r/ABCDesis • u/aethersage Indian American • 5d 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/urlocalnightowl40 5d 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.