For my discourse community I have chosen a brown family. By brown I am referring to people who have been born and raised in middle eastern Asia, who have cultural, traditional and religious values. Brown people may have different traditions or believe in different religions however we have so much in common with each other. Especially how we were raised by our parents, how we are treated, and what is expected of us. I have had friends from Pakistan, friends from Tajikistan, friends from Uzbekistan, and many more diverse countries but we are all identified as part of the brown community. As much as I love my brown community and share so many wonderful memories, values, and traditions with them there are also things that I disagree with. Some issues we have is our parents expecting us to be lawyers or doctors and them not recognizing anything outside that as a career option. Additionally, we are raised with strict rules and tough discipline that may be out of the line and unnecessary to the point that it traumatizes many people from a young age. For this assignment I want to discuss the arranged marriage many brown people deeply believe as the right path for every young adult which I think is a major issue that should be discussed further. “Of those married, 84 percent had an arranged marriage, and 53 percent of respondents disapproved of dating before marriage.” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/soloish/wp/2017/05/02/india-has-changed-a-lot-in-70-years-but-arranged-marriage-remains-the-norm/)
As I was researching, I found some reasons why brown parents choose to arrange marriage for their kids. “parents who favor arranged marriages believe that they are more experienced and objective than their children. “ (https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/burdens-and-benefits-of-arranged-marriages-0412137) this quote reveals that parents think that their kids are not capable of choosing the right person as their partner, hence they make the decision for their children instead. In my opinion if a child is not capable of making a big decision of who they should marry, then they may not be old enough to marry at all together. Furthermore, they introduce the statistics of “arranged marriages end in divorce about 10 times less often than non arranged marriages” just because the statistics show that arrange marriages have less divorce than love marriages, it doesn’t reveal the fact that most people hate their relationships and are forced to be married until death by family and their society. Furthermore, in the article “https://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/fashion/07love.html” a male author discusses the process of arrange marriage in his life, he discusses how easy and smooth the process went, and moves along with revealing how grateful and happy his relation has been for many years. while the wife is trying to teach the sons how to take care of themselves and not to marry someone just for cleaning and cooking
One important thing that stood out to me in the article is the statement the author stated “My poor sons. How the world has changed. Their mother teaches them to cook and vacuum the house so they can get wives. My mother found me a wife so I wouldn’t have to cook and clean.”Â
There is so much more I want to research and discuss further because there are definitely pros and cons of both sides of arrange marriage.
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This is great and as I said in response your comment sounds really interesting. I would encourage you to think of a term that is more exact than Brown people. Latinx people are also Brown. Your DC is a specific religious and cultural or geographic area. Also it is a particular generation as you disagree with those of the same religion and culture who are older.
What you said makes a lot of sense and it’s something that’s still happening around the world and you were able to connect it to you and your culture. When reading about your discourse community I found myself relating to some of the points your were making , my parents are both Mexican and I definitely grew up with some strong discipline and they did have that idea of me becoming someone and having a career. Sadly arranged marriages are still a thing where I am from but it’s not as big as it is in other cultures. Overall good discourse community and it will be good to have people from different backgrounds know more about this.
Thank you so much for your reply. I did not know that Mexicans also perform arrange marriages. I wish parents gave us more independence and trusted us so we could accomplish so much more in our lives