Americans might be just generally more interested in ethnicity than Europeans, since “American” isn’t considered an ethnicity around here. Trust me on that, because that’s the answer I usually give first when someone asks me about mine. And no one is satisfied with that answer. They want to know where your ancestors came from. In Europe, I suspect, most people are the ethnicity of whatever country or region they were born in (or there family hails from).
So, it’s not just about African-Americans. Everyone is always asking everyone else what ethnicity they are-- especially if it isn’t obvious from your last name. White people do this to other White people, too, if your skin is a little darker than the norm. Are you Italian? is a common question if the person has dark hair and olive skin. As if all Italians had dark hair and olive skin…
I wasn’t speaking about making yourself appear “more palatable” at all. Simply saying…well, what John just expounded on. And yes, I very much agree w/him as well that Americans appear to be more fixated in ethnicity than we are in Europe. And again to use another example from his post, we don’t expect that very Italian/Spaniard/Mediterranean should have olive skin and dark hair. Which, OTOH, appears to come as a surprise to any number of Americans.
I think that’s a fair distribution of what we look like. IOW, all kinds. Obviously to many Americans this constitutes some sort of “news.” But so what? It is what it is.
I mean, seriously, don’t take it so much to heart (yes, I know, I’m no one to give you advice. Just adding my perspective is all) if white people – or brown or blue or whatever…they queried me as well – express an interest in your ethnicity…they did it to me, they do it to John and they’ll do it to just about anyone else who doesn’t fit their preconceptions. I might be wrong about this, but I don’t think that’s racist as much as it is curiosity for the sake of it.
PS-Just noticed this from my own link: the guy greeting the woman in this pic could be an uncle of mine. Looks a lot like a couple of them on my dad’s side and we even share surnames (that’s not my first though). There were five brothers and three sisters in it. Down to three now.
Might be a lot of things wrong with you, John, but your memory isn’t one of them. Follicle-challenged, huh? Well thank the guy in the pic for that – four out of the five brothers (dad included) had that marvelous shiny pate. I’m just passing the tradition unto my very fortunate son
But more to the issue at hand, I posted that one in order to make your prior point re: olive-skinned Italians.
Well, I acknowledged that. And even if it’s more than curiosity driving those kind of questions, I wouldn’t be quick to label those motivations racist…just revealing of the way Americans are always trying to compartamentalize people by race. It’s a symptom of the way we think of people over here.
That you and John also experience this in terms of ethnicity doesn’t argue against what I’m saying. If anything it echoes it. Ethnicity and race are not miles apart from one another. It wasn’t that long ago that Italians were considered “other”, right? And a lot of people see anyone with a Spanish accent as “other” (you get placed in the Hispanic/Latino box), regardless of how pale they look.
Actually, no they don’t. As a woman who is unambiguously black in appearance, I get “what are you?” and the follow ups (from people who don’t seem to like my answers) “but where are you from?” and “where are you from, really?” all the time.
These questions are, at best, annoying. If they were meant to be icebreakers, they’re not good ones because they make me think much less of the asker and assume he/she is not a person I would ever want to know. The weather is much better subject.
Or maybe amarinth is right and these are just annoying white people who are asking the wrong sort of questions for an ice-breaker. Why impune the worse of motives to them as you did to me? amarinth met these people and dealt with them as individuals in multiple encounters. I can understand why she would feel resentment for having her privacy invaded.
But you without any prompting from her and without having met the people that she has posted about, have painted them with a racist stereotype of being white bigots. Your own words reflect poorly on you.
And no one actually had any way of determining if there was “one drop” of black blood in a person unless you literally sucked the blood from a black person’s body. If the “one drop” rule had been enforced, no belles with naturally curly hair would have been deemed suitable for marriage. In reality, that was a prized attribute and young ladies with straight hair used curling irons to duplicate the effect. (I’m using this just as an example.)
jsgoddess and you with the face, you might want to consider that in a country that is blessed with greater change and more insight from people like Red Fury, maybe “Americans” don’t all have the same attitude anymore. Maybe we never did. Maybe abolitionists really existed. Maybe white pro-Civil Rights workers lived in the South. Maybe Americans have as many opinions as people have here at the Dope.
you with the face, I never claimed to be “color blind.” That was a label given to me by someone who twisted my words into something they did not mean. I ASKED to teach in an integrated high school at a time when most high schools were not integrated. I don’t know how many ways I can say that. By the third year I was teaching in a school that was 90% black. By choice, I followed my students wherever they were bused.
We were like a family in that school. It had the same kind of spirit that you see between fans and a football team. And just like you don’t look at your family around the Christmas dinner table and think, “Black people, pass the food,” I didn’t think, "Black people, what did Mr. Emerson mean when he said, “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind”?
I also want to remind you that both white and black Americans were fascinated by the black ancestoral history of an American named Alex Haley when his work was portrayed in the television film Roots. I don’t know that there was anyone particularly exotic in his background. You don’t have to be a terribly romantic or striking figure to be interesting. But in Henning, Tennesseet he lived close to a woman who became one of the world’s most exotic women. She lived in Nutbush. Sometimes you don’t always start out in an exotic place or with an exotic background. That’s as much of a clue as I’m giving.
Except when they don’t compartmentalize by race, your words indicate that you can’t deal with it and you become very suspicious of their claims to “color-blindness.” That’s called a double bind
Obviously if they are badgering amarinth with those kind of questions, it goes to reason that there is something about her that makes her not-so-unambigiously black. Like defying stereotypes. Otherwise, they’d be satisfied when she tells them that’s she’s a black American. My response to her was rather tongue in cheek, anyway. Don’t take stuff so goddamn seriously.
You are putting words in my mouth. “White bigot”? I laugh at you and your presumptiousness. Black people are known to do the “what are you” thing as well! Nothing I’ve been saying is limited to white people. I’ve been talking about AMERICANS. Go back and read my posts before you hassle me again, please.
This is nonsense through and through. (So curly-haired whites don’t exist? WTF?) Not going to respond to anything else you wrote, because if you really believe this is the case (and I guess you do…Lord have mercy), then I suspect nothing I have to say to you would make any sense.
I had missed this direct question you’d adressed to me yesterday:
As you can imagine I can only respond at a personal level. Thus I’m not sure what value you would find in my answer as pertains to your society as a whole. Here goes nothing then.
<Realistic response mode on>
Fact is I’ve read a number of your posts before and now we’ve also engaged in a direct conversation. Adding those two facts together I think we already know enough about each others’ ethnicity that it wouldn’t be a salient factor if we were to meet in real life. Doesn’t make you any different than any number of other people whom I originally met on-line and then morphed into real flesh and blood organisms due to whatever connection we developed in Etherspace. Which is simply my long-winded way of saying that some of the perfectly normal chitchat that precedes any sort of relationship between two people is, for the most part (thankfully I think, for that’s something I don’t particularly enjoy even if I understand that is it a necessary part of human interaction) over and done with.
All that said, does it mean that you wouldn’t be “interesting” had I lacked this information? Again, bricks and apple-sauce. If I see someone across the room at any event I might attend that catches my eye (my being a hetero makes it more than likely that such a person would be a female) I would, in the past more than now for reasons already addressed in prior posts, likely approach said person and strike some sort of conversation with her. And yes, I would find nothing wrong if in said conversation, after a proper introductions, you asked something about my heritage (and not just because my name clashes with CW. It’s simply a part of the meeting or mating ritual amongst many species. We just happen to have a linguistic advantage in how we express our ‘desirability’) and I did the same to that person regardless of her degree of “exoticism.”
Now if that is still to vague of a response to you I’ll simply say that yes, I do indeed find you interesting waay beyond your shading and if I was anywhere near you – yes even now that I’m getting into geezerhood – I’d flat-out ask you out for a cup of coffee. Whether you’d be interested or not, I have no idea.
Is that clear enough for you? I’d like to think so, for if nothing else I’ve always been proud of being a straight shooter – even if sometimes the bullets hit nothing but air. Or worse yet, bounced back at me. In that vein I’ll also add that you do come off sometimes (at least to me) as a bit of an Angry Black Woman. Sure you have your reasons and have expressed some of them here – but you are also falling, IMHO, into some of the same prejudices you fault others of having.
All that and a dollar won’t buy you a cup of coffee. But you did ask.
Right, and I guess what I’m saying is that there’s nothing really wrong with that, it is to be expected, but sometimes (not all the time, not most of the time but sometimes) such inquiries do come across as being more than satisfying a idle curiousity. Sometimes such inquiries are used to inform how one would one should view you, what box to put you in, so they know what set of expectations apply to you. That’s all. I don’t call this racist; just indicative of the way race influences relationships here. If I say I’m mixed I’m suddenly seen in different light than if I were to say I’m black. You may not believe this happens or you may believe its “no big deal” if it does happen, and that’s cool. I’m not exactly sure it’s “no big deal”; so that’s probably why I find it annoying.
I don’t think what I’m saying is all that controversial (not that is what you are saying). I’m not saying this is racist (which you suggested earlier). I’m not saying it’s eeeevil (as Zoe implied). Honestly, you may see me as being an Angry Black Woman and that’s fine, but I don’t think you have any reason to. Just telling you how I see things, just as you are telling me how the world looks through your eyes. I’m no more an Angry Black Woman as you are a Clueless White Spainard. As far as I’m concerned, we’re just talking about stuff. There’s not even a debate, unless something slipped by me when I wasn’t looking.
Oh I have no doubt that there are a-holes all over the place – seriously the US doesn’t have any significant lead in that particular department over any other nation. Which is why I like to treat each personal encounter as a one-of and not a search for a pattern.
It also appears to me that now that you’ve used additional qualifiers we’re not that far apart in our thinking – if at all.
I also agree with you here in the sense that we’re not really debating anything but rather exchanging thoughts and, hopefully, learning from said exchange. On the whole it’s certainly helped this Clueless Spaniard.
However I also note that The Angry Woman has adroitly ignored my hypothetical offer for a cup of coffee. Which only makes you more interesting. But I bet you already knew that.
I’d be honored to have a hypothetical cup of coffee with you. How far away is Banana Land from Maryland? Can I get there on the metro with my SmartTrip card, is what I’m wondering.
And it just so happens that the current Government’s Big Plan for the past three years has, coincidentally, been the construction of a subway system. However due to the power deficit that exists here since I can recall the trains might not run much at all, never mind being on time.
As an alternative I might suggest we meet half way as I happen to travel to Fla fairly often to see my son – I’ll let you know in advance the next time I do so. Coffee’s on me, looks and brains on you. Deal to be sealed in private before we are told to get a room.
Can’t help it. Some habits, apparently, don’t die as much as they just go to sleep. Besides I’ve been as single as a man can be for many a year now – nothing wrong with narrowing my horizons
As for blushing, I would as well if I remembered how.
Meanwhile, I respectfully request that you with the facestop putting words in my mouth.
I did not imply that anything is evil as you put it. The only time that I have used the word evil to describe something has been in jest and that was not in this thread.
To say that I implied that something is evil demonstrates a lack of integrity in what you post or a lack of understanding when you try to interpret my words. If it was a lack of understanding, then you inferred it – I did not imply it.
Oh. So you were talking only about blacks and whites when you wrote the following:
I’m glad to know that you weren’t stereotyping whites as white bigots and apologize for misinterpreting. You were stereotyping “AMERICANS.”
I didn’t get answers to my questions, you with the face.. So I will ask again.
Why do you choose to ascribe the worst possible motives to me and to other people? You can’t possibly know what another person’s motives are. You are not a mind reader. So why do you look for the worst?
How could one drop of black blood be determined in a person? You made the claim that the one drop rule was enforced. How was that done?
These are fair questions in General Debates.. Don’t claim to be hassled if you can’t answer them.
Your debating techniques has sunk to laughing at my typos or spelling? Okay, then:
“'Tis is a tricky question.”
“That means that just what it means.”
There were more in yours. I haven’t wanted to go there. So how about answering the questions above?
As for your question about curly hair: Yes, there are “white” people with curly hair. But I don’t know if they are 100 percent white or not. I do know that “Nordic types” tend to have very straight hair and that’s as much as I know genetically. I would be interested in what genetic research has to say.
