ok because yet again i see mainlanders speaking for us all and saying they're not offended, here's a thread of my experiences, growing up as diaspora Indian in the USA, a majority white country.

i grew up going to school with a LOT of desis. initially, in pre-k, that is bc all our parents were about getting ahead, that type of bs, right? montessori shit for life and all.

yeah, well 5yo me got whiplash when i was given parathas w/ aachar for lunch in 1st grade one day, and was mocked for the smelly brown 'food'. don't even get me started on the kids (not just white, mind you, eastern asians were plugging up their noses like no other)

so i ended up throwing my lunch away. didn't quite feel right eating 'gross smelly shit' in public even if i did at home. after that, my mom began giving me pasta for lunch. all the way up till college, i despised my culture's food bc of it's 'ugliness' and 'rancid' smell

that's just food. now lets move on to clothing - yeah! was mocked for that too!

my mom LOVED putting me in suits for my birthday (during navratri) and for diwali. can't imagine the countless jeers i received for just the tiny bindi i wore to school.

literally refused to let my mom buy me anything for 'casual' wear, no kurtis - only owned like maybe 2 lehengas for weddings and that's it.

by the time i got to undergrad, i felt so insanely whitewashed and ashamed by how much of an impact my racist peers had and how THEY caused me to turn my back on my culture.

mind you, i still watched bollywood films with my family; they enrolled me in Saturday 'balvihar' so i would be a shush Hindu. doesn't change the fact that i absolutely HATED my culture and religion

alright now moving onto religion since that also seems to be a big thing. do i consider myself religious? sure! agnostic, maybe, but that might be due to the religious trauma of being forced to memorize and recite the gita to an audience like some sort of cult

i know people who would wear hijabs during high school, because they WANTED TO, but after a year of bullying, took it off. i know i stopped praying and going to temple with my parents because that just wasn't cool and why couldn't i be Christian like my peers just to be liked?

why was i forced to learn hindustani music when western classical was RIGHT THERE and made me 'dumber' when reading sheet music and 'less musically talented' in the eyes of my very non-desi teachers

so then imagine the betrayal i felt seeing whites at coachella in their '~ethnic wear~' wearing kurtis and bindis and things I WAS MOCKED FOR my entire life! and now kpop girls too? like damn what a slap in the face

oh and violence? don't even start. :) my sikh friends took off their turbans and cut their hair in middle school, just in case they could get hurt by racist whites, post 9/11. my Muslim friends never told people they were Muslim, for the same fear.

the amount of times my mom and i have been held back and questioned by airport security bc we 'look like terrorists' is insurmountable. the amount of innocent people who're killed by fanatic and nationalistic whites for being the slightest bit brown or Muslim is fucking insane

like.... do you resident indians even think? tweeting about how you're being oppressed for living in India like damn right you are! white people have oppressed us enough as we grew up and now you want to as well? vah saali chutiya

how dare you say that chungha, blackpink, gidle, ohmygirl, clc, lee hyori, or ANY of the groups - aren't being offensive for wearing our ethnic garb / dancing to OUR religious music?

how dare you say it's not the equivalent of boy groups wearing dreads or girl groups using indigenous wear, when people have been literally mocked and harmed over it?

saw some idiot say that it's bgroup stans coming @ ggroups lemme just tell you that time and TIME again i have been disappointed by both boy AND girl groups. ateez? disgusting :) what IU wore?? :) no thank YOU!

also saw someone else say that them wearing a sari or the jewelry are fine bc they're 'performative' ok then why you get mad about coachella girls wearing the same damn thing? the double standard to kiss your faves' ass am i right lmao.

is it cultural appreciation when they DON'T know about the culture outside of 'curry and turbans and head shaking'? is it REALLY ok when they're stylists do it for the hell of it, without the research behind the generational trauma associated with it?

literally the British colonized us enough that people still associate western suits and classical music with a higher class like why???

why wear a maang tika or mangal sutra then dance sexually to the gayatri mantra or do fake mudras to tunak tun in a mocking way? why associate the whole culture and the religions to savagery?? make it make sense lmfao

oh and i saw someone else state that it's not as bad if eastern asians take south asian culture bc it's not as bad as taking black or indigenous culture.

think about those who had acid or stones thrown at them for looking like a terrorist with their beards or hijab or turbans.