TNR has a new piece titled The Assimilation Artist, which has the subheading "Jhumpa Lahiri's books are more about the coastal elite experience than they are about the Indian-American one." Well, that's because the Indian American experience is in large part the coastal elite experience. Here are the numbers from the Pew U.S. Religious Landscape Survey for levels of education of Hindus and the general population:
| Less than High School | High School Grad | Some College | College Graduate | Post-graduate | N | |
| Total Population | 14 | 36 | 23 | 16 | 11 | 35,298 |
| Hindu | 4 | 12 | 10 | 26 | 48 | 253 |
Obviously not all Indian Americans are Hindu, but they are a good proxy for the general trends. Below are the outmarriage rates for Indian Americans who were born or predominantly raised in the United States:
| US born/raised X US born/raised | |||
|
Asian Indians |
|||
| Men | |||
| Asian Indian | 56.7 | ||
| Other Asian | 2.8 | ||
| White | 31.3 | ||
| Black | 0.8 | ||
| Hispanic/Latino | 5.8 | ||
| Multiracial & All Others | 2.7 | ||
| Women | |||
| Asian Indian | 54.2 | ||
| Other Asian | 2.0 | ||
| White | 36.3 | ||
| Black | 2.8 | ||
| Hispanic/Latino | 2.7 | ||
| Multiracial & All Others | 1.9 | ||
From the TNR piece:
But this example also highlights the big difference between Neil Klugman's world and Gogol's: Neil's universe was wholly insular--all Jewish. Roth painstakingly depicts a divide between Jews who'd "made it" financially and those who hadn't, but the characters themselves never interact socially with anyone who isn't Jewish. Lahiri's Bengalis, in contrast, interact constantly with other types of Americans.
Sure, the immigrant parents in Lahiri's stories might prefer it if their children were confined to Indian social networks, but that proves to be an impossible hope in this new America, the one in which Neil Klugman's children would have grown up alongside Gogol Ganguli and George Herbert Van Wasp III. In this world, dress matters, home decor matters, and a Brooklyn vs. a Manhattan address says something about who you are--artsy or professional--but judging someone because of the language their parents speak at home? Totally gauche.
The author makes a good point that America has changed a great deal. But numbers need to be kept in perspective. The number of Americans of Jewish background peaked sometime around 1950 at about 5% of the population. And obviously around areas like the greater New York City metropolitan region the concentration would have been much greater. Indian Americans today are around ~ 0.30% of the population. Like Jewish Americans, Indian Americans are ethnically diverse, but the fragmentation is greater. The distinction between the early German Jews from Bavaria and the later waves of Eastern European Jews was certainly of note, but this pales in comparison to the contrasts between Punjabi or Tamil culture (a good Jewish analogy might be the differences between Sephardic, Ashkenazi and Mizrachi Jews, but in the United States almost all Jews are Ashkenazi). Additionally, the demographic balance after 1890 favored the Eastern European Jews so that German Jews were only a small relatively assimilated elite. In contrast, Indian Americans are more variegated; about 1/2 are Gujarati (generally banias), 1/4 Punjabi, with the balance rounded out by hodge-podge of groups.
All these factors contribution to the far greater emulsification of Indian Americans into the "mainstream" than Jews during the first half of the 20th century. If one takes 1910 as the high tide of Jewish immigration; 50 years later in 1960 the outmarriage rate of American Jews was still less than 10%. Today it is on the order of 30-50% depending on which surveys you trust. Native born Indian Americans have already reached the low end of the Jewish range of exogamy, less than 50 years after the first large waves of Indians arrived on these shores.
I think all these points suggest that we need to be very careful in drawing analogies between the present and the past. Not only has America changed, but the structural parameters which define the Indian American immigrant stream is very different from that of late 19th and early 20th century Jews.
Note: My friend Manish Vij points out that the lives of the children of the immigrants of the 1965-1985 period might not be predictive of the generation who are the offspring of the 1985-2005 waves. I think this is a fair point; there are many more brown people today in the United States than when I was a kid. Jumping around Facebook I find it strange to young see Indian Americans whose first-degree friends are almost invariably other Indian Ameicans; but I think this points to the fact that the Indian American experience is going to be hard to generalize because of the diversity of the immigrant streams and the relative freedom that American society now offers newcomers.
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You might think in terms of an international middle class which is educated and English speaking but not racially or nationally defined. Chinese, Koreans, South Indians, Pakistanis, Latin Americans, Middle Easterners, East Europeans, and Europeans (as well as Americans) can all be part of this class, as long as they have a viable combination of English fluency, technical chops, and capital. Their primary identification will be with their class.
Japan and Mainland China seem to be somewhat out of the loop, and maybe part of Europe too. And Americans don't always make the cut either -- that's what the stress of globalization is all about.
I'm a Gujarati Guy living in the NYC area and these statistics totally surprise me. All my cousins (distant and clsoe) married Hindu Indians. I also notice that most of my friends are Indians and whenever my Indian friends introduce me to their other friends, these also turn out to be Indians.
Is there any data for outmarriage rates of the Indian subgroups? Speaking from personal experience I suspect Punjabis and Gujaratis tend to marry within the Indian much more than Bengalis or South Indians.
I'm a Gujarati Guy living in the NYC area and these statistics totally surprise me. All my cousins (distant and clsoe) married Hindu Indians. I also notice that most of my friends are Indians and whenever my Indian friends introduce me to their other friends, these also turn out to be Indians.
right. manish and vinod were totally surprised by these numbers too. it does have to do with your personal experience. living in a big city the vast majority of brownz might meet & marry other brownz. but those of us who are the minority who live away from major urban areas overwhelmingly hook up & marry non-brownz. some algebra:
(25% rural X 90% outmarriage rate ) + (75% urban X 10% outmarriage rate) = 30% outmarriage rate.
I suspect Punjabis and Gujaratis tend to marry within the Indian much more than Bengalis or South Indians.
yes. i think this is true. part of it is probably numbers, some of it is the conservatism of these groups compared to the immigrants from west bengal, and part of it is the relatively more upscale & professional nature of the first immigrants from west bengal or tamil nadu.
re: gujaratis and punjabis, i do want to add the issue might be that the sample space within the optimal scale of granularity is bigger. e.g., finding a kayastha of the right SES from west bengal to pair up with is harder than finding a patel of the right SES. there ware orders of magnitude more of the latter than the former in the USA.
re: gujaratis and punjabis, i do want to add the issue might be that the sample space within the optimal scale of granularity is bigger. e.g., finding a kayastha of the right SES from west bengal to pair up with is harder than finding a patel of the right SES. there ware orders of magnitude more of the latter than the former in the USA.
I am not a Patel and my caste is rather small, though big enough to have a facebook group. My parents don't have any expectations of me to marry within caste. As long as the person I marry is a Hindu desi, they are fine. Most of my Gujarati and Punjabi friends's parents have similar expectations.
In fact Guju/Puju matches are very common on the marriage circuit.
My perception is that Gujaratis and Punjabis are more likely to limit themselves to the overall Indian population whereas other subgroups are less likely to. The sample space is the Indian-Hindu population and is equal for all Indian-Hindus. I suspect Gujaratis and Punjabis tend to have some sort of cultural upbrining that causes them to make these choices.
PS: I am leaving Sikhs out of the analysis, but I bet they hew even more strongly than Hindus to caste, religion and ethnicity when choosing a partner.
living in a big city the vast majority of brownz might meet & marry other brownz. but those of us who are the minority who live away from major urban areas overwhelmingly hook up & marry non-brownz. some algebra:
I found that most of the non-Gujarati and non-Punjabi Indians live in metropolitan areas. The Indians that are sprinkled across the small towns and suburbs of Middle America tend to overwhelmingly be Gujarati or Punjabi (usually in healthcare or business). South Indians and Bengalis might , on average, have more access to Indian mates than Gujaratis or Punjabis.
I suspect Gujaratis and Punjabis tend to have some sort of cultural upbrining that causes them to make these choices.
well, most american brownz i know who are gujarati or punjabi are more comfortable with the "hindi-centric" desi identity than those outside of these ethnic groups aside from those from hindi speaking backgrounds. there are a lot of assumed words in american-brown discourse which i was not familiar with cuz i don't know the idioms (e.g., "gora").
I found that most of the non-Gujarati and non-Punjabi Indians live in metropolitan areas. The Indians that are sprinkled across the small towns and suburbs of Middle America tend to overwhelmingly be Gujarati or Punjabi (usually in healthcare or business). South Indians and Bengalis might , on average, have more access to Indian mates than Gujaratis or Punjabis.
i'd like to see some numbers on this. i generally disagree.
btw, if you are really curious about these ethnic group breakdowns, use the wedding registries and search by surname. i've done this sort of analysis before. my impression was that those with bengali surnames (sen, sarkar, etc.) did have a greater outmarriage rate than those with a gujarati one (patel, desai), but i amalgamated the data cuz i wasn't interested in within group structure.
Any intuition on what the tendency to outmarry is among brown people who were raised in rural / flyover country areas but who moved to coastal metropolises after undergrad / grad school?
BTW, if we want to cure the afflictions of aging, let's just clone Jhumpa Lahiri: the Wikpidia entry shows a pic of her when she was 36 -- and shawty don't look a day over 23! Look at how large and clear her eyes are, how tight her skin is.
Her husband looks like he's in his mid-50s, making an objective diff of about 15 years, plus an added subjective 10 years for how young she looks. Rewinding, she must have met her husband no later than her early 30s -- he must've thought she was a college student 25 years his junior. Haha, yeah dog!
Any intuition on what the tendency to outmarry is among brown people who were raised in rural / flyover country areas but who moved to coastal metropolises after undergrad / grad school?
i think the tendency is going to be far stronger than those who were raised in urban areas with a large cohort of "desi" friends. i think the key is the demo in your social network.
re: jhumpa, it's photoshop. google images her and you'll see that v(x) is might be around the e(x).
Co-incidentally, Canadian 2006 census figures on the non-white (visible minority) population were released the same day you made this post. As always in Canada, Desis had the lowest intermarriage rate of any non-white group (see page 16) at just over 10%.
Of course, the structure of Canadian Desis differs quite a bit from American desi, in ethnic origin, religion, and geographic concentration.
re: jhumpa, it's photoshop. google images her and you'll see that v(x) is might be around the e(x).
Maybe a little, but YouTube her (no Photoshopping). First result is from 2004, when she was 37 -- she could easily pass for 10 years younger.
Of course, the structure of Canadian Desis differs quite a bit from American desi, in ethnic origin, religion, and geographic concentration.
right. those punjabi youth are too busy car-jacking to meet a nice gora girl ;-)
Sorry, late to the conversation. This is so interesting to me. I'm a 40-year-old ABD around the same age as Lahiri and I would think that the outmarriage rate would be closer to 60-70% since that's what it was for my cohorts. I'm wondering if those of us older ABDs are similar to younger ABDs in flyover land? If that's the case, then the outmarriage number may go down over the next few years as more younger coastal ABDs marry each other, thereby increasing the number of married ABDs and diluting the influence of us outmarrying fogeys?