Okay, not entirely sure whether this is the right forum but I'm looking to resolve an issue that is somewhat related to religion.

I was telling my friend that I find it easier to talk to Indian people because I find them less materialistic, judgmental and looks orientated than white people. And yes, I am white myself. I said I find that Indian people are more bothered about internal things (knowledge, intelligence, determination) and white people are more bothered about external things (looks, clothes, material items).

I find my internal qualities far outweigh my external qualities, and therefore I'm more likely be accepted/appreciated by Indian people than white people. I feel more comfortable around them as a result.

His response was that "I am chatting the world of ****".

Now he isn't debating whether that is my real motivation, as that's personal to me and isn't something that can be 'true' or 'false'. A motivation may be irrational whilst at the same time existing in the persons mind.

The issue is whether my interpretation is true/accurate.

Basically, I want to know whether people agree or disagree with me.

I realise I am making oversimplifications and I know in reality the situation won't be as clearly defined as 'externally based' and 'internally based' people.

I just want an overall view on the issue as a whole.

If you could vote on the poll that would be great.

Many thanks.

There are more than 1.2b Indians. How many have you met that you think you can make your claims? What data do you have to support your claims?

are you talking about natives or people from India?

I think there may be a slight misunderstanding in the tone of my OP.

I'm not here to claim/support/advocate my view.

I don't have statistics or studies to back up my view.

I just have personal experiences. And based on these experiences, this is my view.

This thread is an attempt to tell you what my view is and gage whether people agree or disagree with it.

I'm not here to persuade you of my view.

Again, I haven't made this distinction.

I'm not trying to present you with a POV with loads of rigorous evidence to back it up. This is simply a POV based on experience.

I don't want you to start throwing statistics at me or start categorizing all the different types.

I realise that this means answers are very generalised and subjective, but this is the only way to give justice to the nature question. It's simply an opinion based on experience, not on facts and figures.

I just want a gut instinct reaction to what I've said based on your experience.

Cue uke and charges of racism.

Oh wait. The target of the post IS white people... Nevermind.

Look at my question in terms of a hypothesis of an academic study.

Before you form your hypothesis, you form an educated guess on the results of the study based on what you have learnt and experienced.

The facts and figures then come as the result of the study.

See this as the hypothesis stage.

If my view was operationalised and transformed into a study, would my view be supported by the results?

OP, there are so few Indians in most poster's lives here to make your quest anything but futile. You have a sample size problem bro.

Yes, good point.

Sigh, this has turned into a bit of a disaster.

I just wanted an instinctive answer, not an academic one.

An answer true relative to your beliefs, not relative to any facts or figures.

wat. Do you even know what my race is? i both reject and resent any implication that I am being racist in my calling out of racism. But yes he is making overtly racial characterizations here (of both caucasions and indians)

No, I don't find Indians less materialistic than white people.

Still can't tell if you're talking about US Indians or India Indians.

Dilettantes often project what they want to see onto people they consider exotic. That's my first guess of what's going on here. ("They look so wise. Let's talk to one.")

I don't know what the value of this exercise would be if you reject any statistical measures. At the individual level I see no use in expecting them to be more or less materialistic. They can be either so you still have to wait and see.

What is the forum? A campus, you live near a res, what?

I'd give you one but I've only known one Indian and I didn't know him very well. I'm guessing most people here are like me. It's not a very populous minority in the west.

Okay guys, thanks for all your responses.

Summary: I've held the view along time, it always seemed 'correct' to me, I was interested to see whether others shared this view and it's quite clear they don't. I'm not at all annoyed and I'm glad I've found out the general picture. Although I wanted it, an instinctive answer has little value and you really need facts and figures to give any view strength. 2+2 doesn't really have much contact with Indians so there is a poor sample. I need to be more defined in what I class as Indian in future.

Thanks guys.

Well, this thread was a bit of a trainwreck.

I don't have a particular view on Indians (especially when I don't know if you are talking about indigenous American natives or people from India) vs "white people" (I'm not even certain we could define a "white people culture"... Portugese culture is fairly distinct from say... Cossack culture).

However, cultural differences are an actuality... and we can tie the differences to specified groups. So there certainly can be a trendwise difference from group A's view on material goods vs group B's view on material goods.

What if by 'white people' he simply meant 'the western world' and was drawing a comparison between that and India which is a developing country. Consumerism is rife in the Western world. From a young age we are targeted and bombarded with the message 'buy buy buy'. India being a third world developing nation, with a much lower per capita income, may not be subject to such rampant consumerism and as such it's population may have a different personal focus. They may be less materialistic because of having less disposable income which in turn makes them a poor target for marketing.

Also, Eastern Philosophies generally favour a more meditative and introspective mindset do they not?

I don't think there's any racism being exhibited here, I think it's more of a (very generalised) geopolitical and sociological argument.

This is exactly what I meant, thank you so much for posting.

If this thread is resolved for you then all you did is correct yourself and decide you are right.

All I see is an unwillingess to divide the "Indian" population in a way that doesn't support your observation.


Yes you are correct if we see it your way, unfortunately the division between non Indian and Indian you are using isn't real.

Where is this unwillingness you speak of? I've quite clearly recognised in this post

That my OP has faults and my approach to answering the question had little value.

Again in the above post I've realised I'm not "right" and that people don't share my view. All I was saying is that your interpretation of what I was saying was a more accurate reflection of what I was trying to say.

Again, something I recognise in my summary post.

Please don't imply I am being narrow minded when I've quite clearly said my view isn't shared by others, my sample is poor, my division was inaccurate and my approach was wrong.

Cultural comparisons like this can be evaluated on their merits, but he didn't just do that, he used overtly racial identifiers.

I missed that tone, I see that now.

dude, that's racist

+amen

What do you think a good sample size would be to judge an entire nationality by?

If someone had met 1,000 random Americans, would they have a good enough sample size to judge the country? If not, or if so, how many people would be needed?

Ask a statistician, that's what they do.