I miss the reputation that Desis had when I was a kid in elementary school like 15 years ago
In the early 2000s I feel like the worst stereotypes we had were "cow lovers" and terrorist or other Islam-related stereotypes which were pushed onto us from appearing similar to Middle Easterners.
Even in middle school, I remember having some redneck white kid telling me to go eat curry; like that's genuinely the best roast they were able to think of.
I mean like it wasn't even until around 2008-2012 when scam calls started getting common and known about. If people heard an Indian accent prior to 2010, they didn't think "Oh, probably a scam call" yet.
Mostly, when people thought of India, they thought of Bollywood at that time. Which was silly, but not in a manner that caused us to receive hate, rather it was just goofy, like the bollywood overly-dramatic action scenes or singing randomly. We were known for singing and dancing, that's not bad.
But nowadays, it feels like racism is actually hate-based rather than ignorant of slight mockery.
Maybe because I was a kid I wasn't exposed to the real world at that point, like I'm 24 right now, but it feels insanely worse.
Even at that time, we were socially considered part of the model minority in that people saw us as people who never commit crimes and remain highly educated, which a lot of desis complained about, because it means we are held to a higher standard than others, but have you seen what they're saying about Indian immigrants in the west now? It's objectively worse since they're expecting perfect behavior while having preconceptions of us defaulting to littering and illegally working or entering the country.
One positive change though seems to be that people are less colorist. When I was growing up dark skin was seen as a negative trait, while now it's a neutral thing.
It's crazy to think that at one point, India had 32% of the world's GDP. Even 1700 years after that 32%, it only dropped to 24% of the world's GDP. No other country has been that much of the world's GDP at any other point than China. Imagine the perception of us at that time, and what could've happened if colonialism didn't destroy India after 1700. I wish I could experience it.