Ugh, the hair thing. A couple years ago, one of my classmates, with whom I was friends, got her hair done in a million little corkscrews and I thought it looked really awesome. Just the previous day it had been a totally different style (I can’t remember what, she went through several wildly different hairstyles in the time we were in school together) and I was interested in how this had been achieved. Anyway, I reached out and touched one of the corkscrews.
Both she and another friend, who was also African-American, looked at me like I was completely off my fucking rocker and I realized that I had totally violated a boundary. I’m pretty sure that I would have done the exact same thing if a white friend had walked into school with an interesting new hairstyle. But there isn’t that same bagged of exoticism attached, and regardless of my good intentions, I shouldn’t have done it.
Heh. Reminds me of when Sophie Okonedo was nominated for an Oscar, and some dim-witted reporter asked her how she felt about being one of a record number of African-American nominees that year.
“I wouldn’t know,” she replied, “I’m British.”
Personally, I’m about as white as white gets, so I haven’t encountered the problem at hand. I try not to be a “What Are You?” person, but on some level I can understand the urge. Growing up in my cozy little white suburb, I encountered almost nobody who didn’t look like my family, so it was difficult not to view ethnic differences with curiosity.
As an adult, and with a much more diverse sampling of individuals in my life past and present, I like to think I’ve grown beyond compartmentalizing people. But I’ll be the first to admit that my brain automatically goes there sometimes, and it can require a conscious effort to suppress it.
I’ve got a surprise for you: I know already. It’s not news to me. But I still think it’s weird to describe someone with a pale skin color as “black” just because one of their great-great-great-grandparents was forcibly shipped from Africa to America. It’s just one of my personal hangups.
BTW, I’ve got a surprise for you too: Even if I would be classified as “white” (or cracker, or honky, or whatever you’d like to call me), I’m not literally white. I’m more pinkish.
It’s not wrong to notice how someone looks, but no one likes being badgered about their ethnic background. Why is it so important to people? Will the answer make any difference? I’ll agree with some others here that these people likely don’t have overt any malice, but the questioning seems to stem from the need to know how to categorize people, as if their ethnicity will help understand how the person should be related to. Do swarthy white people undergo these types of interrogations as frequently as people of other races, or people whose races may not be immediately clear, do?
Now it could be that these people that these people hold race in the same regard that they do, say, height, but even then I’m pretty sure very tall people get sick and tired of having their height questioned and remarked upon all the time.
Okay, if you know this and fully admit that its one of your personal hangups, then that just means you were feigning doe-like innocence by inquring about “light-skinned black”. You knew exactly what this phrase meant, and you being a foreigner to the US was just irrelevancy you threw in for the sake of plausible deniability.
Gotta excuse my tone, but this kind of stupid silliness isn’t all that different from what is being pitted in this thread.
“You’re black? No, you’re not! Just look at your color. It’s brown not black!”
It ain’t all that clever, really. Seriously. It aint.
Looking back on things, I see that you inadvertantly posted one of my pet peeves. I got angry. Now things are getting all adversarial for no reason. If you want to start a thread to discuss Medicine Men, shamans, witch doctors, mundumugus and such in general and the Sioux specifically I’d be happy to participate in it and hear what you have to say.
But, you with the face, you’re ignoring the giant learning moment you just witnessed. We whiteys are more pink than white. SURPRISE! Damn, I hope you were sitting down.
I’m a bit of a smartass, so when I have this type of exchange, and they ultimately arrive to “But where are your ANCESTORS from?” I reply with “Africa.”
Or if they say “What’s the big deal, just tell me.” I say “Why? Do you want to know how to make stir fried rice? Any idiot can make that.”
I have to say, I don’t come across this much anymore. Mostly because I don’t have the face that invites idle chit chat. And people in my social group who do have an interest in other cultures don’t start off with questions like that. If they share their cultural background, I’m happy to share mine. I just don’t respond to interrogation about it.
My friend also has strong ‘contrary’ proclivities. You may recall a very superficial portrayal of that in the movie Little Big Man. (the character that bathed in dirt, dried in water and rode horse backwards) The Lakota term for that translates out as ‘sacred clown’, but in English, that is a profoundly incomplete term. The movie, in my view, makes it seem a voluntary choice, but individuals that identify as ‘Sacred Clowns’ feel they are called to that way of living.
Both. Though I have a feeling those boxes will disappear right quick once Europeans are no longer the majority in this country. I can’t find it right now, but I did chart based on census data that showed British Isle-descended Americans are not far from losing that status. It do remember that Irish/Scots/Scotch-Irish were the largest plurality. English descendants became a minority a while ago.
Look at it this way - the idiots are just checking to see who the new overlords are going to be and are trying to curry favor now.
I once asked my wife, who was born in Vietnam and is ethnically Chinese (her family speaks Cantonese) but is a total banana (been here since she was 4), what she would pick on the census for ethnicity. She said “Canadian” without any hesitation (we’re in Canada), which I thought was interesting because I’m betting no one actually sees her as Canadian, they see her as a Chinese Canadian or Asian-Canadian. I hate questions about ethnicity, and since I work in a certain type of population research it is such a huge component of what people try to use to classify others. I think it’s mostly useless in comparison to income and education for determining anything meaningful, but we’ve learned that old habits die hard, particularly in the US where everything is divided up by race/ethnicity (and often in really retarded ways).
I’m wondering how you could’ve comprehensively read through this thread and asked this question. No one is being insulted by someone politely inquiring as to my ETHNICITY (which is what you mean, because any American who spends all of 5 seconds talking to me can hear that my nationality is AMERICAN). It is insulting to ask me “what are you?” itself, and then to try to argue with me about what I am after telling them, or then telling me that I don’t look like what I am.
I said “Not considered attractive”, I don’t think I am quite into ugly range.
Is your strawman for real??
It’s like you have turned your brain off completely when reading this thread. NO ONE HAS EVER, ONCE SAID that people are stupid for noticing someone’s ethnicity. Can you find a single quote from this thread where someone said so? It’s HOW PEOPLE TREAT OTHERS who they find ethnically confusing that is the issue. Or do you think it is impossible to be rude or stupid when attempting to determine someone’s heritage? Let me give you a polite and a rude inquiry from a stranger that will apply to you since you can’t fathom why some people are uptight:
If I don’t know you, and I walk up to you and say “Excuse me, but are you an only child?” It would be weird, but not particularly rude, yes? But if I walked up to you and said “Hey, did your mom crap out another spawn?” it would be the same question, the latter of which is rude. THEN after you answer “No.” I being the rude stranger would tell you, “Well, you sure don’t LOOK like your mom only had one kid.” followed by a suspicious stare like you’re trying to trick me.
Would you or would you not have a right to be annoyed by having this same conversation over and over again constantly your entire life? Is my behavior stupid or not?