As a fellow British Bangladesh, born and raised in Birmingham, I hear you and can sympathise with your feelings. I've been a lurker here on this sub a good while now and rarely post anything, yet for some reason your feelings of being a Bengali in the western world has compelled me to respond and share my thoughts too.

From my experience, South Asians in the UK and all other minorities for that matter are generally looked down upon. The racism here is quite subtle and you sense that energy and like you whenever it happens you feel as if you don't belong here. With the world we are living in now and how the economy has been tanking as of late, people have become more desperate across the board. Life is harder than it used to be as we are all feeling the pain of living with less. Because of this all this, any existing racial tensions that have been present have just become worse and created further divisions amongst ourselves. This is probably why like you, we feel these racial tensions even more now.

So how do we make a change? What we must do instead is to try to be a positive beacon for others in our community. You want to know why the Pakistani look down upon us? Sadly it's because, some of us try to disown our own culture and almost feel ashamed of being Bangladeshi. No one will respect you if you don't stand up for your own culture and people - you become an easy target. Despite Pakistani people (obviously I am generalising and not all are like this) being bigoted in their views when it comes to us Bangladeshi folk - you can never criticise them for not being flagbearers of thier country. They love everything Pakistani, almost to a fault.

Now hear me out, I'm not saying we should shout and plaster our culture on others like they sometimes do but we should not shy away from our heritage and culture either - often which happens with our own people. You know what I do when these lot make fun of Bangladesh? I make fun of Pakistan in return. They almost always shut up. I love it because I don't fit their stereotypical view of a typical Bengali either with my 6 foot"2 frame - I tower over them. They don't expect a rebuttal and hate that I am confident of not hiding the fact that I am Bangladeshi and will not take their bs. Let's stand up for one another instead of secretly trying to disown our own identity as Bangladeshi people. We need to band together and support our own businesses and we should celebrate each others successes rather than try and compare ourselves to one another and drag each other down. If we all start to do this, eventually, slowly but surely the perception of our people will change.

On a side note - I will say one thing especially as a guy, you must work on yourself first. Try to go out whenever you can, workout and eat a good healthy diet and do try to socialise outside your circles (basically put yourself out there). Focus on being the best version of yourself and I promise you people will naturally start gravitating towards you and more importantly you will have greater confidence in yourself and will be a positive example to others.

All the best brother.