J. D. Vance and family visit India
With all the more pressing news it’s easy to miss the fact that VP Vance and his family are in India on an official visit. Usha Vance is of course of Indian ethnicity and so it was especially adorable (and not even “cultural appropriation”) when their three children wore Indian or Indian-inspired dress.
Funny bit with their eldest son trying to find his mom’s hand:
Hard to repress memories of Justin Trudeau and family doing the same. But that guy clearly loves playing dress up, and they went over the top, things that you might get away with at your wedding but that normal people would not normally wear.
Note that Vance himself is wearing Western attire, and so is Mrs. Vance. No reason why these half-Indian kids can’t wear Indian clothing, which they may do when they visit their grandparents in the US.
Our Indian-American friends remark that when they go back to India to visit, they are always identified as American, even though they are wearing traditional clothing. Something about the way they carry themselves, perhaps.
Hard to repress memories of Justin Trudeau and family doing the same.
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Vance is in a business suit, so, no, he’s not ‘doing the same’. What the children are wearing isn’t that different from occidental clothing.
Biden destroyed US/India relations. Trump and Vance are trying to restore good relations.
Kate
Our Indian-American friends remark that when they go back to India to visit, they are always identified as American, even though they are wearing traditional clothing. Something about the way they carry themselves, perhaps.
A family friend, born in the US of Italian immigrants, learned English only when she started attending school. Her first language was Italian. Decades later, she and her aunt/stepmother took a trip to Italy. Although our friend was a native speaker of Italian, Italians always identified her as American, while her aunt/stepmother was always identified as Italian.
Before the trip, our friend expressed the fear to her aunt that they wouldn’t have a good time on their trip. The reply: “How we NOT have a good time? We aren’t going with any men!” (We no hava men) The aunt was right . They had a great time.
In most of Latin America, I was easily identified as a foreigner/gringo, because my European ancestry contrasted with the mestizo/Indigenous ancestry of most of the population. In Argentina, a country dominated by European immigrants, I was still identified as being a foreigner/gringo, because my casual clothing–bright colored & patterned shirts, jeans and T-shirts—contrasted with the dark pants and white or light blue shirts that Argentine men wore.