A very thoughtful article. Thank you UH.
It’s a theme which can be played out in several contexts. For instance there is a logic to an “arranged” marriage whatever uber- romantic fiction would make you believe- a tacit compromise right from the beginning instead of heartbreak and disillusion once the rose- tinted ” love” cementing a passionate attraction fades.
Marriage also entails for much of South Asia a buy-in from familial support, making inter- faith and inter- community unions more of a challenge in polarised times. It’s always more difficult for both partners to adjust their families together – ” you can’t choose your relatives”as the adage goes.
Sometimes parents can see with the maturity and hindsight of years that their children are about to make wrong marital choices, thinking it’s ” love” when it’s just animistic sexual desire. This again makes a strong case for “arranged” marriages as movies and novels donot always delve into ” what after” the happy lovers unite!
Jane Austen still is very popular by the way in this part of the world for the reasons the writer brings out.
India, with. 70 years of freedom, might not be at the same level economically as countries that were never colonised and started off far ahead of India in 1947, which is why people don’t move there.
That being said, arranged marriage and Indian culture is the reason why Indians migrants are top of the pile in terms of income and educational achievement, have zero crime rates….and why there is no “Indian history month”.
Singapore is admirable in many ways, but it is a tiny city state, not the world’s largest country by population – with vast ethnic religious, caste and tribal differences.
Singapore is one of the most densely populated places in the world with a complex ethnic and religious differences. It is the epitome of diverse, and has no natural resources other than its’ people.
The reasons for one state or another succeeding or failing after the end of colonisation are complex – but blaming a countries’ failings 70 years after the British leave, on the British is foolish and dishonest. This is Samir Ikers’ claim – Its a cheap and predictable shot, an attempt to deflect responsibility.
If being colonised was a vital ingredient in the recipe for future failings, Singapore, would not be Singapore. It would not exist as it does.
India is a remarkable county but its many failings are of its own making. Singapore is a remarkable country, and its many successes are of its own making. British rule can take little credit for either other than once giving both countries a basis of effective bureaucracy and law.
Right-Wing Hippie
2 months ago
Opposites attract, but birds of a feather flock together.
I once saw a painfully accurate “Christmas card from a lawyer – with comments” online. It was very good.
Paul T
2 months ago
Love…?
Jeremy Bray
2 months ago
Culture is important. I married a woman of a different social background but the same ethnicity and everyday is a reminder of our different tastes and outlooks on life.
Lord Chesterfield gave advice to his son regarding marrying for love rather than money. He said if you marry for love you may have many happy moments but many uneasy ones whereas if you marry for money you will have few uneasy moments but few happy one’s.
While I have had a happy marriage the differences have certainly resulted in more conflicts of opinion than a more conventional pairing.
Interestingly one family of Pakistani Muslim origin we know had two of their sons marry non-Pakistani non-Muslim brides. In each case the brides came from catholic families one Irish the other Italian. Perhaps the bonds of religion even if it was a different religion and the close family ties of Irish and Italian families was enough to make the matches feel grounded in a sufficiently common cultural context.
Jeff Dudgeon
2 months ago
The children are hardly mentioned and were probably not thought about when younger.
In a mixed marriage, what language will they speak, what will be their religion, their nationality, their colour?
What schools would they attend?
What if they assimilate and differ from both the parents? Would that be appreciated?
Eamonn Toland
2 months ago
Not sure what Mr Rashid means by “primitive” societies. Certainly in nomadic hunter gatherer societies women have a great deal of autonomy, and occasionally practice serial monogamy.
While Vikings and other groups did seize women in raids, for the most part the “slave” status he refers to is a feature of settled, sedentary farming societies which often come into conflict over resources.
Rather than being seized in raids, women became assets that could be traded to build alliances and reduce tensions. While it lends itself to patriarchy and restrictions on women’s rights, “primitive” tribes with high rates of exogamy have a lower documented rate of warfare. Kin altruism helps to keep the peace.
A wonderfully written piece.
A slight aftertaste is left, however, by the frank realisation that those of us who have never been attached to the ‘everywhere’ model of life – the blank slate, the citizen of the world unencumbered by the ‘obsolete’ baggage of birth, nation, language, custom and religion – have to endure the social and material effects of a governing class still working out why such things are, in practice, benign.
The foibles of the subject are an inconvenience only to himself but the foibles of the managerial cadres must be endured by the rest of us, to adapt an adage of Gibbon.
William Shaw
2 months ago
“ I should not have been surprised. In multicultural Britain, most marriages are still between members of the same ethnicity.”
On the contrary, if you watch TV every married and cohabiting couple is multiracial. We never see a same race couple in TV ads.
Which however tends to be one of those desiderata that we expect others to do, not ourselves if we are really honest.
Alex Lekas
2 months ago
In multicultural Britain, most marriages are still between members of the same ethnicity.
I hate to break it to the makers of commercials and others who would rearrange society, but that’s the reality pretty much everywhere. The interracial couples that grace ads are not reflective of reality, which is what makes them such an obvious punchline.
I believe the interracial phenom that is so beloved of TV ad companies aims to cover (at least) two racial demographic targets in one 30-second ad. Economy! What puzzles me is the oversized prevalence of red hair among whites in TV-land (at least here in NAmerica). This is not in the least objectionable, but seems inexplicable in terms of advertising power. Do gingers spend that much more than the rest of us?
There are many, many interracial couples in U.S. TV commercials (and ads). Who is most under presented are those squat, dark skinned Native-Americans of Latin America. I’ve never seen even ONE in a commercial.
There are actually a lot of black – white marriages. With the South Asian community it is a different matter, religion and social norms being a big barrier to most white people joining such partnerships.
Steffan Jones
2 months ago
I appreciate the article and the author for their frankness and insights but out of all the depressing things I’ve seen, heard or read in the last few months everywhere I follow, this has been the most depressing.
The alternative to “Asian culture” in the West is marked by relatively high levels of fatherlessness, divorce and single family homes, low education levels, higher drug abuse and crime levels.
You know what I mean.
The highly successful Western society that led the world in terms of Science, arts, architecture etc for several centuries, was based (until the last couple of generations) on the same principles as Indian and Chinese cultures – strong family, education, everything etc. nothing unique about it.
Dougie Undersub
2 months ago
A lovely, thoughtful piece, though I must point out that it isn’t the majority white population that’s been pushing identitarian politics.
peter lucey
2 months ago
“My relationships exemplified the liberal ideals of multiculturalism and mobility. There were romances in various corners of Europe.”
An interesting piece. None of my business, of course, but did the author’s wife have similar multicultural adventures? (Rather dangerous for a Muslima, I understand.)
If she didn’t, we have an textbook example of the sexual double-standard!
Kasandra H
2 months ago
As the writer said, it’s who you feel at home with. To analyse and think so much based on one author’s personal experience is quite something. Is this even somehing to pontificate about? Hahaha. X
Sean G
2 months ago
If “the occasional nuisance of cooking two differently spiced meals” is a deterrent to choosing a certain life partner, hopefully wee offspring are given more leeway if, say, it’s discovered they don’t share their parents’ affinity for hot bonnet peppers. Meh. As the product of multiple interethnic generations, and as someone who married someone of yet another ethnicity and is raising children in a bilingual household—and we’re doing just fine, thank you—I find this quite hard to fathom. But to each his own.
Peter F. Lee
2 months ago
The name ‘unherd Reader’ is applied to those subscribers that have not completed their name in theUnherd Account Profile. ie their name in the profile section is blank.
Frederick Dixon
2 months ago
Surprised to learn that ethnic intermarriage is the ideal of both the Left and the Right, because it’s certainly not the ideal of my kind of Right. My kind of Right prizes identity, tradition and belonging – we’re “somewhere” people and many of us regard ethnic intermarriage with (to put it mildly) suspicion.
So it’s a pleasure to read a piece which goes wholly against the post-modern assumption that we are all doomed (at least here in the West, different ideas prevail elsewhere) to merge into a raceless, cultureless nowhere fusion.
Alex Carnegie
2 months ago
Perceptive article. But behaviour evolves. A hundred years ago “mixed” marriages were probably about as infrequent as today but the boundaries concerned were different. Standard WASP or Anglican parents would object to their children’s proposed marriages to Catholics, Jews or southern Europeans. Now these give rise to little comment. In another hundred years’ time, I suspect cultural assimilation and the melting pot will have shifted the boundaries yet again. The author might have been uncomfortable marrying someone with a different taste in spices or without a shared second language but his grandchildren may feel less circumscribed. On the other hand, the challenges imposed by economic or class differences will remain, I suspect, much as today.
James Athill
2 months ago
m
Dr. G Marzanna
2 months ago
Everywhere I’ve seen significant numbers of interracial couples are large cities. Outside of those it is rare.
But it’s religion, not race that determines the tendency. Few Muslim women marry out. Being accepted into another religion isn’t easy. Some make things easier – Jewish women don’t require their partners to convert as the children will be Jews ( unless they choose not to). I am pretty sure I could never marry an evangelical Protestant; though I’m not particularly religious I’d prefer a fellow catholic, an orthodox or a CofE.
jane baker
2 months ago
Yes. It was the great 20th century myth that the relationship between two adults that had legal,financial,child rearing and property owning aspects did not need to be recognized by a silly bit of paper and was purely and solely based on romantic love and was.nobody elses business. Sadly,people have always been prurient and curious and judgmental and the relationship you choose takes it’s place in the SOCIETY in which we live and move and have our being,and that life,or those two lives will only prosper of they have the recognized sanction and protection of everyone else ie society.
Well written!
A very thoughtful article. Thank you UH.
It’s a theme which can be played out in several contexts. For instance there is a logic to an “arranged” marriage whatever uber- romantic fiction would make you believe- a tacit compromise right from the beginning instead of heartbreak and disillusion once the rose- tinted ” love” cementing a passionate attraction fades.
Marriage also entails for much of South Asia a buy-in from familial support, making inter- faith and inter- community unions more of a challenge in polarised times. It’s always more difficult for both partners to adjust their families together – ” you can’t choose your relatives”as the adage goes.
Sometimes parents can see with the maturity and hindsight of years that their children are about to make wrong marital choices, thinking it’s ” love” when it’s just animistic sexual desire. This again makes a strong case for “arranged” marriages as movies and novels donot always delve into ” what after” the happy lovers unite!
Jane Austen still is very popular by the way in this part of the world for the reasons the writer brings out.
Arranged marriages are part of why India is the world’s superpower and everyone wants to move there. Oh wait…
India, with. 70 years of freedom, might not be at the same level economically as countries that were never colonised and started off far ahead of India in 1947, which is why people don’t move there.
That being said, arranged marriage and Indian culture is the reason why Indians migrants are top of the pile in terms of income and educational achievement, have zero crime rates….and why there is no “Indian history month”.
I take it you’ve not been to Singapore…
Singapore is admirable in many ways, but it is a tiny city state, not the world’s largest country by population – with vast ethnic religious, caste and tribal differences.
Singapore is one of the most densely populated places in the world with a complex ethnic and religious differences. It is the epitome of diverse, and has no natural resources other than its’ people.
The reasons for one state or another succeeding or failing after the end of colonisation are complex – but blaming a countries’ failings 70 years after the British leave, on the British is foolish and dishonest. This is Samir Ikers’ claim – Its a cheap and predictable shot, an attempt to deflect responsibility.
If being colonised was a vital ingredient in the recipe for future failings, Singapore, would not be Singapore. It would not exist as it does.
India is a remarkable county but its many failings are of its own making. Singapore is a remarkable country, and its many successes are of its own making. British rule can take little credit for either other than once giving both countries a basis of effective bureaucracy and law.
Opposites attract, but birds of a feather flock together.
A bird in th’ hand is worth two in the erm…
A bird (X) in the hand is worth (X + 1)^n
Where n = the number of bushes.
Very good!
I was struggling to do something similar but you have ‘left me standing’. Bravo!
I once saw a painfully accurate “Christmas card from a lawyer – with comments” online. It was very good.
Love…?
Culture is important. I married a woman of a different social background but the same ethnicity and everyday is a reminder of our different tastes and outlooks on life.
Lord Chesterfield gave advice to his son regarding marrying for love rather than money. He said if you marry for love you may have many happy moments but many uneasy ones whereas if you marry for money you will have few uneasy moments but few happy one’s.
While I have had a happy marriage the differences have certainly resulted in more conflicts of opinion than a more conventional pairing.
Interestingly one family of Pakistani Muslim origin we know had two of their sons marry non-Pakistani non-Muslim brides. In each case the brides came from catholic families one Irish the other Italian. Perhaps the bonds of religion even if it was a different religion and the close family ties of Irish and Italian families was enough to make the matches feel grounded in a sufficiently common cultural context.
The children are hardly mentioned and were probably not thought about when younger.
In a mixed marriage, what language will they speak, what will be their religion, their nationality, their colour?
What schools would they attend?
What if they assimilate and differ from both the parents? Would that be appreciated?
Not sure what Mr Rashid means by “primitive” societies. Certainly in nomadic hunter gatherer societies women have a great deal of autonomy, and occasionally practice serial monogamy.
While Vikings and other groups did seize women in raids, for the most part the “slave” status he refers to is a feature of settled, sedentary farming societies which often come into conflict over resources.
Rather than being seized in raids, women became assets that could be traded to build alliances and reduce tensions. While it lends itself to patriarchy and restrictions on women’s rights, “primitive” tribes with high rates of exogamy have a lower documented rate of warfare. Kin altruism helps to keep the peace.
Thank you.
A wonderfully written piece.
A slight aftertaste is left, however, by the frank realisation that those of us who have never been attached to the ‘everywhere’ model of life – the blank slate, the citizen of the world unencumbered by the ‘obsolete’ baggage of birth, nation, language, custom and religion – have to endure the social and material effects of a governing class still working out why such things are, in practice, benign.
The foibles of the subject are an inconvenience only to himself but the foibles of the managerial cadres must be endured by the rest of us, to adapt an adage of Gibbon.
“ I should not have been surprised. In multicultural Britain, most marriages are still between members of the same ethnicity.”
On the contrary, if you watch TV every married and cohabiting couple is multiracial. We never see a same race couple in TV ads.
Not true.
Social engineering.
This is a very depressing article IMO. People should be looking to expand their horizons, not hunker down in a comfort zone of liked-minded people.
Which however tends to be one of those desiderata that we expect others to do, not ourselves if we are really honest.
In multicultural Britain, most marriages are still between members of the same ethnicity.
I hate to break it to the makers of commercials and others who would rearrange society, but that’s the reality pretty much everywhere. The interracial couples that grace ads are not reflective of reality, which is what makes them such an obvious punchline.
I believe the interracial phenom that is so beloved of TV ad companies aims to cover (at least) two racial demographic targets in one 30-second ad. Economy! What puzzles me is the oversized prevalence of red hair among whites in TV-land (at least here in NAmerica). This is not in the least objectionable, but seems inexplicable in terms of advertising power. Do gingers spend that much more than the rest of us?
It must be different in the UK versus the US. In the US ads show couples of the same race the whole time. Asians and Chinese are just not represented
There are many, many interracial couples in U.S. TV commercials (and ads). Who is most under presented are those squat, dark skinned Native-Americans of Latin America. I’ve never seen even ONE in a commercial.
There are actually a lot of black – white marriages. With the South Asian community it is a different matter, religion and social norms being a big barrier to most white people joining such partnerships.
I appreciate the article and the author for their frankness and insights but out of all the depressing things I’ve seen, heard or read in the last few months everywhere I follow, this has been the most depressing.
Why?
Yes, really, why?
The alternative to “Asian culture” in the West is marked by relatively high levels of fatherlessness, divorce and single family homes, low education levels, higher drug abuse and crime levels.
What’s not to like?
All children have a father. Many choose to absent themselves from the child’s life……. Some women choose a father from a catalogue but most don’t….
You know what I mean.
The highly successful Western society that led the world in terms of Science, arts, architecture etc for several centuries, was based (until the last couple of generations) on the same principles as Indian and Chinese cultures – strong family, education, everything etc. nothing unique about it.
A lovely, thoughtful piece, though I must point out that it isn’t the majority white population that’s been pushing identitarian politics.
“My relationships exemplified the liberal ideals of multiculturalism and mobility. There were romances in various corners of Europe.”
An interesting piece. None of my business, of course, but did the author’s wife have similar multicultural adventures? (Rather dangerous for a Muslima, I understand.)
If she didn’t, we have an textbook example of the sexual double-standard!
As the writer said, it’s who you feel at home with. To analyse and think so much based on one author’s personal experience is quite something. Is this even somehing to pontificate about? Hahaha. X
If “the occasional nuisance of cooking two differently spiced meals” is a deterrent to choosing a certain life partner, hopefully wee offspring are given more leeway if, say, it’s discovered they don’t share their parents’ affinity for hot bonnet peppers. Meh. As the product of multiple interethnic generations, and as someone who married someone of yet another ethnicity and is raising children in a bilingual household—and we’re doing just fine, thank you—I find this quite hard to fathom. But to each his own.
The name ‘unherd Reader’ is applied to those subscribers that have not completed their name in theUnherd Account Profile. ie their name in the profile section is blank.
Surprised to learn that ethnic intermarriage is the ideal of both the Left and the Right, because it’s certainly not the ideal of my kind of Right. My kind of Right prizes identity, tradition and belonging – we’re “somewhere” people and many of us regard ethnic intermarriage with (to put it mildly) suspicion.
So it’s a pleasure to read a piece which goes wholly against the post-modern assumption that we are all doomed (at least here in the West, different ideas prevail elsewhere) to merge into a raceless, cultureless nowhere fusion.
Perceptive article. But behaviour evolves. A hundred years ago “mixed” marriages were probably about as infrequent as today but the boundaries concerned were different. Standard WASP or Anglican parents would object to their children’s proposed marriages to Catholics, Jews or southern Europeans. Now these give rise to little comment. In another hundred years’ time, I suspect cultural assimilation and the melting pot will have shifted the boundaries yet again. The author might have been uncomfortable marrying someone with a different taste in spices or without a shared second language but his grandchildren may feel less circumscribed. On the other hand, the challenges imposed by economic or class differences will remain, I suspect, much as today.
m
Everywhere I’ve seen significant numbers of interracial couples are large cities. Outside of those it is rare.
But it’s religion, not race that determines the tendency. Few Muslim women marry out. Being accepted into another religion isn’t easy. Some make things easier – Jewish women don’t require their partners to convert as the children will be Jews ( unless they choose not to). I am pretty sure I could never marry an evangelical Protestant; though I’m not particularly religious I’d prefer a fellow catholic, an orthodox or a CofE.
Yes. It was the great 20th century myth that the relationship between two adults that had legal,financial,child rearing and property owning aspects did not need to be recognized by a silly bit of paper and was purely and solely based on romantic love and was.nobody elses business. Sadly,people have always been prurient and curious and judgmental and the relationship you choose takes it’s place in the SOCIETY in which we live and move and have our being,and that life,or those two lives will only prosper of they have the recognized sanction and protection of everyone else ie society.