It's not because you're white...

Early on in our relationship, during the “exclusive” talk, my girlfriend explained to me that I would not be able to meet her parents until we were on the verge of being engaged. There were two reasons for this: (1) her parents’ generation almost exclusively had arranged marriages and simply did not understand the concept of dating and (2) I’m not Indian.

This was an extremely difficult concept for me to accept; after all, as a white male I had never faced discrimination before. It was shocking to me that her parents, highly educated, contributing members of society, could really be against their daughter dating someone outside of their race.

It took time to understand that their priority wasn’t to discriminate against me, but rather to preserve their culture. One thing I’ve learned is that Indian people are often very proud of their roots: their language, their religion, food, holidays, movies, etc. and I feel like those things can be lost living in the U.S.

I certainly don’t agree with being against an interracial relationship, but her parents have valid concerns. It wouldn’t be incredibly far fetched for a person to enter their daughter’s life and not take an interest in anything Indian or to say I’m Christian, I won’t participate in anything Hindu. Like any parent, I think they want to take a piece of who they are and pass that down to the next generation of their family and I can’t fault them for that.