Attn losers: Go to Asia and get laid!

The BBQ Pit
113

There are a lot of places in the US where Italian is “white, but not”. In Detroit, we have a LOT of Italians (and Greeks), and they’re exactly that. Like, the general perception is “technically white, but y’know”. There’s nothing negative about it (“they’re not white enough!”), it’s just that with a darker complexion, dark hair, etc, it is more exotic than the usual Irish/English/French/German “lighter skin, vaguely blondishbrownish hair, and brown or blue eyes”.*

So yeah, they look “different” enough that it’s a different category in a lot of people’s minds (or maybe subcategory. There’s “white” and then there’s “white-Italian/Greek”). Hell, there’s a ton of Poles here and non-Polish people still think of us as “different”.

If you’re not descended from people who are from Western Europe, even if you’re white, you’re considered different. Hell, my German-heritage aunt*, when my other aunt and her Polish husband were naming their daughter “Katerina”, said, “isn’t that a bit… ethnic?” Yeah, with a Polish last name. :rolleyes:

Hell, I get attention around here because I’m 1 - super pale (even for a honky), 2 - have smaller, deepset eyes and 3 - my body is more stereotypically “black” (the only jeans that actually fit my waist AND hips are Applebottoms, as an example) with a rack. Here’s my [strike]Myspace[/strike] Facebook picture to see the paleness that everyone comments on. I’m different enough from “generic white girl” around here, at least, that I do get more attention than I’d think I’d get otherwise.

  • At my Catholic grade school, I remember looking at the backs of heads at mass and seeing that the vast majority had hair a shade somewhere in the range of “dark blonde to ashy/sandy lightishmediumish brown”

** My mom’s side is German-descent and my dad’s is Polish/Slovak.