To continue the hijack - my pure-blood Lebanese MiL is frequently mistaken for Mexican, once in Playa del Carmen.
One of my friends back in Texas is half-Filipino, and does look very much like many of the hispanic girls in Texas.
What was amusing was that people kept thinking ANOTHER of my friends, who very much looked like she was half-Korean, was Mexican. I think in many parts of Texas, if you look foreign, but not of some obvious ethnicity, you’re assumed to be Mexican.
My father, who is French Canadian, has been mistaken for a Mexican - in some cases by actual Mexicans.
One of my swearing bibles, that alas I can’t find right now to cite from, says the popular pot/kettle/black saying is a polite truncation of “pot calling the kettle black-arse”, the implication being that both pot and kettle would have equally sooty undersides.
There are other variations (with references), oulined here in Pots, kettles, and interpretations of blackness by Patricia A. Turner.
Ha! A couple years ago I worked for a guy who I assumed was Mexican, but found out he was actually Lebanese. My confusion came not just from his appearance (and the fact that the population of my town in Washington state is approximately 30% Hispanic), but from the fact that his last name is Dominguez and he often travels to Arizona to visit his mother.
This one is probably more understandable: I have a Native American friend who is frequently mistaken for Mexican, even by Mexicans. And it pisses him off. He told me he would often get Mexican customers approaching him and asking, “Do you speak Spanish?”. His standard response was, “No. Do you speak Cree?”
-Thanks for the link!