What causes East Indians to act this way?

You're more then aware that you're generalizing and that's just not right, but to answer you, at the end of the day people are people and no religion holds back humans true colors (at least not enough). And its a matter of values (or how you measure values..something like that). People who are truly doing better then others don't have to degrade and belittle them to know their true value. It probably just made her feel better to treat you like crap. To say it was because of her ethnicity...idk about that.