Why would it be shocking for people to perceive nepotism in their own society?
So, in their minds, it is very shocking that a racial minority immigrant said something negative about their own culture. Especially since it sounds even worse than their over-exaggerated negative perception of the US.
In terms of nepotism in particular - we had the Kennedy's, honestly not the worst political dynasty in America but a pretty clear example of name trumping qualifications. I've since emigrated, but I think I was probably disabused of any glorification of the land of opportunity and american exceptionalism by the time I finished middle school.
I was simply saying that a significant number of people in the US get so myopically focused on those issues locally, they don't realize that there is a whole world out there, where those same issues are massively more rampant and ubiquitous. And when they suddenly discover that through a first-hand or a second-hand experience, it is understandable they would be shocked.
Are you providing anecdotal evidence to support him or were you trying to disprove?
Sorry about that!
There's other stuff like that, too. For example, many Americans - especially progressive left politically, but plenty on the right as well - appear to believe that single payer is the norm in the developed world, and US is unique in deviating from that recipe for universal healthcare, even when discussing other options. When you tell them that one can opt to go with fully private insurance in Germany, or that Switzerland runs on something like ACA (much better done, obviously - but the same basic principle), it just doesn't compute.
Or gun control: some lefties literally refuse to believe that civilians can own an AR-15 in Germany, or a silencer in UK, or carry a handgun concealed in Czechia, without much trouble.
PS: US doesn't have universal healthcare, but universal healthcare doesn't imply that government must provide the services.
I get why this is, propaganda aside - the only developed country that borders US is Canada, so their health system is the one that Americans are most familiar with, and the one that's most often used as a prop in political debates here. And Canada is single payer...
But even that doesn't fully explain it. For example, all proponents of M4A in US want to implement it on the federal level. Canadian healthcare system was created bottom-up - started in one province due to popular demand, gradually adopted by others as it became obvious that the benefits vastly exceed any downsides, and eventually the feds stepped into the coordinating role, but provinces still retain the final say as they can always opt out of that federal system. So, why can't US do the same? For that matter, why shouldn't the states be able to decide for themselves whether they prefer the Canadian model, the German one, or the Swiss one - and then we can see which one works better here? I never got coherent answers to any of those questions.
That seems extreme.
Hearing that was pretty shocking, not so much because it’s clearly untrue, but because he held that opinion of other Indian people. He did fall under the description you gave, though. He seemed to struggle with basic Arduino and Raspberry Pi programming even though he had a degree in computer science from an Indian university.