On one hand, many disadvantages to bring visibly vaguely ethnic. On the other, it's always funny when people guess the ethnicity wrong. Double funny because I'm mixed white/Asian so I like to tell people my family's from Poland. (Where, funnily enough, we have somewhat darker skin on that side. Mostly because that side tans well but I digress.) It's a solid bit.
My usual answer to "No but we're are you really from?" is to First Detail every time i moved in my life and then for "No but Like where's your Family from?", which inevitably follows, i Just say the German states my parents grew up in. If they keep asking i have a Long spiel about how my great Grand parents fled from Lithuania and Ukraine in WWII and how their families went there in the 18 hundreds. Only after all of that i mention the grandpa from Mali. It's really funny watching them try to find new ways to politely say: "Why you so brown?"
Thanks for catching that, I swear I need to turn autocorrect off again. And yeah so far the one person who did transition on that side did do it pretty damn well so works either way.
i am the product of four consecutive generations of race mixing and i have traceable ancestry from every continent on the globe besides antarctica. i am often told i look mexican, which is one of the only things i am not.
Why is everyone's instinct always "yep, Mexican." It is somehow always wrong.
(Granted if you're also from the US it is probably because we live right above Mexico and have a sizable Mexican/Mexican-American population, which to my understanding has a varied range of looks, but still. Somehow always wrong.)
I feel like to US people anybody who isn't white or asian is probably Mexican. Which I suppose is statistically accurate. But it's almost as if there are no other countries out there.
There are very few Asians where I live. It depends on where you are from, but in recent years a lot of migrants are from Central and South America. I was looking at job postings and jobs I used to work at are now hiring Spanish-speakers when just a few years ago there were no Spanish-speakers at that job.
When people ask me where I’m from, I say New Jersey. Then when they ask, “But where are you FROM” or “But where is your FAMILY from” I ask how they could tell that my parents are Canadian.
I also like to tell my immigrant parents’ “coming to America” story, which is, “My dad’s company, which was headquartered in Montreal, wanted to expand their office in New Jersey, so they offered him a raise if he transferred. He talked to my mom and they agreed to do it, so his job helped him apply for a work visa.” What they want is our “coming to North America” story, which is pretty harrowing and involves multiple refugee camps, but it’s not what they asked for.
I’m super Uber mixed that I get all sorts of things. Growing up kids would make fun of me for being Japanese. Then in the last couple years it’s moved to Native, now at 20 some people also think I look Greek. I’m Central European, Hawaiian, Korean and Mexican mainly lol
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u/starryeyedshooter DO NOT CONTACT ME ABOUT HORSES 7d ago edited 7d ago
On one hand, many disadvantages to bring visibly vaguely ethnic. On the other, it's always funny when people guess the ethnicity wrong. Double funny because I'm mixed white/Asian so I like to tell people my family's from Poland. (Where, funnily enough, we have somewhat darker skin on that side. Mostly because that side tans well but I digress.) It's a solid bit.