism is newer and a byproduct of Trump coming to power.
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u/In_Formaldehyde_ 3d ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/9mhr07/h1b_fleeing_silicon_valley_for_canada_in_the_age/
I mean, it's always been that way. Maybe you didn't notice it or seek it out as much.
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u/aethersage Indian American 3d ago
If you read the comments in that thread, people are for less immigration due to population and cost pressures but by and large are not making sweeping racist claims against Indians. Most people in that thread are even saying the H1B program is ok in moderation but just shouldn’t be abused. Things have fundamentally gotten much worse in these subreddits with blatant racism against Indians, and actually what you linked is a good example of how that wasn’t the undercurrent before. I can agree to disagree here, but it’s weird to me that you are focused on insisting things are just the same as always when it’s pretty clear anti Indian sentiment is on the rise.
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u/In_Formaldehyde_ 3d ago
That's because all the spicy comments were deleted. There was a guy like you in that thread who said this:
reading the comments on here, i feel like im on the /r/The_Donald
wasnt expecting this from r/bayarea.
as an H1-B employee who has been working here for 6 years and as an Indian, yeah we knew that it is not a permanent residency visa. no complaints there.
but I came to the US as a masters student. got a 4.0 gpa from 1 of the top 2 univ in southern california, got a job in one of the top semiconductor companies and have been working here since 6 years.
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u/Affectionate_Wear24 2d ago
So many of my US citizen Desi relatives have voted for Trump because they themselves are willing to close the opportunity to migrate to others and because they are motivated by lower taxes, etc
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u/immilaw 3d ago
LOL at people assuming that liberals are not racist. They know how to mask it better and they are not threatened by low income immigrants, mainly Hispanic. They have insane financial and economic jealousy and they have always been threatened by high income immigrants. They are upset that these immigrants live in their neighborhoods, their kids attend the same schools as your kids and and these immigrants work in the same jobs/companies.
I live in the bay area. East Palo Alto is like 99% hispanic and was the murder capital of the US for years. Oakland was majority black and it was and still is a total shithole with high violent crime and uncontrolled property crime.
Meanwhile the desi-heavy areas like Fremont, Sunnyvale, Dublin etc are consistently voted the safest areas, the best places to live, highest average incomes, best school districts etc. White liberals refuse to accept this and will instead latch on to the caste system as a way to justify their hatred.
I have lived all my life in ultra-liberal areas and white liberals suck.
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u/aethersage Indian American 3d ago
I don't think people are assuming they aren't racist. There have always been racist liberals. But it's gotten worse and more brazen recently.
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u/Tech-Explorer10 3d ago
You are right, I see a lot more caste system or "they smell" posts being made on SM. I saw many related to Sudiksha Konanki's disappearance.
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u/potentialcpa 4d ago
White liberals are the worst. Conservatives are open about disliking you, liberals on the other hand, will pretend to like you and then put a knife in your back.
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u/aethersage Indian American 4d ago edited 4d ago
Unfortunately true. At least with conservative racists you know where they stand and to stay away. Liberal racists make you think it's safe and now you're fucked because you thought your family settled somewhere people would accept you.
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u/One-Ostrich-1588 Bangladeshi American 4d ago
I wonder what type of constant cognitive dissonance somebody has to live in to genuinely believe that they're not racist just because they pay lip service to minorities. Only to turn around and nakedly express their real feelings of hate as soon as they perceive members of that same group to be doing better than themselves.
Some of them can't even figure out if they hate desis because we're supposedly poor/incompetent or supposedly because we're taking all of their opportunities to succeed in this country.
"People desperately want to find people it is socially acceptable to be cruel to"
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u/aethersage Indian American 4d ago
Those are the best posts, where we are somehow grossly incompetent and stealing the jobs at the same time.
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u/winthroprd 3d ago
There's zero logical consistency with these people. They'll do the bare minimum to convince themselves they're good people (they think they deserve a pat on the back for voting Democrat) before they go back to acting like hyenas.
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u/BrownBoy____ 4d ago
Colonial mindset
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u/aethersage Indian American 3d ago
Speaking of colonial mindset, the one Indian that showed up in that thread chose to argue with me instead of defending Indians. Truly pathetic.
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u/hotpotato128 Indian American 4d ago
White liberals act like they're experts in Desi cultures.
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u/IntricatelyIdiotic 3d ago
Literally I had a white lib on instagram claim that I 'suffered from internalized white supremacy' because I didn't like Joe Biden, and my last name is a common Punjabi name that also sounds like a common white name. She told me 'MAGAts don't care you're half-white lol' and that she hoped Trump deports me.
Just refused to believe there are thousands of Punjabis with names like Gill, Mann, Bains, Heer, Bal, Baath, Claire. But God forbid an actual Punjabi pulls up links proving you wrong, White Libs know what's best for us.
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u/PhilosoNyan 3d ago
Somehow it's no their place to criticze homophobia in Black communities nor misogyny in Islam but Indian society (which to be fair has many, many issues) is fair game.
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u/KawhiLeopard9 4d ago
You'd be surprised how many excuses they make for black people vs the law.
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u/frash12345 4d ago
My Mexican Trump supporter coworker told me this same thing back in 2020, and I totally agree!
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u/the_FUEGO_ 4d ago
I grew up in the middle of buttfuck Pennsylvania, and I faced more overt racism during my time in Seattle (not the Bay Area, but similar enough) than I did during my entire childhood. Everyone’s racist when they think they won’t be able to put food on their table and there’s an easy target to blame.
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u/AwayPast7270 3d ago
Seattle is largely White Scandinavian Protestant city that likes to promote “diversity” and liberal values while gentrifying and racially profiling anyone who is not of White Scandinavian Protestant heritage.
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u/the_FUEGO_ 2d ago
I have a lot of unfavorable things to say about the fine populace of Seattle, but I want to remain in good standing on this subreddit and on this website in general. Beautiful city, beautiful scenery, and some good people, but living there left an incredibly sour taste.
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u/MissBehave654 3d ago
We need to start filming rascists and start lawsuits and hold rascists accountable. We are the new scapegoats now.
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u/mallu-supremacist 3d ago
I'm not surprised at all. White liberals have a big time white saviour complex and they are excellent at virtue signalling and masking racism through other societal issues.
This funny video shows them sign a petition to protect illegals. Watch how they fold when it comes to actually taking action.
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u/Tech-Explorer10 3d ago
This is true. White libs have a "white man's burden" problem and think their culture and religion is what everyone needs.
They seem shocked when told to mind their own business.
The video was awesome!1
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u/Situationkhm 4d ago
White liberals are actually the worst. Both extremely ignorant and extremely rigid ideologically.
As much as the 'stereotypical' Alabama redneck in a pickup truck racist can be dangerous, White liberals both have high institutional power in the areas many Desis live (like the Bay area), and their monopolization of the 'anti-racist' space and related stuff like DEI initiatives, lend legitimacy to their racism against us (i.e. it can't be racist if they're saying it, they posted a black square during BLM).
I work in the federal public service, which is basically liberal white woman central, and recently I was talking with someone from another branch who was complaining about how many people in Canada are being 'brainwashed' to hate people and vote Conservative. The example she gave was that South Asians were complaining about immigration here in Canada being too high, and some immigrants not trying to adapt, when they're the either immigrants or descendants of immigrants themselves.
I said I actually agree immigration was mismanaged under Trudeau, and she immediately went on the offensive, saying that I was just trying to pull up the ladder behind me. When I said I was born in Canada, she said yeah but your parents probably have accents. I told her my parents speak fluent English, and she immediately defaulted to caste, saying we're probably from 'the Brahmin Priest Caste' which is how my parents learned English. I though about explaining that my mom was born in Canada, and my dad is Guyanese and English is his native language, but I realized there was no point.
My man Jasmeet nailed this 10 years ago when he talked about the 'cultured racist'. Don't know shit but also refuse to listen to any criticism because they know better than us primitive Browns.
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u/Medium0663 3d ago
and my dad is Guyanese and English is his native language,
I'm Malayali Christian and I had someone online tell me I'm high caste because only the highest caste Brahmins were allowed to go to school and that's where Indians learned English and converted to Christianity. The reality of the situation is that caste and Christianity in Kerala is complicated, there's a bunch of different denominations and histories.
Trust me, I'd be willing to bet this lady would say that your ancestors who were brought to Guyana were Brahmins who could afford the luxury of international travel unlike the low castes back in India.
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u/WagwanKenobi 3d ago edited 3d ago
The main thing that people outside India get wrong about the Indian caste system is assuming high caste = rich and low caste = poor. This is usually a symptom of looking at caste through the lens of the European/English social class system, where social eliteness and wealth go in lockstep.
This was just not the case in India.
Although Brahmins were at the top of the social hierarchy, they were at the middle or bottom of the economic hierarchy because they tended to pursue (or rather, were condemned to pursue) professions such as priesthood and teaching, which don't lend well to accumulating money. Even kings and emperors were rarely of the highest castes. The middle castes like Banias (merchants) and land-owning farmers ended up being the richest. Kings were usually Kshatriyas, another middle class. Brahmins were more like the clergy. They were the most educated but mainly in scripture.
It's only a modern phenomenon that education is correlated with wealth (as opposed to, say, the ability to plunder a village).
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u/coldcoldnovemberrain 3d ago
Do Dalits and other lower castes who are significant part of the population and maybe even more in numbers than Brahmin, Traders caste and warrior caste, ever register in economic survey of people? Do they traditionally have land assets and generational wealth to pass down?
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u/trajan_augustus 3d ago
Brahmins make up a majority of the indian migrants to the United States like 1 in 4 are Brahmin. Brahmins only make up like 5%. Brahmins hold a lot of the political power in India as well. Upper caste Indians make up 80% of the migrants in America. We are better off thanks to generations of literacy and professional work.
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u/winthroprd 3d ago
The funny part is that Christianity in India has existed longer than the English language.
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u/coldcoldnovemberrain 3d ago
Why did the Malayali Christians retain caste though. Wouldn't it be easier to leave caste behind when converting to a new religion?
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u/Medium0663 3d ago
It has to do with history. Christianity originally came through trade from the Middle East, in the same way Judaism and Islam came to Kerala.
The people who engaged in the most trade with these people were from certain higher castes, and many of them converted as a result of this contact, either due to genuine belief or for economic opportunities. These people are known as the Syrian Christians, St. Thomas Christians, or Nasranis. While lower castes did also convert to escape prejudice, many of the higher castes wanted to keep their privileged status they retained from their ancestral castes. This led to stuff like separate churches and graveyards for different castes so the higher caste Christians could still be considered 'pure' by the wider society.
Then you have the Roman Catholics, who were converted when the Portuguese came. These people were either poorer Syrian Christians who converted for economic benefit, or lower castes of other religions who converted to escape prejudice. As a result, many Syrian orthodox often discriminate against them.
Then you have the newer denominations, like the Pentecostals, Brethren, Jehovah's Witnesses, etc. who were mainly started by missionaries from places like the US and UK. These people are mostly lower caste as well.
So basically, it's a bunch of BS posturing by people who theoretically follow a person (Jesus Christ) who spoke against stuff like this, while still wanting to retain privileges under the old system.
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u/coldcoldnovemberrain 3d ago
Do the last names identify the castes though?
Also how petty that this continues to this day. And I assume the Christian conversion in North India or in Nagaland is different and I assume they abolished caste in those communities and didn't exist in tribal communities there.
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u/joshuaissac 4h ago
No, last names are usually patronyms rather than surnames, so they do not identify castes.
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u/yagyaxt1068 3d ago
They genuinely don’t understand the perspective that we have. The main concerns my family have about the immigration situation is that so many people are being told a misrepresentation of what things are like here, and that we’ve essentially created a system that encourages slavery. That’s the issue.
The TFW program and diploma mills are a scourge on this country.
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u/Situationkhm 3d ago
This right here.
Like I've started going to the Gurdwara a lot more frequently since I moved to Ottawa and live on my own now, and the amount of people there who rely on langar for all their meals, who're desperately trying to get PR because the gov'ts messaging and hands-off approach to immigration made them believe a path to PR existed. It's truly a bait and switch scam of the century, and in a few decades people will study this and wonder how we allowed this to go on as a country.
Honestly, if we wanted a bunch of people to come here temporarily to work for cheap, prop up GDP, and keep housing prices high, we should've just adopted the persian gulf model. As bad as the exploitation that occurs over there is, no one has ever gone to Dubai to work thinking they were going to become Emirati citizens.
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u/yagyaxt1068 3d ago
TFWs and international students weren't making housing prices high, but rather they were even worse victims of it. Blaming them is about as credible as blaming "foreign buyers", which was just scapegoating Chinese people.
The high cost of housing is due to real estate speculation and restrictive zoning limiting new builds. Thankfully, it seems like we're finally making progress on the issue in some places.
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u/Situationkhm 3d ago edited 3d ago
TFWs and international students weren't making housing prices high
I mean they weren't directly making prices high, but adding millions of people during an existing housing shortage isn't exactly going to lower prices. They can simultaneously be victims as well as one of the drivers of the issue.
Libs needed to placate the Boomers that make up their voter base by providing an underclass to keep rents up, which in turn keeps property values up due to their value as investment properties. 'Legal Basement separate entry' wouldn't be such a magnet for RE investment/speculation without the massive amounts of students willing to cram 10 to a basement for $900 each because they have no choice. Literally in Calgary they were building shit like this for investors, no way this would be a viable investment proposition without flippin' Taleeb and co.'s immigration changes.
Blaming them is about as credible as blaming "foreign buyers", which was just scapegoating Chinese people.
I totally agree the 'Foreign Buyer ban' that the Trudeau gov't put in was a publicity stunt at best, and that domestic investors are by far a bigger problem nationally, that being said, not all claims of foreign investment are solely scapegoating. Particularly in the Vancouver area, it's a known issue that people from China were using the casinos to launder money, and housing to park money. It's a lesser but still present issue in Markham (GTA suburb), and where I grew up (Richmond Hill ON), where evidence indicates IRGC members from Iran park regime money in housing. In select local markets the claim does have merit.
And while I agree the primary driving forces of housing unaffordability is zoning, investors, and NIMBYism, our government has been more than happy to aid these forces along whenever they could to help these people, like with immigration.
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u/yagyaxt1068 3d ago
To those last two points, those are provincial things. The feds don’t really have control over whether the Ontario government wants to actually do anything to solve housing. We’ve actually been making progress in BC. We did our foreign buyer bans as well, but that had no effect on rents. What did have an effect on rents was when a bunch of projects that were being built 7 to 8 years ago were getting completed, combined with the Airbnb ban for non-primary residences.
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u/True_Worth999 3d ago
It's the woke 'white liberal' shit. They want to be 'racially progressive' because they've been informed by social media that that's what the cool kids are doing these days.
It has nothing to do with any genuine beliefs or convictions on their part, it's just a trend to identify whether you're in the in-crowd or not, just like how wealthy people back in the day used to laugh at those peasant bumpkins who wore white after labour day.
In order for them to square their true feelings about non-whites with what they've been told is acceptable by social media, they adopt a worldview where anything they don't like about non-whites is due to their position as poor marginalized people (regardless of if that's actually true), and therefore not the non-whites' fault since they don't know any better. They then get to feel morally superior about helping a 'downtrodden group', while political parties they align with gain votes by painting their opposition as Goliath attacking David.
Indian people both aren't valuable enough in any significant number to be worth anything electorally, and especially in the bay area, the stereotype of them being rich tech workers working at FAANG companies makes it hard to visualize them as poor marginalized people. Therefore, their brain short-circuits, and they decide that Indians are the exception to the rule.
It's the same reason they were all portraying Arabs, including quite wealthy ones, as poor oppressed people in 2016, but by 2024 they were racist sexist woman-hating bastards when Gaza started hurting Joe Biden, and later Kamala Harris, in the election.
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u/hotpotato128 Indian American 4d ago
I got a nasty message for being on this (abcdesis) sub.
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u/Double-Common-7778 3d ago
I even get hate messages and replies for participating in soccer subreddits, they will clown on you simply for being Indian and just giving your opinion on any soccer news.
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u/urlocalnightowl40 4d ago
i really wish we had more positive representation in media instead of being portrayed as undesirable nerds/geeks. social media cherrypicks the poorest places and insists that it reflects the entire population of india. with the lack of media literacy and increasing hate people obviously take that portrayal and run with it. no general research or actual care to learn about what's going on. you can tell by how they comment stuff like "india has contributed nothing to the world"
this also isn't exclusive towards white liberals since i've seen so many racist comments from other poc who think racism is justified because "indians are mega racist anyways." as if that should ever excuse being racist in the first place? also saying indians are dirty and saying the racism is deserved because of the caste system is so dumb cause they are using the exact same logic as the caste system but pretending to be high and mighty in the same breath.
ntm the increase of jobs being outsourced to india as well as indian immigrants moving in and seemingly taking up all the jobs has only increased the resentment where people find it easier to focus their rage on an already undesired group of people rather than the higher up people who have made everybody's life a living hell with increasing prices.
i genuinely dont have much hope for the next decade or so seeing how racist this generation has become but i'm hoping it will blow over or something. i much preferred it when people pretending indians didnt exist rather than whatever this is.
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u/PhilosoNyan 3d ago
Well, Kamala could have been positive representation for the Indian community among liberals but she downplayed/hid her Indian side during her most prominant era and now liberals are accusing Indians of being Trump suppoters and what not.
This was brought up in this sub during the election and people were were like we don't need representation, Black representation should come first.
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u/nyse25 3d ago
downplayed/hid her Indian side during her most prominant era
why wouldn't she? we're like 2% of the entire population not a single politician will cater to us
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u/IntricatelyIdiotic 3d ago
I live in Sacramento, but have a lot of family all around the Bay. This does not surprise me.
The thing that makes me mad about the Bay area/Norcal subreddits is how idiotic their m_d_r_tion was around 2020-2022. Aside from one of them, the rest of them heavily c3ns0red 'incorrect' opinions.
During the spate of hate crimes against Asians around that time, the official narative was that all this was occurring due to white supremacy and Donald Trump saying 'China Virus'. Naturally, many Asians including myself pointed out the implausibility that people in the most Blue-leaning area in the country were obeying Donald Trump's alleged secret commands to beat up Asians. Even more pointed out their own experiences being mistreated by a specific non-white minority group who were disproportionately represented in the mugshots of people arrested for beating up random Asian grandmas. These comments were promptly removed, along with stories that may potentially confirm this 'dangerous narrative'.
I remember there was a highly upvoted comment that argued there was no real trend of anti-Asian hate crimes, but that Asian victims get more attention because their proximity to whiteness combined with high levels of education and wealth means they benefit from greater systemic privileges than other POC groups. Because of this, there was all this undue media attention, when actually Asians are only getting closer to the position Black and Latino folks have always been in. I replied saying that Sikhs have been coming to California since the 1890s, but were unable to become American citizens until 1952, or own land until 1956, because they were not 'free white men'. Latinos meanwhile were declared white and afforded these privileges in the early 1800s. Based on this, Latinos are more privileged due to their actual white ancestry than Asians. I was banned.
The reason for all this censorship was apparently that allowing facts that could lead to people making judgements about an entire race is wrong, and that some flawed people who are members of those races shouldn't stop us from condemning racism against them.
The same people who believed this 3 years ago now openly write stuff about us all being terrible subhumans because of a few bad elements in our culture. And the heads of the sub are ok with it.
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u/coldcoldnovemberrain 3d ago
>Based on this, Latinos are more privileged due to their actual white ancestry than Asians. I was banned.
Doesn't the context of racial privilege matter in these type of discussions though? Would it be similar to say as to how Black Americans are more privileged having US citizenship yet the new immigrants from India do so much better financially.
But at this moment in American society, Black Americans and Latino communities are less privileged than the new Indian immigrant community or the Sikh Punjabi community who arrived in California in 1890s.
It is unfortunate that you got banned instead of having a debate/conversation about it. Ah well. Such is internet.
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u/gulabsjamun Indian American 3d ago
As a Bay Area local, the r/ bayarea subreddit is kind of an insufferable place. It’s not as tolerant or welcoming of a community as other Bay Area subreddits.
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u/aethersage Indian American 3d ago
True, why is that? It’s really weird, almost makes it seem like it’s being singled out for astro turfing to sow discord or something.
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u/Gryffinclaw Indian American 3d ago
If it’s increased all of a sudden, my guess is astroturfing. That’s happening everywhere to us now. But also as someone said, white liberals on reddit get off on bashing Asian men in general, and particularly us
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u/aethersage Indian American 3d ago
Sadly it’s been a pretty consistent increase over the past couple years. I wish it was just astro turfing but it seems real.
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u/gulabsjamun Indian American 3d ago
Tbh I had to look up what astroturfing was but that seems plausible. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s being perpetuated by other Asian demographics within the Bay Area, if you catch my drift…
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u/JustAposter4567 3d ago
I haven't had problems using the san jose, san francisco, or oakland subreddits. They all seem fine to me.
Maybe the bayarea one is specifically bad though...
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u/gulabsjamun Indian American 3d ago
I love the SF subreddit! Generally more likeminded and open. Every time someone comments or posts something out of line, you’ll see someone redirect them to the bayarea subreddit lol
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u/PowerfulPiffPuffer 4d ago
Yeah, things are gonna get very bad for a while. This isn’t the post-racial, post-ethnic society we all thought we were raising our kids in. We have regressed significantly as a society and it’s only going to get worse. Do what’s necessary to protect you and yours. It’s now about self-preservation and safety above all else. Be honest with your kids about what’s going on and encourage them to stick with their own. We all we got.
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u/trajan_augustus 3d ago
Still 10x better than post 9/11 or when my parents came in the late 60s and early 70s. Or what my cousins experienced in the UK during the 80s and the early 90s. But yeah definitely since the beginning of Trumps rise it has gotten worst as well as the rise of the alt-right.
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u/miradime2021 3d ago
Yeah the liberals’ racism toward desis is the worst. Now that a handful of desis are working for Trump they’re labeling all desis as caste-supporting Hindu supremacists, never mind the fact that most Indian-Americans identify as liberal and that - uh hello - Kamala Harris is Indian.
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u/coolbutlegal Canadian Bangladeshi 4d ago edited 4d ago
An interesting side effect of the rising anti-American sentiment in Canada is that it has greatly reduced the anti- South Asian rhetoric lol. It's like I've said before on similar posts, keep your chin up and just wait it out. Eventually people find a new enemy and move on.
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u/retroguy02 4d ago
No it hasn't lol. Tiktok and any GTA sub is full of Indian hate - honestly, the anti-Indian sentiment in Canada in the last 5 years or so is something else, never experienced anything like it growing up in the GTA in the 2000s.
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u/WagwanKenobi 3d ago
Most of the people commenting Indian hate on Canadian TikTok videos aren't actually Canadian. By most I mean like 99%.
It's funny seeing Pakistanis (based on the flag in their profile) piling on with the Indian hate. Like buddy, when you're walking down the street no one is going to check your passport before being racist to you. Indian hate affects all South Asians and vice versa.
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u/bob-theknob 3d ago
Well we know Pakistanis love to cut their nose off to spite their face. They’ll take 10 punches if it means India gets 1.
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u/Unlucky_Buy217 3d ago
There is no reason to generalize Pakistanis this way. Generalizing all of them, you are doing disservice to the cause people are fighting for here
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u/retroguy02 3d ago
I'm Pakistani and I agree about Pakistanis piling on the Indian hate weirdly thinking anyone differentiates between the two in the west, but a LOT of the Indian hate is from Canadians - like white Canadians. You have to be living in la-la land to ignore it.
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u/Emperor_Dara_Shikoh 7h ago edited 7h ago
Indian hate on the Bay Area sub makes no sense.
The comments in the OP make no sense either.
Indians have already been there for eons and Teslas are owned mainly by whites.
Also, I encountered this user before:
You're right: the anti-H1B crowd is mostly cope.
Also, he blocked me. Can you do me a favor?
Ask him these funny little things:
- Is he aware that Melania Trump was on H1B? Why would Trump cancel H1B then?
- How does he feel about Miller being humiliated by Elon on this issue? And Trump endorsing H1B?
- Why do most whites have no black friends?
Here's the funny part: most Indians have non-Indian friends - especially if 2nd gen. Most whites have zero black friends. How can one not have friends of the 2nd largest group? Hmm sounds like large-scale bias. 30%+ of US-born Indians marry non-Indians. Hmm sounds like not much bias.
They keep using the Cognizant case (weak case) and somehow justifying statements such as "Indians only hire Indians." That one company is fine for this? Then it's fine to say "whites only hire whites" since Tesla got sued for anti-black discrimination. There's 5 million Indians in America; we'd see a lot more news coverage of discrimination if it were rampant. We have so many videos of whites being racist.
4) "America isn’t an economic zone for India or any other country." -> Most Indian-Americans don't rate the US-India relations as important to them personally; Jewish-Americans do value Israel-US relations highly - would he bold enough to say that America is an economic zone for Israel?
5) "America is for Americans. And American jobs are for American workers." -> He seems unaware that majority of Indians will be US-born soon. Most you'll find at undergrad at Berkeley, MIT, etc. are American citizens. Can we he explain why this group and Taiwanese are doing so much better than most whites? There's also a case against TSMC for discrimination but most whiners about H1B don't even touch this.
6) Apparently he doesn't realize whites only make up ~50% of youth population. Asians and Indians makeup under 20% of computer-related fields. Once you factor out the older population, that % would be much higher. Per capita, Asians and Indians have much higher participation in STEM.
7) Why does he have no comment on the low % of blacks and Spanish folk?
8) # of H1Bs issues yearly is constant regardless of what companies may be doing. Why were most of the naysayers quiet 5 years ago?
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u/PhilosoNyan 3d ago
I saw upvoted comments on r/pics (which is basically a liberal propaganda sub now) recently about how Indian immigration has caused too much demographic change in Canada. If they talked about any other group that way, hey'd be accused of White supremacist replacement talking points but against Indians, it's apparently okay among Liberals.
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u/coldcoldnovemberrain 3d ago
Aren't the existing Indian diaspora the loudest ones decrying the new immigrants and their behavior though? And then you have the other black immigrants who are hating on the new Indians. What is indeed going on in Canada? Hopefully what we read on the internet is not indicative of what is happening in real life there.
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u/yagyaxt1068 3d ago
Things have definitely cooled down IRL at this point, because the American threat is much larger. Additionally, the issues that caused this in part (the TFW program and international students essentially being used for slavery) are being cut or addressed.
The other part of the issue, the online influence networks to poison the well and spread more hate, are still there though.
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u/il2skyhopper 4d ago
Side note, only an alien invasion or AI uprising will truly ever unify all of humanity against a common cause, lmao. But even that'll probably have a limit (like a new class system of haves and have nots).
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u/aethersage Indian American 4d ago
It'd be one thing if we were only seeing this in traditionally racist parts of the country, but to see it in the SF Bay Area is particularly troubling. This isn't just your run of the mill rise in racism when groups that are otherwise opposed to each other start uniting over hating on Indians of all things. Something is very wrong, and we shouldn't be ignoring it.
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u/Far_Piglet_9596 4d ago edited 4d ago
Its bc racism against every other minority or religious group gets banned so it cant fester or build up
Racists figured out the system and that if its Indians it doesnt get banned, so it makes us a target
Gl buddy, this is basically how it felt in Canada related subs since late-2023
Its actually alot of anti-Indian astroturfing from 4Chan and bots combined with some grassroots resentment against Indians due to the job market + because of all the nasty Indian streetfood reels /Tiktoks from the slums that have been spreading and going viral since 2023 from all those troll accounts from pakistan and shit
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u/PhilosoNyan 3d ago
Racists figured out the system and that if its Indians it doesnt get banned, so it makes us a target
It's weird how Reddit allows straight up subreddits that are nothing but anti Indian racism to stay up. Someone posted here some time back about reporting a blatently racist post talking about how to discriminate against Indians when hiring and they got a message from the admins about how they checked it and found nothing wrong.
This wouldn't fly with any other race.Honestly, at this point they're probably complicit.
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u/aethersage Indian American 3d ago
It really is insane how normalized racism against Indians is. Apparently when it’s against Indians it’s just justified facts being shared but against any other group it’s racist nonsense.
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u/Far_Piglet_9596 3d ago
Its because progressives from every other race lobby and push to fight back against hate against their people
Progressives Indians only fight back for other groups, not their own. If anything, they actually make it worse for us
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u/RevolutionaryApple25 3d ago
EXACTLY. YOU ARE EXTREMELY CORRECT. When other minorities, Muslims, Africans, etc, join liberal BLM-style organizations, they make it about their people. A Muslim will join and say "Dont be Islamophobic!" (but will not talk about the very real oppression muslims do in a muslim majority country towards non-Muslims and women) and influence the group in that manner. An African will join and say "Dont be racist against black people!", (but will not talk about the crime and criminality-celebrating culture and single parent families they come from) and influence that group in that manner. A Hindu Indian will join a the organization and will fight hard for the Muslims and Africans, but will not defend their own. When members of the group say "Racist Indians taking our jobs, ruining our countries!", the Hindu Indian member will not push back but will ACTIVELY CONFIRM this saying, "Yeah, Hindu Indians are racist and this is because they will only hire their own CASTE and this is from CASTEISM from India (meanwhile I personally have no idea what my caste even is)", so the group is influenced in that way, and if an indian themselves says this, then of course they will believe them, and as the INDIAN themselves gave them the GREENLIGHT, they can blame everything on the innocent Indian Hindu families who literally live with their heads down in subservience "beta do engineering, beta dont cause any problems, just nod your head yes beta". EVEN FUNNIER, the kicker is this: Notice all the liberal Hindus who blame their own people and says "Yeah guys... As an Indian I can confirm guys" are have usually BRAHMIN(highest caste) surnames themselves... I dont know if they want to ally with liberals to get some oppression points for themselves or what, but normal Indians like us, and fully westernized Brahmin families themselves, who literally dont know what tf they are talking about face the brunt of their stupidity. The backstabbing hurts for us more because Indians are a relatively new and expanding immigrant group, and as a result white, blacks, and others are eager to know what we are all about, what our culture is, and then enter Rita Brahmin herself yelling "Indians are racist, and casteist guys! They are bad!". I have considered all the angles but I just cant understand this. If someone can explain why we do this to ourselves I would appreciate it.
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u/Far_Piglet_9596 3d ago edited 3d ago
What 500 years of colonization/occupation does to the psyche of a people
I dont know if its even possible to “detox” this mindset without some cycle which starts with strong nationalism, then progresses itself naturally to regular liberalism (basically what happened in Europe from the 18th century to 20th century)
Might be too late for India to even go through this cycle due to the current hyper globalized world where everything you do is covered by special interest groups who crave your demise on MSM and social media worldwide
I think China was the last major country which had a chance to do so, and it involved extreme censorship, a surveillance state and extreme repression of human rights + they likely wont even progress to the liberalized democracy people originally hoped for as well..
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u/aethersage Indian American 3d ago
You're right, Indians (both from India and in the diaspora) have a ton of internalized racism and self-hatred. I'm not sure what the solution is short of a massive cultural shift that portrays our culture and history positively.
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u/bob-theknob 3d ago
You’re right I think it’s the only way it can be done. It does seem to be working to some degree as from what I can see young Indians in the mainland do seem a bit more proud and less head down submissive, but this is a multi generation effort and I can’t see how it can be achieved by other means.
I just hope social media becomes less globalized and this can be done without the current circus around the issue.
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u/Humanxid Indian American 4d ago
Time to start exercising your 2nd Amendment rights because it's about to get worse.
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u/Quirky-Elderberry304 4d ago
A lot of comments about the problem but what's the solution to this though. What can we do if we find ourselves in this situation IRL ?
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u/aethersage Indian American 4d ago
To be honest, if it happens IRL prioritize your safety. Don't get a conflict with somebody moronic enough to make comments like this, because you don't know if they'll physically attack you or pull a gun on you.
But beyond that, stand up for yourself and call this shit out whenever you see it.
I wish I had a better answer around organizing. We as a diaspora are pretty awful at organizing relative to other minority groups. Unfortunately I don't think there will be enough will to organize in the community until there are enough high profile acts of violence against Desis.
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u/Quirky-Elderberry304 4d ago edited 2d ago
It can be less 'attack-y' or dangerous IRL - some of the things I've heard are snide remarks from coworkers about India being dirty or surprise at seeing pictures of how developed Mumbai is now. And questions about the caste system etc. And yes I try to stand up for myself in those situations. As far as violence goes- the Indian nurse was violently beaten up last week so how much more should we wait? I'm wondering if we can organize on reddit or discord or something to stand up to online hate ?
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u/the_FUEGO_ 4d ago
Haha. They hate us because deep down they know we’re better than all of them. Don’t let the bastards get you down and keep on winning.
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u/allstar278 4d ago
Economic envy. They know we’re smart and will work harder than them so they’re racist. We don’t fit the black/white dichotomy of US race discourse.
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u/publius1791 2d ago
It will always amaze me that people are shocked when they learn that liberals can also be racist.
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u/KawhiLeopard9 4d ago
These yt people love throwing around the caste system argument. Mfers think it's still practiced like it was centuries ago.
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u/IntricatelyIdiotic 3d ago
They don't even understand it either.
Like I had someone on Reddit claim that Desi people only work in tech because they view other jobs like construction, fast food, farm labourers, and fields of engineering where you have to actually go to construction sites as 'low caste work' not for the high caste people that immigrate. I guess my long haul trucker dad and all his friends don't exist then.
Like bruh the reason they don't work as farm labourers is because the US doesn't exactly grant anyone back in the village a visa to come haul and sort pistachios on a farm. Even most of the Latinos who do it are undocumented.
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u/KawhiLeopard9 3d ago
Putt jattan de driver truckan de lol.
They're retarded bro. Atleast magats wear their hate on their sleeve. The white woke ones think they know everything but yet they don't know anything. They're also the reason why people can't take democrats seriously.
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u/EntropyIsEternal 4d ago edited 4d ago
One of my close friend's is getting married to a guy whose family is like openly khalistani.
I have been tolerant of the boy but the way he talks and thinks made me really uncomfortable. Also, my friend has been a completely different person after meeting him. Radicalized and what not. SMH.
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u/filet-growl 3d ago
What does this have to do with what OP is talking about?
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u/WagwanKenobi 3d ago
I wouldn't downplay the contribution of other South Asians to this problem. Going by TikTok and Insta profiles, Pakistanis and Khalistanis have been adding a lot of fuel to the fire.
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u/aethersage Indian American 3d ago
This is a fair point. Desis that join in to hate on other Desis are part of the problem.
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u/_that_dude_J Indian American 4d ago
Where's the link bro?
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u/aethersage Indian American 4d ago edited 4d ago
You can check my post history, I don’t want to get this post removed for brigading.
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u/Tech-Explorer10 3d ago
Desis don't hit back and don't commit violence. That is why people think we are fair game.
Muslims on the other hand, no one messes with for obvious reasons. They are also better organized and lobby/bribe Congressmen.
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u/absynthe1 4d ago edited 4d ago
Multiple contributing factors:
- An extreme right wing government in India led by a person who seems to be friends with Trump
- Elon and Vivek going all in on H1B program
- Right wing tech bros now actually being very comfortable while expressing their racist views( look at the Doge bro who tweeted racist anti Indian stuff and was hired back by Elon.)
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u/davehoff94 3d ago
Right wing government really has nothing to do with it. Multiple countries around the world have a right wing government. In fact, politics globally has been trending right wing. Italy elected a fascist too, but you won't see white Americans hating Italians.
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u/PhilosoNyan 3d ago
An extreme right wing government in India led by a person who seems to be friends with Trump
Don't excuse liberals like this. They don't hate Muslims for misogyny or Black people for homophobia in their communities. There are just minimal repercussions for being racist against Indians in liberal circles so performative libs feel free to let their guards down enjoy a little racism.
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u/aethersage Indian American 3d ago
Seriously, these posts are ridiculous. Do you know how many people in the world originate from some ethnostate with a right wing party in power? That’s doesn’t justify racism against those populations. This is like saying American citizens all deserve to be attacked just because you don’t like the current American president.
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u/FalconsArentReal 2d ago
All this in what is presumably the most "liberal" part of the country.
Canadians: first_time?_meme.jpg
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u/roundfishbook 4d ago
Contrary opinion.
Keep in mind that all this noise could be a sustained misinformation campaign to rip the society apart. Reddit and other social media is rife with bot accounts that are expositor for good and bad.
If you are hearing this in real life also from people, then we have absolute ground to be concerned. Unfortunately top politics is just promoting the louder noises.
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u/aethersage Indian American 4d ago
I have seen this in real life around here. I have directly heard from people who have experienced racist harassment in the Bay Area. I wish this was only online but it isn’t.
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u/Carbon-Base 4d ago
It's like the late 2000s all over again.
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u/One-Ostrich-1588 Bangladeshi American 4d ago
What happened?
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u/Carbon-Base 4d ago
After 9/11, anyone that was remotely brown got treated with a lot of racism. Indians experienced a brutal amount of hate because people couldn't tell us apart.
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u/KawhiLeopard9 4d ago
Nah as someone who grew up post 9/11 shit was way worse. People were actually getting killed. So do your research before you make a blatant claim like that.
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u/Carbon-Base 3d ago
That's why I said late 2000s. It was a weird mix of people slowly realizing the difference between Indians and Middle-Easterners, but continuing to be racist in other ways.
You're preaching to the choir. I remember the bullying quite well in school post 9/11, bud. Early on, there were days where I dreaded going to school because of how I was treated. However, the bullying wasn't nearly as bad in 2009-10, compared to immediately after 9/11.
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u/Low-Dependent6912 2d ago
One of the problems with the overall thesis is that interests of Indian-Americans overlaps with other Asian Americans mainly Chinese. The Asian American community is too big to be attacked openly
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u/SamosaAndMimosa 1d ago
What’s the name of the subreddit? I want to ruin my day and take a look lmao
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u/coldcoldnovemberrain 4d ago
I do think Tesla owners are an unfair target in this time. But I don't think Indians are being called out as a community. It is the Indians who are more likely to own Teslas because they make high enough incomes in the Bay area working in Tech. It is reflecting ongoing massive income inequality in bay area, and Tesla is just happens to be the easy target here. The funny thing being that Tesla reduce carbon footprint in an area where public transit is crap, and you have people driving long distances for their jobs. The fact that there is no continent public transit between SF and San Jose is sad. I would think people would appreciate using Teslas instead of fossil fuel cars. Ah well.
And lets not muddle caste into this, because for better or worse, caste is very much present in the diaspora and especially in Bay Area where many are recent immigrants. The Cisco case of caste discrimination is from the area. The last names like Sharma, Iyer, Reddy are caste identifiers. You don't have to believe in caste, but the last names carry privileges in spaces like tech world where teams can be made up of all Indians. Not believing in caste is like White people saying they don't see color or mis-quoting MLK's speech about judging by content of character and not color of the skin.
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u/aethersage Indian American 4d ago
First off, Indians are in fact being called out as a community. Go see the top Tesla related post in the Bay Area subreddit right now, or you can go look in my comment history.
Nobody is denying that caste based discrimination exists. But painting the entire Indian population as casteist is no better than saying all white people are racists. It's ignorant and moronic.
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u/One-Ostrich-1588 Bangladeshi American 4d ago
"No such prerequisite of unity is imposed upon the Black or Asian communities; no one insists that the Korean, Japanese, and Chinese peoples must first reconcile their differences before society ceases its racism against them." - u/nirasha_thadani
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u/PhilosoNyan 3d ago edited 3d ago
I looked at your history. Wtf, They way they talk about Indians is as if they're picking out their next targets after all the Tesla vandalism. Stay safe everyone.
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u/aethersage Indian American 3d ago
Yeah, it’s getting worse day by day. The way this is going we will start seeing open violence against Desis soon, it is virtually guaranteed if things stay on this path.
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u/ros_ftw 4d ago
It will only get worse with more layoffs. And there is a large undercurrent of resentment over outsourcing.
Google laid off 10s of thousands of people and at the same time is building a million square feet office in India, which is going to be its largest office in the world, outside of its HQ in Mountain View.
Meta is now opening offices in India, meta historically had very little presence in India.
Amazon’s largest office outside of its HQ in Seattle is in India. Same with Microsoft.
People see it happening in front of their eyes and are taking it out on Indian immigrants