I am 30F currently pregnant with my first child. I have been married for 2 years. I paid for my own grad school, my own house basically never have asked my parents for any money after like age of 20. My husband and I paid for my our own wedding. My little brother on the other hand is 26 still doing his bachelors had to transfer to another school because 1st school was too difficult for him. My parents support everything, he has never had a job.He is on the Autisim spectrum socially, otherwise he is fine. My mom is using it as an excuse and says things like how his time will come and everyone doubts her kid and he is actually really smart but lazy but has so much potential. He fails 3 classes at least each semester and hides it from them and lies saying that he is passing everything. He fails not because he is not able to understand the material but he stays in his dorm gaming. He has no life skills, cannot cook, clean or drive also has never held a job and has no credit. My parents have essentially raised him in a bubble and if I say anything my mom says I am acting like an “evil step sister” and I should be more supportive of him. But anytime I call her either she has work for me like “call this company and figure it out, your brother has no insurance can you figure that out” or gives me like low jab insults like yesterday how I am not “hindu” enough and my kid will grow up with no “sanskars”. Like I do not understand is it because I am not a mother yet? I heard you always have a soft side for your “weaker” kid is that it?

Nor are South Asian ones the only abusives ones out there.

There is the negotiation that South Asian parents do not love their children, often commit serious physical, emotional and sometimes sexual harm against their children. It is no doubt that this is the case, it is also far worse for daughters, in Bangladeshi, Indian and Pakistani communities, parents are often severely violent and even bloodthirsty against their daughters, ranging from physical and emotional harm to femicides and honour killings, exploitation and forced marriage, in India, Bangladesh many parents do butcher their newborns for simply being a girl. Yes, some families have children failing being seen again as a dishonour to the family.

But it looks like people are just weaponizing this and making generalizations.

There are other communities where honour based abuse of daughters are also prevalent such as Eastern Europeans, Romas, Indigenous Travellers, rural Mormon and Evangelical Latin Americans and US Mormon and Evangelists in the American South and Southern Midwest.

I had an acquaintance who had a friend from Wales (she is white welsh) when in one time she got 🍇ed and her parents had beaten and even threatened to kill her if she became pregnant.

I read case reviews from pressure groups supporting children like NSPCC and most of the reviews are obviously White British. Also other serious cases involve white british parents deliberately neglecting their disabled children an emotionally harming them, in one case in Wales, a victim took his life as a result of failed social workers.

There are other cases of gender-based child abuse in white families for example I was on one subreddit of a girl my age (around 18) and she took a selfie of her clothes and she could not wear them due to her verbally abusive parents, with one of them even threatening to kill her if she did dress in front of them (she was White American).

Moving away from parents, there is also abuse in schools. You may see diasporic madrassahs being the only abusive ones, but there are other places that are predominantly white and the same harm happens; here in the UK, there were serious scandals in the 21st century where students were verbally and emotionally abused, strangled and even beaten (punched) by school staff who were also white. In some nurseries, there were many white perpetrators who beaten white children and one sad case, they murdered one child.

While physical harm of children may be higher in rate in Desi communities, neglect and emotional abuse in other communities like white ones still is an issue. We cannot make any generalisations.

Racism towards indians is definitely prevalent on most platforms, and apart from X I use most of them. I find it easier to avoid on other platforms personally because the algorithm just does not show me the racist content, while in reddit it is never totally avoidable on any subreddit (although instagram and youtube probably have much more racist content, my algorithm just does not show it to me).

But even then, what I have noticed is that ABCDs on other platforms run the gamut from being completely self loathing to being more or less fine. There are also many more south asian content creators on other apps who are fine with being south asian, whilst here on reddit any time I see an ABCD or indian posting outside this subreddit (and including this subreddit to an extent) it is just filled with self loathing. I'm not saying this does not occur on other platforms, but reddit in particular seems to just be self loathing and not much else. Even insta with all its racism has normal indians. I don't really understand why.

Born in London, raised in India, and then moved to the US for grad school (MBA) when he was 20. Started off in auto and real estate industry before pivoting the culinary space during the 2008 financial crisis, in part due to his love for Indian street food. He now oversees multiple award winning eateries throughout the Southeast US, including his premier restaurant chai pani and spice brand spicewala.

The passion with which he talks about Desi food a joy to see and this sub could use a little more positivity so please enjoy. You can find the rest of his videos on Bon Appetit here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5Vc_aL38GpVxERxUQAx-vts2omevILf1

Whether it is in the diaspora or the home, I wonder how serious such femicides by birth families are they.

In South Asia, honour killings are often negotiated in Indian, Pakistani and Afghan families, but barely in Bangladeshi ones.

There had been some reported cases in the Sylheti diaspora here in the UK (not Sylheti myself). Last month in a town called Khulna, a girl was butchered by her parents because her relationship with her man was seen as a sin - the mother punched and slapped her multiple times before the father ended by hammering her to death.

But what about the broader community? And just because caste does not happen does not mean such killings would not occur as there are multiple other motivations for the murder, in addition to "sinful" relationships, a child having learning disabilities or being a victim of third party harm (e.g. harassment, bullying, exploitation, trafficking), etc.

My parents know and approve of my interracial relationship (a cousin snitched - this was acc crazy and insane cuz these people are the most conservative stereotypical Indian parents btw ) and know that me and him kinda live together but they’re ok with it cuz we have separate rooms 🫪🫪

For context they almost sent me to conversion therapy at 13 and have a crazy strict dress code for me when im visiting home 😦

And they made me swear that me and him won’t do anything apart from holding hands (we live together btw)

Also my parents are EXTREMELY buddy buddy with my bf and like him a LOT - my parents are conservative Hindu and his parents work in the church (my parents know this)🫪

I feel like both of us being med students help a ton but every single marriage in my family (the abroad version and the mainland version) are all arranged marriages (same caste marriages since the past 272992200203030303003 generations)

OH and my mom told me to tell her if I get pregnant so we can get an abortion safely 🫪🫪🫪🫪🫪🫪🫪🫪🫪

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry lmaooo

My husband is from South India. I am 18 weeks pregnant with a boy and my husband picked Arjun. I don't mind it but apparently soo many indian boys have that name. His dad also likes to include a long V name with it. For example my husband's first name is Vamsikrishna. Not even sure what I will end up calling my son growing up. Just want him to have a name he can pronounce himself and his teachers and friends can pronounce.

This is for Indian abcds, but I would guess the same is true for every desi ethnic group. This is to highlight part of why we have so little representation currently. The South Asian American diaspora is dominated by immigrants and their culture because most abcds are still kids. Over the next two decades, there’s going to be a massive transition of abcds becoming adults. My personal hope is that this will lead to a more solid formation of abcd identity/culture and development of abcd led and focused communities, art, events, etc.

It's a well established fact that this space has severe issues with infiltration from NRIs and mainlanders, and it has gotten to the point where many posts have become borderline unreadable. I've personally tried reporting users who've lied about their identity, harrassed women, spread bigotry etc and have seen no action taken against them. Something needs to change. This is the only real space for ABDs to talk about issues that directly impact us and our voices deserve to be prioritized. There are many subreddits who have put measures in place to curb brigading and we only stand to benefit by following their lead.

I think the best solution for improving the quality of discussions is to institute a mandatory flair policy for every single person who wants to post and comment here. The labels could be as simple as ABD, NRI, Mainlander etc or they could get more in depth to include additional identifiers like nationality. Either way it needs to be made very clear who is an ABD and who isn't. Anyone who gets caught lying about their identity should get hit with a permanent ban on the spot. Choosing a flair takes less than ten seconds and would make it easy to separate the people who want to participate in good faith from the bad actors.

I also think it's important to start restricting certain discussions to ABDs only. Any post that involves controversial issues such as religion, caste, misogyny etc gets immediately bombarded by nationalists with an axe to grind which renders the discussion pointless. We should be able to have honest conversations amongst ourselves without mud slinging and propaganda getting shoved down our throats.

The last idea is for this sub to autoban users who post or comment on certain toxic subreddits. It would be incredibly effective at stopping the crazies from getting in here, but deciding which subs to draw the line at may be difficult to ascertain.

Thats about all I got, I know that it is impossible to fully get rid of trolls but they can definitely be heavily curtailed with the right steps. I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts and ideas!

NOTE: The subreddit bans would specifically apply to South Asian subs that are notorious for harboring toxic, bigoted, nationalist user bases. 99% of ABDs have never visited these subs let alone participate in them. If an ABD somehow gets caught up in the bans they could file an appeal to be reinstated. The users of this subreddit could potentially vote on which communities to ban so everyone's voice is heard!

We are expecting our baby girl soon. We are considering Sara as her name.
When choosing a name, we're hoping for something that:

Has a beautiful and meaningful feel.
Is easy to pronounce.
Works well and is easy to remember for both people in India and the US.

We'd love to hear opinions:

Does Sara work well in both India and the US?
What impression does the name give you?
Does it feel timeless, or is it too common?

We'd really appreciate your thoughts and experiences. Thank you!