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Notes -
>ask if the abstract property is kiki or bouba
>he laughs. "It's a good property, sir"
Just thinking out loud here, really. I've had various dealings with Indians.
First of all, I'll freely admit that every Indian doctor I've encountered has been at least competent even if the bedside manner often leaves something to be desired. They often seem more disrespectful to their patients (or at least me) than doctors of other races, which I imagine has to do with how social status is understood in their culture generally.
In the corporate environment it's a very different dynamic. The Indians I've worked with are often spectacularly incompetent and, worse, preternaturally skilled at covering this up by spoofing the impression of a sincere, genuine colleague. It's frankly very creepy. Like they've modeled us whites, know how to exploit our good nature, recognize that they're intrinsically worse, and have zero shame in faking us out while leading us into situations where we're completely screwed and they're incrementally better off. It makes my skin crawl. After enough of this one is sadly obliged to develop a thick wall of prejudice simply for barely-minimal self defense. Chinese are often the same way except somewhat more reluctant because, I think, they realize they're less-convincing. Perhaps I might say that Chinese are smarter about modeling the future and not being too brazen in their duplicity? Whereas Indians often seem totally oblivious to the possibility that we might catch on to them, which adds a measure of insult to the injury. But, you know, they promote each other, so somehow this never seems to catch up to them.
There's some deep ancestral memory, some terror and hatred, of things which mimic benign features of the environment while actually intending to have us for dinner. Indians often push that button for me harder than I can believe.
When dealing with Indian business proprietors, based on the way they look at me and treat me, I'm often unable to shake the impression that they don't even recognize me as basically human. I'm a resource and they'd step over me as I die in a gutter as soon as they'd rent me a (cattle-car tier) hotel room or sell me a bottle of water. Again, it's creepy. But less so than corpo-Indians, since at least these ones have dropped the pretense. It's a bit strange that this should bother me. I'm engaging in a simple economic transaction; why should there be an expectation of mutual respect and friendliness? But again the sensation is that they know I'm dumb enough to assume good faith and have zero compunction about punishing that as hard as they can. Defect-bots. Namaste, indeed!
It can be almost cartoonish. They can be so unsubtle about it, and yet so simultaneously inept, that they remind me of the stock character of 'adorably incompetent pint-sized would-be villain'. Except it's not so adorable when you remember how few safeguards are actually in place. Not so cute when you walk through an area with dozens of dark eyes in dark faces tracking your every movement, calculating. When the pretender who's been holding back your whole team is suddenly your boss, and when did all the management start looking just like him? One of them is a curiosity; an opportunity to cultivate patience and compassion, with a side of smug self-satisfaction to boot. Many of them is a threat.
One oddity I've noted is that Indian men seem much worse about all this than Indian women. The Indian women I've met do generally seem to be nicer people and don't set off my "you are being eaten" alarm to anywhere near the same degree. I don't know whether the difference is fundamental or some kind of observation bias thing. I've also never actually worked with an Indian woman. Someday I'll probably find out what's going on here.
So all that plus the general impression of filthiness (caste-dependent, I'm sure) and I'm not surprised that there is some backlash. Frankly I think they're overdue for much, much more. Given time, even quokkas must evolve an aversion to predators.
EDIT: You know, I'd like to take a moment and clarify that while I've known plenty of lovely Indian men, they have universally been extremely high-caste. Obviously 'Indian' is an even worse category than 'Italian' for sorting people. But, that's the category we're using until people wake back up to the reality of race.
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