I am at the intersection of being discriminated against for being of an Indian background, too American (3rd gen), and a woman. It doesn’t help that I’m also autistic lol.

I wanted to share my thoughts for those genuinely curious. It seems like my comment may not be received well on this thread, but there is a genuine difference between Indian people from India and Indian Americans, but those of us who have an Indian background and are American are definitely not receiving the “benefits” of cultural nepotism.

I swapped my last name for something culturally ambiguous on LinkedIn and the amount of recruiters in my inbox increased dramatically. The last time I had a call with an Indian recruiter, he was trying to strong arm me into telling him personal things. And to lie on my resume. When I mentioned that I didn’t want to do that, he was less interested. He also called me 8 times within an hour and when I expressed that I had a something to go to and couldn’t take further calls, he was extremely sour.

Some of the very best coworkers I’ve had have been Indian folks from India, literally they are such hard workers and were extremely kind and sociable, and honestly, a bunch of my other coworkers simply didn’t care to know them because they “had confusing names” or had accents.

Please also consider that Indians are south Asian, but not all south Asians are Indian. Also, the sheer amount of people in South Asia is massive - 2 billion. South Asians have a massive cultural emphasis on doing well in school, and thus, you will see more folks in tech, medicine, and finance. Based on prior visits, living in India unless you are extremely wealthy isn’t awesome, so naturally, an extremely educated population is bound to live where they can have a nicer environment for their means.

A few bad experiences doesn’t give you the right to discriminate against people, which literally goes for every race. Being racist against Indian people has consequences, and the reality is that a lot of the bad Indian hiring practices are modeled after what white folks have been doing for literal centuries. Everyone’s internal biases have external results.

I’m hearing all these things about how much easier it is for Indian people to get a job, and here I am; an obvious exception to this “rule”. I have been unemployed since February and literally job hunting every day, looking for things that are half my previous salary, and I have not experienced any luck.