Split-second identity

How long does it usually take to make an assumption about someone's ethnicity? Yesterday, I was on the bus and there were three people sitting next to me, one guy and two girls. The bus hadn't left yet and they were bored, so they passed the time by talking about the people they could see through the window. And they used race to describe the people. I overheard one of the girls say, "that White guy is cute." It took her literally less than one second to conclude it was a White male. She looked at him and, a split-second later, she made that comment. It surprised me how fast she made an assumption about a stranger's ethnicity. It's a little disturbing that people can jump to conclusions so quickly when it comes to race.

Many people have four "preset" racial boxes in their heads: White, Asian, Black, Latino. And they throw people into the box that fits best (based on the person's appearance). If they can't fit them into one of those boxes, they just avoid the topic of ethnicity altogether. And I have noticed this too; when people try to describe a person whose ethnicity is unclear, they just don't mention it. If that guy standing outside the bus window looked mixed-race instead of White, that girl would have just said, "that guy is cute."

I hate to admit it, but this is why I wish I looked more mixed-race. It seems like people who don't look like a specific ethnicity are less likely to be labeled racially, and if they can't be labeled racially, doesn't that mean they're less likely to suffer from prejudice? Of course I'm not saying they're "immune," as I wrote more than a year ago.


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Undercover half-Filipino girls

Last year, I ran into an old classmate whom I went to school with back in 1998. It was the first time we had seen each other in 8 years, and I discovered something new about her: her ethnicity. When we were going to school together, it was long before I was thinking about race all the time, so I never thought about what ethnicity she was. But I did subconsciously assume that she's White. She had dark brown hair, round brown eyes, and was one of the tallest girls in the class. I guess she looked like a Latina with strong Spaniard blood, but other than that, she just looked White to me.

When I found out what her actual ethnicity is, it was a complete surprise: she's half Filipino (and half White).

A few weeks ago, I found out another old classmate of mine is also half Filipino and half White...I went to high school with her and I always thought she's only Filipino.

Learning about their real ethnicities didn't change the way I feel about them, but it definitely changed the way I see them; which is strange because they've had the same identity their entire lives. It felt weird to "discover" their ethnicities...after I've known them for years. Has that ever happened to you? You know somebody for a long time, then you get really surprised when you learn what their heritage is? I felt like I was meeting a new person. It's like they were wearing a mask all those years--a mask that was only in my mind--and I just unmasked them.

Experiences like these are reminders that not only should we never assume people's ethnicities, but we also shouldn't be shy about asking them about it if we've known them for a while.


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Single-parent heritage

Whenever people see a child with only one parent, they usually assume the kid is the same ethnicity as that parent. If there's a girl who is half Asian and half White, and people see her with her Asian father, most people will assume she's Asian. But if people see that same girl with only her White mother, they'll likely assume she's White.

As if it wasn't bad enough that people make these assumptions, the American government used to do this when collecting census data. Before the 2000 U.S. Census, mixed-race people in the United States could only choose one ethnicity. A woman named Susan Graham was filling out the Census in 1990, and she couldn't find a place on the form for her multiracial children. She asked the U.S. Census Bureau about it and they told her that mixed-race children are counted as the mother's ethnicity!

Graham is white. Her husband is black. When she received her 1990 census form, she complained to the census bureau that there was no place for her children. An official told her that children take the race of the mother because "in cases like these we always know who the mother is, but we don't know who the father is."

About the same time, her son was starting kindergarten. Her husbnd took him to school. [sic] A teacher, filling out a school form, concluded her son was black.

"We had the same child who was white on the census, black in school and multiracial at home," Graham said. "And I thought there's something wrong with this picture."

(Source)

Like she says, when the same person is White on the Census, Black in school, and mixed-race at home...there's something wrong.

This problem was fixed in the U.S. Census in 2000, but it still exists elsewhere. Many people still assume a person's mother and father are always the same ethnicity, and when they see someone who is biracial, they usually force them into one side. A well-known example of this is how the media usually refers to Tiger Woods as African-American. He's actually only 1/4 Black and is more Asian than any other race, but almost nobody calls him Asian-American.


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More than Indian or Chinese

On July 22, 2005, police in London, England mistakenly killed a man because they thought he was a terrorist. People said the guy had an "Asian" appearance. On June 30, 2007, there was an attack at Glasgow International Airport in Scotland, and the suspects were also described as "Asian."

But wait.

Did they mean these guys looked Chinese? In America, if someone looks "Asian" it means they look "Chinese" (regardless of what ethnicity they actually are). But these events happened in the United Kingdom; when they said "Asian" they meant Indian (from India). The American media would never use the word "Asian" to describe people from India (maybe they would use the term "South Asian").

Most people will agree Filipinos are Asian, but I have never heard people use "Asian" to describe their appearances. In the US, Asian is generalized as Chinese. In the UK, Asian is generalised as Indian. In the Philippines there are people who look Chinese, Indian, or a mix of both, like boxer Manny Pacquiao (picture above).

"Asian" usually refers to Chinese or Indian, but it doesn't always mean people from China and India.

In the United States, "Asian" usually means people from here:


...Vietnamese, Japanese, and Koreans are generalized as "Chinese."

But in the UK, "Asian" is:



...Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh are also included.

I don't know what "Asian" means in Australia/NZ or Canada. If you are from those countries, please comment.

In any case, "Asian" more accurately means people from here:




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The most popular question

There's a woman on YouTube known as HappySlip (real name: Christine Gambito), and she's become quite popular in the past year. Being popular on YouTube means millions of people around the world watch your videos, and of course, this also means being watched by different races and ethnicities. In one of HappySlip's videos, she answers some of the questions that many people on YouTube have asked her, and she says the most popular question is:

"Are you Filipino?"

Link to that video: HappySlip Vlog #1

This made me think "why is THAT the most common question?" There's a lot of other questions people could ask her, like: "what's your real name?" or "are you married?" For some reason, what people want to know the most is if she's Filipino! It seems like people get uncomfortable when they can't figure out someone's ethnicity, and HappySlip's appearance does look racially unclear. I remember seeing a comment on another video of hers' and it said: "are you Spanish?" (this question can either mean: "are you Latino?" or "are you Spaniard?").

Another reason I was surprised about "are you Filipino?" being the most asked question is because many people haven't even heard of Filipinos. I know that's hard to believe, but the Philippines isn't exactly a world-famous country, and YouTube is a global community, so it's surprising that her fans from around the world would ask that. I would've expected "are you Mexican?" to be a more popular question towards her instead of "are you Filipino?" because Mexico is a lot more well-known compared to the Philippines. (And HappySlip looks like she could pass for Mexican).


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Crossing the White line

This is something I always think about. People from WHAT part of the world can be considered White? It's easy to say White people are Europeans, but it's not as simple as that. Where does Europe end and the non-White part of the world begin? Countries like Greece and Turkey are at the very edge of Europe. Do people in these countries count as White? Middle Eastern people are sometimes considered White, and I guess that makes sense, because another word for White person is "Caucasian", and Caucasian refers to the Caucasus Mountains, which are in the Arab part of the world.

An interesting thing I've noticed is, some Europeans will hesitate to call themselves "White." One time, this guy on the train was telling me about his ethnic heritage, and I asked him if he was White. He said, "well I wouldn't say 'White'" and then he listed a bunch of ethnic groups--all of which were from Europe! If he's full European, why doesn't he identify as White? I think it's because not all European ethnicities fit into the common idea of what a White person is. Another time, I was talking to a girl about one of her friends, and she said her friend was half Japanese. And then I said, "is she half White?" She hesitated for a moment and then said "half Greek." She didn't say "yes" or "no" to my question of "is she half White?" That probably meant she didn't know if Greek people are White. And it is kind of hard to tell what Greeks are exactly; Greece is located at a global crossroads (it's in the middle of Europe, Africa, and the Middle East). The same thing goes for countries like Armenia, Iran, and Iraq. Are they Asian countries? European countries? Are people from those countries White?

Sometimes I wonder if Italian people are White. I once thought they're Hispanic because some of them look Mexican and Italian sounds like Spanish, but they're obviously not Hispanic because they don't have a Spaniard history. Some Italians, Portuguese, and Spanish people have darker skin than other Europeans, so I never thought of them as White people. But technically, they ARE White? I guess the general idea is: if they're in Europe, they're White. But again, where does Europe end?

My conclusion is, the people who are usually thought of as being White are: British people, Scandinavian people, and people from German-speaking countries. I noticed, the more southern or eastern a European country is, the less likely the people in that country will be considered White.

Another good question is, where does Europe end and Asia begin? Arab countries are in the middle of these 2 continents, and not surprisingly, many Arabs look like a mix of European and Asian.


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My name is...who?

Right now, I'm in this class about race and ethnicity, and on the first day, the professor made us write our name on the board and explain the ethnic origins of it. The professor who's running it is African-American and she told us how people never expect her because of her European-sounding name. She was telling us how this girl from an African-American organization was "relieved" when she met her, because the girl had expected a White person.

This mistaken name-ethnicity experience seems to be even more common among mixed-race people. For example, if you're half Asian and your last name is Asian (because your dad is the Asian parent) then people will probably expect you to be full Asian if they see only your name. I knew this girl who ordered pizza over the phone, and when she went to pick it up from the store, they didn't believe she was the one who ordered. They were like, "you're not Asian!" And they made her show I.D. She is Chinese from her father's side, but she doesn't look very Chinese (she's half White). Obviously, those people at the pizza place have never heard of biracial people. Or at least, they assumed only Asian-looking people can have Asian names.

Many Filipinos are familiar with this. Most Filipinos have a Spanish last name so people would always expect them to be Mexican or some kind of Latino. I know Filipinos who get calls from telemarketers speaking Spanish and junk mail (e-mail and regular mail) in Español. It also happens the other way around with Filipinos; some Filipinos look Chinese, so people would be suprised when they hear a Spanish name. A general rule I've invented is: if you look Chinese and you have a Spanish last name...you're Filipino (I know it's not always true, but that's usually the case).

On a slightly unrelated note, I first heard about Eminem 8 years ago when his song "My Name Is" became popular. At first, I thought he was Black (I'm sure other people thought so too). And it wasn't even because of his name, I guess his voice somehow sounded Black to me. See, even if you don't know a person's name OR what they look like, you still might get their ethnicity wrong.


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Martin Luther King Jr. was Irish

Today is Martin Luther King Day, the only American holiday that honors a Black person. Most people know King was an African-American, but how many people know he was part Irish? That's right, the most famous Black person in U.S. history actually had some European ancestry. According to this page from Stanford University, King's grandfather, James Albert King, was Irish-African (that probably means he was half Irish and half Black) which would make Martin Luther King one-eighth Irish. And in the past, I read somewhere that he was 1/8 Irish. So it's probably true.

Some people might be shocked to know he was part Irish, but it's really nothing surprising. Many African-Americans today have distant non-Black ancestors (usually American Indian or European). This likely explains why some African-Americans are more light-skinned than others (and these particular Black people aren't known to be multiracial). Some examples I can think of are:

Beyoncé
Will Smith
Colin Powell
Michael Jackson

These people are all generally assumed to be "full" Black, but they are rather light-skinned. Colin Powell certainly looks like he's more White than Black (in my opinion). Before Michael Jackson surgically became White, he had about the same light-brown skin color as Will Smith. And I've never heard anything about Beyoncé being multiracial.

It is possible that these people have more European ancestry than Martin Luther King did (since King was known to be part Irish, and he was darker than most of them). I can understand why he's considered to be full Black instead of mixed-race (1/8 Irish is very small), but I wish more people would know that "full Black" doesn't necessarily mean "100% African heritage." In fact, "100% American heritage" would be more accurate, keeping in mind that "American" is not a race or an ethnicity, it's an identity that transcends both of those.


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The Face of Tomorrow

As we enter a new year, many of us must be wondering what the future will be like. As someone who has a habit of viewing things through a racial lens, I'm wondering about the possible ethnicities people might have in the future--and what these people might look like. With anti-miscegenation laws broken down and continuing immigration (not just in America, but around the world), mixed-race people are becoming more common and the world is beginning to see human faces that almost didn't exist a century ago. But what will happen a century from now?

Today, there are an increasing number of people who are half one ethnicity, and half another ethnicity; if you go to places like Hawaii, you'll encounter people whose ancestry is even more complicated (and you can usually tell by the way they look). If you ask a young person what his or her ethnicity is, don't always expect a one-word answer.

So without getting into genetics or biology, what will people look like in the 22nd or 23rd century? We can almost be certain that they won't look like anyone who has ever lived. Faces of the future will embody the mixing of races that is continually becoming more common today. They probably won't look like any ethnic appearance that has ever existed. This has happened before. Many Latino/Hispanic people are generations and generations of mixed Native American and Spanish ancestry, and as a result, many of them look multiracial (on a related note, people who are half-Asian and half-European are commonly mistaken to be Mexican). Do you think there were people who looked like modern-day Latinos before the Spanish arrived there?

The mixed-looking appearance of many Latino people is a result of colonial mixing hundreds of years ago, and we have to wonder: what kind of facial features will today's racial mixing bring about hundreds of years from now? In today's multiracial people, we can see the faces of tomorrow. But a photographer named Mike Mike is taking a different approach.

The curiously-named Mike Mike is from Istanbul, a city that's historically considered to be in both Europe and Asia, and sure enough, many of the residents there look mixed-race. This is probably what inspired him to do a photography project called The Face of Tomorrow.

Mike is going to several cities around the world, and in each city, he takes pictures of 100 random people, and then combines all of them (using computer graphics) to make 2 faces: one male, and one female. The idea is that these 2 faces will be what a person in each city will look like a century from now, and that a city's population represents its racial (and facial) future. From the website:

"The large metropolises of the world are magnets for migrants from all parts of the planet resulting in new mixtures of peoples. What might a typical inhabitant of this new metropolis look like in one or two hundred years if they were to become more integrated? [...] if you could combine all the faces in a city right now you would be looking at the future face of that city."

Here are a few faces that've been done already:

Rio de Janeiro

Hong Kong

London

Sydney

The Sydney face was done with people at Sydney University, so not surprisingly, it looks more mixed-race than the others (in my opinion) since colleges tend to be diverse. The London face, which looks very European, surprised me because my brother went there and he tells me it's very diverse. (Mike explains on the website that the London face isn't very accurate because the photos he took for it happened to be in a very White part of the city).

The Hong Kong and Rio de Janeiro faces, as well as most of the other ones done so far, look more like a general appearance of a modern-day resident in each city, instead of a future mixed-race person, because a lot of those cities aren't really melting pots or salad bowls. But what if The Face of Tomorrow was done in North American cities? I would love to see what this project yields in super-diverse places like New York, Toronto, or San Francisco; those cities are just begging to be included (or at least, I'm begging that they be included).

It's probably impossible to know for sure what people's faces will look like hundreds of years from now. With the mixing of so many ethnicities, it's possible that everyone will eventually look like the same race--the human race. With a new year upon us, we're one step closer to seeing these faces...whatever they will look like.


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"Asian" girl (part 2)

This is related to a previous post I made.

I saw this picture on a stock photos archive, and the caption said "Young Hispanic girl doing homework on the floor." But if you look at the tags below, you'll see the words "Asian ethnicity." Apparently someone couldn't decide whether this girl is Hispanic/Latino or Asian...so they put both.

(Click on the picture to see what I'm talking about)

The Multi-angle Phenomenon

This week's topic is familiar to many mixed-race people. Have you ever glanced at someone, and then when you saw them again...they looked like a different race from when you first saw them? I'm talking about how a person's racial appearance can change depending on the distance, lighting, and angle from which you're looking at them. This works better in real life than in pictures, but I'll try to illustrate.

What ethnicity does this woman look like?























To me, she looks Latina or southern European (she looks Italian or some kind of Mediterranean ethnic group in my opinion).

Ok, how about the woman below? What ethnicity?















Asian? Most people would say she looks Asian (maybe Chinese or Japanese).

What's interesting is...it's the same woman in both pictures!

Let's do a guy now.
The man below (on the left) looks like what ethnicity?


























Most people would say he's Black.

And the guy below?

























Yes, it's the same guy in both pictures. In the 2nd photo, I think he could pass for Filipino, or maybe a Latino with strong American Indian blood.

"So what's the point?" you're probably asking. My point is, people will not always look like their ethnicity. The woman above is Tammy Duckworth, who is currently running for congress in Illinois, USA. She is half Thai and half White. The guy above is Will Demps, who is a football player for the NFL (New York Giants). He is half Korean and half Black.

Did you notice how their races changed? (In my opinion at least). They're the same two people, but their ethnicities changed because of the lighting and camera angle. This could cost them their lives if they looked like a certain race at the wrong time.

What if Will Demps was in a dark room and then he encountered a racist Filipino who's killing Black people? Do you think the killer's gonna go "hmm...I don't know"?

Or what if that same racist Filipino person saw Will Demps in bright sunlight? Let's just say, Demps would look more Black in a dark room.

This isn't just a case of "what if." This has happened. After 9/11, Middle Eastern people weren't the only ones who experienced racism, but also "dark-skinned Latinos with goatees." In many cases, these Latinos were mistaken to be Arab and then were attacked based on that. I guess the angle and lighting made them look more Arab at the time.

Does this girl look Asian?

I was browsing around on Flickr when I saw these pictures, and I noticed one of the tags the photographer put on these pictures was "Asian". Meaning: the photographer is saying "this girl is Asian."

But I thought to myself, "this girl doesn't look Asian."















Maybe this girl is mixed Asian with another ethnicity, but the other tags don't indicate that. It only says "Asian." Maybe the photographer knows this little girl and her ethnic background? Or maybe he or she didn't know the girl and just guessed? Why did the photographer tag these pictures "Asian"? If he/she didn't know her, did she really look Asian? I'm not saying: "this girl is definetely not Asian", I'm saying, she doesn't LOOK Asian TO ME. To me, she looks more Latina or South American, so it surprised me when I saw she was tagged as "Asian." If she's only part Asian, why isn't the rest of her heritage tagged?

Ok, you're probably wondering, "what's the big deal?" "does it matter what her race is?"

Unless I am completely wrong and this girl happens to be full-blooded Asian, this girl is either part Asian and part another race...or she isn't Asian at all. If she is part Asian, did the photographer know that? If he did, why didn't he/she tag the rest of her heritage? If not, why was she tagged "Asian"? If she isn't Asian at all, then the photographer was probably just guessing her race, but does she really look Asian?















My point is two things:

1. People have different perspectives of what an ethnicity looks like; I'm not saying the photographer was wrong and I'm right. I'm saying, if he/she was guessing her ethnicity, then it shows that people have different visual perceptions of a racial group.

2. Multiracial people are usually lumped into just 1 category. If this girl is mixed-race, then why weren't all of her ethnicities tagged? If she's Asian and another race, why is "Asian" the only one that's mentioned?

Many people are unaware that a human being can belong to more than one race. We aren't all just White, or just Black, or just Asian, just Latino, etc.

I know all of this is just random, harmless pictures on the Internet, but what if it were something worse? What if, instead of a photographer matching a race to someone's picture, it was a White supremacist matching a race to a potential victim? I might sound like I'm exaggerating, but we can't escape the reality that hate crimes still exist. Like I mentioned 3 days ago, this seemingly harmless process of guessing someone's ethnicity can potentially determine if you are murdered or not.

"Americans" are NOT White!

"American" does NOT mean "White person"

Have you noticed when people talk about Americans, they're usually thinking of White people? This is an insult to people in the USA who are NOT European. I noticed a lot of people ouside of America use the word "American" is if it's an ethnicity. As in: "are you half American?" or "are you full-blooded American?" or "I'm 1/8 American!"

Can people PLEASE realize that there is no such thing as "American blood" and that Americans can be from ANY race, because "American" is not an ethnicity!

I notice many people think this way:

1. African-Americans are "Black"
2. Asian-Americans are "Asian"
3. Latino-Americans are "Mexican"
4. Native Americans are "Indian"

BUT...

Euro-Americans (White people) are "American"

C'mon, I mean, a man who just came here from Europe last month will "look more American" than a woman who's a 3rd or 4th generation Japanese-American. Why? Because he's White and since most people think: "American = White", the American of Japanese descent will look like a foreigner to most people, even though her family has been in the United States for a century!

I wish people would realize that nobody "looks" American, because Americans don't HAVE a "look". We're diverse. We're not all White. You can't tell if someone is American just by looking at them.

And American people who are mixed-race? Don't get me started!