You wouldn’t happen to be talking about PG County Maryland, would you? That’s definitely where I’m from.
Make room for me too, willya?
My life has been a series of meetings with people whose faces do a weird little bobble thing when they see me after having only spoken to me on the phone. I’ve had people who don’t believe that I’m me and have reacted to my self-introduction by saying “You’re Tracey?”
I’m sick of being viewed as odd because I don’t fulfill some stereotype. I’m me. That’s all. I’m not a paid spokesperson for black people everywhere nor am I like someone you might see on UPN or BET. Why is that so hard to get?
[QUOTE=TeaElle]
Make room for me too, willya?
QUOTE]
We need a theme song for this bus. I’m thinking something by Barry Manilow. 
Heh, great OP. I’ve kinda felt the opposite side of this coin, in that I was accused by a fellow Asian in high school of perpetuating the Asian geek stereotype simply because I was good at math and interested in school. I then countered that he was perpetuating the Asian Kung Fu Ninja Killa ™ by being a green belt in Tae Kwon Do, and he was like, “You have OFFENDED MY HONAH! PREPAH TO DIE!” and I was like “Yo, chill out man” and promptly gutted him like a fish with my sharpened TI-85.
(OK, this story was true up to a certain point ;))
I believe I’d know those bridges anywhere. One comic remarked while doing stand up in Pittsburgh that we should color-code the bridges to make it easier to give out-of-towners directions.
“Just take the pink bridge…”
Apologies for the off-topic posts
I don’t understand one word of this new lingo that’s going around at all. Sometimes when I hear people talking it (black and white people) I wonder if I have magically been transported to a foreign land.
Well, fuck. That explains all those damned fingers on my plate.
Don’t do it, Honey. You’re turning white enough as it is being married to this pink ass. Word up.
How about Lenny Kravitz instead? I wonder how many people have been surprised to find out that a guy with a name like a little old Jewish man looks like…well, Lenny Kravitz.
Barack Obama, who kicked ass in last Tuesday’s Illinois Democratic Senatorial Primary, has had some of those “mulatto”* problems. From the Austin Weekly News,
-
- Love that word almost as much as “quadroon” and “octaroon!” And since nobody hardly these days knows they are offensive (and those that do are as arthritic as me) I can almost use them without fear of getting beat up.
- Love that word almost as much as “quadroon” and “octaroon!” And since nobody hardly these days knows they are offensive (and those that do are as arthritic as me) I can almost use them without fear of getting beat up.
Her name was Lola!
She was a Fly Girl!
With shiny bling-bling in her hair,
and her milkshake all out there!
Actually, given recent news developments, he’d probably be masturbating if his family hadn’t skimped on the funeral and gotten him the casket with the low lid.
From the link:
“Kids, I’ve been thinking alot about this, and I’ve decided it’s time to leave Hawaii, and live somewhere else.”
“Where, mom?”
“We’ll find out when we get there!”
I am 23.
Well I am glad that there are a few people who understand what this is like. My husband read the thread and apologized. He said he had no clue it bothered me that much.
Pssssst- I have a few Barry Manilow Cd’s. Guess I have gone past the point of no return.
<----walks off humming Copa Cabana
( I like the fly girl version JayJay, cracked me yup)
Yup. Small world.
I was kinda surprised that octaroon was defined in dictionary.com as “A person whose ancestry is one-eighth Black.” Are there different words for people who are 1/8 White or 1/8 Asian?
jayjay now I’m gonna have to cut ya! 
On the startled reactions upon people meeting me for the first time. I call it the Lethal Weapon Syndrome syndrome: “But, but, but…you’re black” True story, I was at the Paris Air Show a few years ago and was having some drinks with some other people in the industry when I met a guy with the same name as my own. He did that impression perfectly. We spent the rest of the Convention going ‘but, but, but…’ every time we encountered each other. It was a stitch.
The whole mulatto, quadroon, octaroon model has a long history, mostly in Louisiana. Historically, the blackness of a biracial person was measured, not the whiteness. And also historically, biracial blacks were much more common than biracial Asians.
There was (as recently as the first half of the last century) a very strict (and black-enforced) social layering based upon the degree of African blood one had and the lightness of one’s skin. To a less overt degree, that continues in some areas today (see the debutante ball chapter in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil for an (I’m sure) dramatized example).
Basically, no, there’s no word for 1/8 white or 1/8 asian, because historically it wasn’t as socially important.
This attitude can be lethal. When my daughter was in 4th grade her grades suddenly dropped. Her reading level dropped from 12th grade to 3rd on the standardized tests. Her father and I were called in to meet with her teacher.
After a few conversations with her, we found out the kids in her class were calling her Eggbert, Oreo and Wannabe. We talked to her and convinced her that she wasn’t “talking white” and being black doesn’t mean being stupid.
When I lived in Deep South Georgia, in the PeeWee football league, one team had two Tommy Johnsons (or whatever), one white, one black. Most people just thought it was kind of amusing (after all, the area was probably 1/3 black). IIRC, they went by “Salt” and “Pepper” at team practices and games.
I know how that is. When I went to a private school, I didn’t run into those problems. But once I transferred to a public school :eek:. My last two years of school were miserable. Black people picked on me for “trying to be white”. White people ignored me because I was “trying to be white”. I ended up with some of my dearest friends, who last I checked are classified as “freaks and geeks”. I Wouldn’t trade them for the world.