Ethnicity and other things

[teaberryblue]

I had a really fascinating conversation with hymnicide last night. We talked about a variety of things, like alternative education, what it means to have career goals as a teenager, ethnic identification, and definition of 'whiteness'-- how some people are considered white in one geographic area and not considered white in another, or how some white-skinned ethnic groups are considered 'more white' than other white-skinned ethnic groups. We talked about how, growing up where we did, about half the people we know are Jewish, and most of the Christians we know are Catholic, not Protestant. We talked about some of the things arasan discussed in her post yesterday: about the real failure in the US to create pedestrian-friendly cities, as opposed to European cities that make it very easy to walk everywhere and to everything. We talked about the lack of a need for a car where we grew up in comparison to many places in the US. It was interesting.

Nora and I both grew up about ten-fifteen minutes away from each other, although she's more than ten years younger than I am. We had an interesting conversation about how college admissions have changed and how expectations of kids in high school have changed. Even how the reputations and demographics of certain top universities have changed: I don't want to name the school publicly, but she is looking at a school that I had a really hard time with when I went to visit. When I went there as a 16 year old bisexual kid looking at colleges, I was scared by new I heard about gay kids getting bullied on campus. She says that the same school now is reputed for being very open and liberal. Man, things change a lot.

Anyway, we started talking about whether being 'white' in New York is different from being 'white' in other parts of the country. For example, in some places, Jews and Italians are both definitely considered white, while in other places, they are definitely not. Growing up, I had a lot of friends whom I considered white who were not treated as white in other situations: Israelis, Iranians, Armenians, and so on. So I decided to make a poll about ethnicity. I would like to say that I had trouble wording some of these questions, so if you find the terminology limiting or in any way offensive, I apologize in advance, and please feel free to correct me or offer your own suggestions in the comments. I had a hard time deciding when to use 'white' as a label and when to use 'majority' as a label. Same goes for anything I might have overlooked.



[Poll #1172765]

Comments

[styletax.livejournal.com]

My experiences being the minority come from the years I lived in Japan. If you want to know about some of them (good and bad), just ask! :)

[zia-narratora.livejournal.com]

Yeah! That was one of the things I was thinking about when I was making this poll-- I think that for most people, you are either in the majority or minority and it never changes. It must be very strange to be used to being treated one way and then go somewhere where you're suddenly the 'other.'

[clytemnestra215.livejournal.com]

Interesting poll! As far as ethnicity goes, I'd say Jewish, but then the questions asked about countries, so I added 'Russian heritage," since that's 75% of my family's background.

I would consider myself white, but at the same time I wouldn't consider myself an ethnic majority, just because there are so many times, especially around December, when we're basically hit over the head that we live in a country where our experiences are not the default and are made to go along with things just to make others not spaz out - and they do spaz, some of them, if it's even hinted that you don't want to deal with any Christmas stuff. Christmas is all around, and apathy isn't received well. Basically, in order to get along with people, you have to pretend to care about their holiday for a month, as though this were your excellent experience as well, or things get sticky and sometimes people get affronted, even if you're being polite.

I wrote an essay in university years ago in a nonfiction class about being a Jewish American at Christmas, and I might go through it sometime and update it.

[zia-narratora.livejournal.com]

See, I am in a similar but not identical situation because I am ethnically part Jewish but I was raised Catholic. Jewishness in itself is interesting because it is both a faith AND an ethnicity-- and being a German Jew or a Russian Jew is different from being German or Russian. I part identify as Jewish because being ethnically Jewish is different from being religiously Jewish and it's important because of issues like Tay-Sachs. And because, weirdly, when I leave New York, I get treated differently in some places because I 'look Jewish' without my even mentioning it. The funny thing was that I grew up in a mostly-Jewish neighborhood and looked like the other kids, but was in the minority because I didn't go to Hebrew school and such, even though my family still paid lip service to Passover & other major holidays (we always had a seder but didn't get rid of chometz or stop eating anything- because, well, being Catholic, it's very hard to observe Easter in the middle of Passover).

[applespicy.livejournal.com]

Though I answered question 1 with my "background," I really don't consider myself Irish/English/Welsh/NA. Some of my great-great-grandparents were immigrants, but all I have ever known is being an American. If cultural practices were passed down, they didn't make it to me.

I like that you included "hometown" and "where you live now" in your questions about ethnicity, because that's definitely something that I noticed when I came to school in Arkansas. This place is white. In my hometown, white people are now actually in the "minority" (though, of course, white people still have all of the authority, sadly), as the area has a lot of Hispanic transplants. It was very strange for me to leave that behind and come somewhere where being anything but white was really pretty rare.

I answered "no" for the last question, as I've never had that feeling, but I'll admit that I have not often been in situations where I am the only white person. Judging the feelings I would have, then, is kind of difficult.

[zia-narratora.livejournal.com]

I've lived in many different places with very different ethnic makeup, so I definitely know that where you are now might be totally different from where you were raised-- I actually went to a college that was supposedly more diverse than my high school, because there was a larger percentage of African-American students, but I actually felt like it was more 'mainstream white' in attitudes than where I was raised. And I definitely felt like my college was segregated in ways my high school wasn't.

In my case, my family's cultural practices were always put ahead of being 'American,' which was one of the things Nora and I were talking about that interested us.

[arielchan.livejournal.com]

I feel like the minority/majority issue is real weird in my part of Texas?

Okay first. My ethnicity answer has nothing to do with anything at all. Because the last generation of my family that had anything to do with our various homelands was so long ago. At the same time, I don't know that I would identify myself as an American. It's not that my family has been in the USA a long time, it's that my family has been in Texas a long time. If someone asked me where my family was from, I'd say "Texas". I mean, my dad's mum's side is one of the founding families of Fredericksburg. Beyond that, when my friends start saying "Oh, I'm Irish" or "My family is German", it's kind of awkward to say "Oh, I'm British/German/Scots/Russian."

My part of Texas is split on ethnic makeup, really. I wouldn't say white or hispanic is the majority. We're sort of even. And groups really tend to mix, especially since you get interesting situations like a friend of mine in high school. Her last name was Avery. She had blond hair, grey eyes, and olive skin, and she spoke fluent Spanish because her grandmother didn't know a word of English. *shrug* So how you get treated based on skin color, and whether or not you get treated differently really depends on the area you're in and the people you're around. Because some areas the majority tends one direction, and in some areas it's another.

[zia-narratora.livejournal.com]

I think Texas is a lot like New York and a few other places in this country in that even though we're not culturally similar to you, our own cultural/ethnic issues are so different from other parts of the country that it's sort of like we're our own countries? That was part of what Nora and I were talking about last night. New York is such an ethnic and religious hodgepodge that it's hard to describe to other people sometimes. I had a friend in high school who was part black, part Japanese, and being raised Jewish, for example.

[evil-laugher.livejournal.com]

I'm white, the most conventionally white kind of white, and I grew up and still live in an area outside DC that's mostly black (with a growing Hispanic population). If I take public transportation from my area, everyone will be black, but once I get into the city center, it'll be much more white, sometimes the majority. College was very white, though it's considered "diverse", and I felt a little out of place regarding that for the first year. The same kind of went for study abroad in England (maybe that was because they all thought I was gay and treated me thusly?), and all my friends in my hall ended up being Asian international students, ha ha.

The "Jewish people aren't actually white" thing is always so weird to me.

[zia-narratora.livejournal.com]

See, I felt the same way in college? And in my case my college had more black students than my high school my a long shot, but I still felt like it was more 'white' than my high school experience.

The Jewish thing is weird to me, too. Partly because I grew up in a town that was mostly Jewish.

[rowena742.livejournal.com]

It might be interesting to put this on one of those survey sites that gives you multiple pages and see if it changes the results any. For #1, I was automatically going to follow the standard government designations and put White/Caucasian, but then I looked through the rest of the questions and thought, "No, acknowledging the Judaism probably makes more sense in context."

[zia-narratora.livejournal.com]

Actually, what I should have done is worded that one as "what do you consider your ethnicity to be?" I think? Because what I was trying to look at was what people consider themselves vs. how they feel the rest of the world sees them? Like, in New York, I am definitely Standard White Girl #452, but in other parts of the country, I am Italian Girl or Jewish Girl.

Teel deer on my family..

[http://users.livejournal.com/_samalander/]

This is a hard poll for me to fill out - when I am asked where I'm from, I say "the US" but my ethnicity is "Eastern European Mutt." Besides the history of the Jews in terms of being constantly kicked out of countries, there is the fact that no two of my relatives are from the same place, thereby making be not identify with a country so much as a region.

I also don't know where all my relatives are from - in part because of the Holocaust, in part because of Ellis Island, and in part because one great-grandmother was a dirty liar.
We also have weird anomalies - like Mediterranean anemia - that shouldn't be there and we can't account for them.

Then there is the fact that the place I grew up was predominantly White and Asian, but the area where I live now is much more Latino/a and Black. So if I go to my parents house, the people around there look like me. Around here, not so much. They're about 20 miles apart.

I have been told in the past that I am not white because I am Jewish, but my skin was once an issue in a class I was teaching for an internship. My students were fifth graders and all POC. More than once they made reference to my skin color in a nasty way, and I heard one parent complaining about "that white girl." I don't know if it was me or another, but it made me very uncomfortable.

When I was in London, a few of the Brits I talked to on a regular basis had never known a Jew before. There, I was ethnically "Jewish" rather than anything else. I went looking for something I wrote about that, but I'm not sure where it went.

Anyway. That's enough from me. I think I qualify as "ethnically confusing."

Re: Teel deer on my family..

[zia-narratora.livejournal.com]

When I've been in England, I am definitely "Jewish" even though I'm not even religiously Jewish, so I get you on that. I think the whole Jewish history thing is way too confusing for any poll to describe it-- my grandfather may or may not be German, but he went through a German agency to get adopted by a Christian family who may or may not have been related so that he could get out of Europe during the Holocaust. So we have excellent records of his adoptive family, but nothing about his original, Jewish family.

[kikithepirate.livejournal.com]

Like styletax, living in Singapore was a year where I was very very clearly suddenly in the minority. That year made me realize a lot of new things about race and ethnicity that had never occurred to me before, because I had always considered them within a western context.

Also, on top of my year in Asia, I've lived in California, in DC, in Ohio and in Iowa - all of which have incredibly different racial and ethnic diversities (or lack thereof) so I feel like I've gotten very different perspectives and experiences in each place.

The only problem I sort of had a problem with was the very last one - I feel like it needed a caveat. I wouldn't say that I would be uncomfortable thrown into ANY situation where I was the only member of my race or ethnicity. If I was, it would have been a really really long year in Singapore. But there are certain ethnic groups with whom I don't have any experience, so I might feel more uncomfortable around, say, a group of Palestinian students, because I have never had many Palestinian friends and I don't know a great deal about their culture or values. But that's also where nationality comes into play, which I think is a huge thing that this poll ignores. A group of Palestinian-Americans would be much easier for me to feel comfortable around, because we would all have the American cultural bond as a starting-ground. But if it were a group of students from Palestine, I might feel more uncomfortable and out of place. Does that make sense?

[zia-narratora.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that makes total sense and that was a question where I was definitely considering throwing in more options but didn't want to overcomplicate it.

Part of the ignoring nationality was deliberate, because that's what Nora and I were talking about-- we wanted to see how people relate to themselves in terms of heritage versus nationality, and if you have separate questions for each one, you don't see whether people choose one first over the other.

[spiralstairs.livejournal.com]

Oh! The first one asked for our heritage? XD My bad. Um, Irish, Austro-Hungarian, Czech, and Welsh. If I was asked to define myself, I'd say New Yorker. I always felt a closer connection to my state than my country. I think it's because we have such a defined culture separate from what could be called American culture. Even then, I always felt weird identifying as my ethnicity first. It's always been in the back of my mind and something like, "what? Oh yeah, I'm a chick and I'm white and I'm from New York. Whatever. You see South Park last night?"

One of my pet peeves in high school (once my senses came to me as I was kind of a moron through most of high school), were the white kids who tried to have white pride, but without the racist connotations. (They kind of failed. XD) It always sounded like they didn't care about where they came from (and they knew damn well where their ancestors came from), and it was first priority to show the black kids and hispanic kids that they weren't so different, but they didn't do such a good job of it. >.< I think the best example I can use is what makes up the white liberal bingo card.

I was talking to a friend the other day and we decided what qualifies as white is if you can join the klan. So Irish, Jewish, Italian, and anything not WASP is disqualified, which is kind of my elitist idea that you should be proud of where you came from instead of a generality. (And I only hold this demand for white folks who actually can find out where they're from. It's not my place to say for others, but then again it's not really my place to say to begin with? But if you know your roots and reject them anyway, I'm kind of...eh.)

[zia-narratora.livejournal.com]

Oh, no, that was actually what Nora and I were talking about, was 'if you ask people what their ethnicity is, will they give you their country of origin, the country they currently live in, or something else?' It was actually that question that gave me the idea to do a poll.

[opaleyes.livejournal.com]

I totally feel the need to elaborate. ::laughs:: I think the setting and gender really change things a bit as well.

I think my issues that I need to work through in regards to other races are extremely class-based. Sort of. I can't explain the way my brain works here.

Ok let's start out with elementary school. I'd say the majority of kids were white. We had 2 Asian kids that I knew, and actually my best friends (3) were all African American. I didn't really think anything of it.

Middle/High school same sort of situation. There were two African American girls in my graduating class. I think only one in the class before me. That girl (I've forgotten her name! Which is a shame because she was awesome) liked to describe herself as the chocolate sprinkle on a vanilla, white frosted cupcake. There was one Asian girl in my graduating class. She was one of the two Asian kids I knew in elementary school, actually. Past that, there weren't really any racial differentiations. Or at least, not that I knew of. I guess I classified everyone else as "white."

College, mostly just more white kids, with a small mix in of African Americans, mostly male. I actually don't think I encountered many African American females at my college. Right now I only know (in person) 1 at all.

There are loads of both Mexican and African American people in the area I live now, and honestly there likely were when I was growing up as well, but I just never knew it because I lived in a very privileged bubble. I'm not sure if other white people are in the majority or not. If you combined Mexicans and African Americans we might well be outnumbered.

I actually find my classism harder to overcome than my racism. Around here though it's easy to confuse the two. If I'm nervous/scared because there's an African American man walking towards me on the street, it's not just because he's African American, but also because he's 1) male, 2) in my area likely to be not-well-off, and 3) most likely race/class/gender to commit a crime for my area. This certainly isn't to say that white people can't and don't commit crimes, but the statistics say that if I get mugged/raped/etc around here, it's going to be by a non-white person. Most of the white people around here are well off, and have no need to commit crimes.

I tend to sympathize a lot with a ton of the illegal and legal immigrants here, because my grandfather was an immigrant from Puerto Rico. They're totally different places, but they have a common language. I've worked with an awful lot of Mexicans, and was comfortable enough with them to hang out outside of work, but I won't go to a Mexican grocery here without Sean. I don't feel safe. I don't know why that is.

Man, I feel like I'm just rambling. Oh, another point. The question about being in the minority. I think I'd feel a little weird if I were the only white person in a group where everyone but me was the same race, but if I were the only white person with a mix of people from a lot of other races I wouldn't be too fussed, I don't think.

Defining white is weird though. I never really thought about it.

I have a lot more I could ramble about, but I'd need prompting, I think. My brain just kind of went "wait, where was I?"

We're actually having a relatively ethnically diverse set of groomsmen at our wedding (I hadn't really thought about it!). Out of 5 guys, one is Armenian, and one is African American. Yeah, the majority is still white, but damn, for the old south, that's pretty diverse!

[zia-narratora.livejournal.com]

I definitely sympathize on the class issues part-- I was less well-to-do than most of my friends, but still upper-middle-class, and my family has only improved themselves financially since then, so my idea of 'poor' is skewed. I have relatives who are much, much poorer than we are, and I think that helps me keep things in perspective, but I think I expect that people have a common set of experiences that we don't.

And the Mexican grocery thing I understand. Being in a community that is predominantly Mexican makes me uncomfortable because I think there are different standards of acceptability for how women are supposed to be treated? And I just plain don't like the way Mexican men treat me. I always feel really guilty saying this, and I feel like, well, how much of this is my issue that I need to get over? Because it makes me feel like I am taking issue with a group of people for their culture, but I can't walk down a street in a Mexican neighborhood without feeling very uncomfortable about the way men are looking at me or speaking to me.

[rhikat.livejournal.com]

Answering question 1 stumped me for a good while, I think mostly because there isn't a term that encompasses the racial and cultural aspect of being a white American and my understanding of ethnicity is that it encompasses both of those. Culturally, "white" seems too broad of a category (which I think is part of what you're getting at in this post? In Minnesota you've got people who could call themselves ethnically Irish or Swedish or German because that's where their ancestors are from and they've kept some of the culture, but still consider themselves white), while "American" really doesn't incorporate race.

I also think part of this lack of term comes from white Americans being in a position of privilege where we don't need to think about what our ethnicity is, because we're the majority/consider ourselves the norm and ethnicity is a way of classifying and describing those other people who don't fit the norm. (See also: White America doesn't have a distinct culture.)

Question 6 I put "It depends." With stores, most people share my ethnicity. On the bus it really depends on where I'm starting from, where I'm going, and what areas I go through to get there. On the bus rise home from work, I'm usually in the ethnic minority--although now that I think about it, the ridership gets whiter the closer we get to my apartment, especially once the bus is out of downtown.

[zia-narratora.livejournal.com]

That was exactly what Nora and I were wondering about-- what do people think of when they see 'ethnicity' ? Especially for Americans, whose 'ethnicity' may be different from their country of origin or the country they live in.

And I think there are so many different kinds of 'Americans,' too-- I would say it is nice to have a term that doesn't define us by race-- I think it was lycanthroffee below who was talking in someone else's journal about how in England, you're "English," and not "African-English." But even among white, Christian Americans, there is a huge cultural divide between, say, people from Northern California and people from Chicago and people from Maine.

I agree that white America as a whole doesn't have a distinct culture, but that's possibly because it's a faulty definition...there are so many cultural differences between the people who are white Americans.

Because I live in the center of the city, my subway is usually a hodgepodge, although if I travel to certain neighborhoods, it will change in its makeup.

[ariesathena.livejournal.com]

That was very hard on my brain to fill out! But now I feel like I need to offer explanations... On the last question, it probably makes me sound more xenophobic than I am, because I'm not inherently uncomfortable being the only white girl in a group, but I wanted a 'it depends' option because there are certain circumstances where I've found it uncomfortable - being the only one who doesn't speak a language or getting lost in a certain area of SE DC. (No, I didn't think I was going to be shot for being a white girl, I just didn't appreciate all the guys yelling catcalls.)

And DC kind of makes my answers confusing anyway, because it's a pretty fucked up city when it comes to racial issues. African Americans are the majority of the population, but the town is so segregated, it's pretty easy to forget that fact if you never venture out of certain areas.

Oh, and my first elementary school was a majority hispanic school in Tucson where they bussed kids in from the surrounding areas for diversity so I was like one of three white kids in my class, but I don't remember thinking that was weird at the time?

[zia-narratora.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I sort of got to the point where I just wanted to give people fewer answers that didn't take differing circumstances into consideration to force them to pick. Partly because I wanted to force myself to own up to my own issues with things like this, too. Like I was saying to Nikki up above, I definitely feel a bit weird in some neighborhoods-- for the same reason you are talking about in SE DC-- I just plain don't like having men make degrading statements about my tits, and it definitely seems to be something that is more acceptable among certain ethnic groups as opposed to others.

That is an interesting experience-- but of course, when you're young, most kids don't realize that their experience is different-- but it isn't often you hear from white kids who were the minority in their schools. I would ask what it was like but, like you said, I'm sure it was just normal to you.

[rougebaiser.livejournal.com]

Very interesting poll.

For question 7 I answered "My experiences were different" primarily because I felt none of the other options applied to me.

While I went to a high school that you might as well have just called All White, and my university was primarily all white as well, I still never felt I shared the same ethnicity with many of them. Much of this, I think, comes from the fact that people see the word "ethnicity" differently.

We used to have Multicultural Day at my school (which we always took to be a bit of a laugh considering how few non-white people went to my school), but it was actually quite interesting. One year we actually spent the day in seminars discussing the concept of ethnicity, and everyone was asked to write down what they believed themselves to be. Our group was a little bit rubbish as our teacher kept trying to convince this kid Jurgen that he is actually "Norwegian-American" whereas in reality he's just...Norwegian.

In the end very few people used the same terms to describe themselves, and it was interesting to see the many different countries that people originated from. But what was more interesting was to see what cultures people identified with now. My friend Allison, for instance, lives in a very Italian household, they hold onto that culture very strongly and live in it, despite living in the US. In my family we live in a very Irish household, as my mother's entire family are basically from Ireland and a lot of the culture has been passed down and is still "kept alive" today.

When I lived in Britain, however, when ethnicity is asked for on forms you do not get Caucasian etc. you get something like this:

White British
White Irish
Other White Background

Black African
Black Caribbean
Other Black Background

etc.

I would always pick White British as it just made the most sense at the time for me, but other people would say to me "You should say Other White, as you're American". But, um, no. Ethnically I'm mostly British, so that's what I put.

But, to answer the question, I have never felt in the majority my whole life. I lived in many countries growing up, and while they were all primarily "white", they were all very different cultures and they've all made me who I am, which is different from who other people are.

Maybe I am just strange but I don't really see there being a real majority or minority, just like race it seems we're lumping people into convenient categories whereas everyone is so different that they're the ultimately the same :)

[kikithepirate.livejournal.com]

Ethnically I'm mostly British, so that's what I put.

I definitely agree with you that the problem here is that "ethnicity" is SUCH a broad term. I define ethnicity based more on culture, whereas based on what you're saying, you base it on ancestry (I think?). I consider my "ethnicity" to be American, because that is the group of people I identify with most closely. For example, I feel that I would have more in common culturally with a black American than I would with a white Italian, even though my great-grandfather was born in Italy. But you're saying that you're "mostly British," I'm guessing based on where your ancestors are from.

Race, religion, culture, and nationality all play a part in deciding whom we identify with, so I definitely think Tea was right on in highlighting the fact that we all define our "ethnicity" as something totally different!

[hymnicide.livejournal.com]

Wow, I get my own tag? I'm flattered! :D

I have lived in Levittown, THE model of suburbia, my whole life. Nearly everyone who lives here is white; you can count the total number of African Americans that go to my high school on one hand, but there may be one or two Asians in each of your classes. The thing that separates Long Island along with the tri-state area in general is that being Jewish is a common thing here. I played Dreidel and ate matsah at my elementary school when the holidays were coming up, in addition to all the normal Christmas things. Jewish and Catholic are about equal here, you're usually one or the other. It's surprising to me that in other parts of the country, those religious groups are considered the minority.

Although my entire high school is white for the most part, nobody affiliates themselves as being white. They're Italian, Irish, Jewish, German, etc. We identify ourselves based on our heritage, and we're proud of it. It's normal to ask what one another's heritage is, and everyone knows their own - and often it's a list of 3-5 different countries.

[ninepointfivemm.livejournal.com]

My elementary and middle school made a huuuuge to-do about celebrating both Hanukkah and Christmas, too. I definitely remember learning to dreidel with chocolate coins, and I got a very thorough education on Hanukkah. In addition to that, we talked about the 5 million variations on the Christmas holidays. I'd say my schools were split 1/3 Jewish, 1/3 Catholic, and 1/3 Protestant. (Being the South, we weren't just Christian, we were either Catholic or Protestant.)

[lookslikelove]

Ethnicity: Freckled Arse Scotswoman. Does that count? I think it should.

I hate St Patrick's Day for this very reason (which makes me a terrible person probably, but it happens), for it's less of a "woo let's be Irish for a day!!" celebration than it is, because as a child, I used to not be allowed to go outdoors on the 12th of July and know why the colour orange is a bad idea for someone of my heritage. Plus, St Patrick's day has for my entire time of living in the States never come and gone without at least a dozen people asking me what it's like to be "Irish" and making leprechaun jokes at my expense. Which isn't funny, as I'm not Irish. :| And if I was, I'd be twice as horrified (plus it's still funny as I live in an urban ghetto where the majority of the population is...not white).

Though I'll admit some of the BEST times I've had was when I was in Mongolia and everything was so different, but at the same time, still enlightening at the same time.

[ninepointfivemm.livejournal.com]

Oh, God, people ask me if I'm Irish all the damn time, and we moved from Scotland 150 years ago! St. Paddy's is annoying because it's like, "Yes, I have red hair. No, I'm not Irish, and the only Irish person we have in our ancestry moved from Scotland in the first place." (He moved from Scotland to Ireland to South Carolina to Texas. I'd classify him as "nomad.")

[oxymoronassoc.livejournal.com]

When I live in England, my English friends would tease me about my Americanness, but they didn't really do it in a cruel way. They were all really jealous I was from California.

I don't usually pick people out by race/ethnicity when I first see them, though if they are in some sort of traditional dress I get curious because fashion and ethnicity interest me. I did notice that in LA the only people who do public transit are usually Hispanics and homeless people of all varieties, esp in West LA.

[oxymoronassoc.livejournal.com]

Also, RE: the What Are You question, I usually say Californian, but if asked to explain my ethnic make-up, I guess I would go into the fact I am half Swedish because my family still does some ethnically Swedish things for, like, Christmas. My Dad's grandparents were from there (on both sides), so he grew up with it and we just incorporated it. My parents also gave my sister and I deliberately Swedish names (like my dad and aunts have too). I had someone take my ID once explain OMG YOU HAVE A REALLY SWEDISH NAME and it was kinda alarming because I don't really consider myself Swedish.

[ninepointfivemm.livejournal.com]

I'm Caucasian, as WASPish as they come, and I would classify myself as very Southern. The whole minority/majority thing is kind of funny (weird way, not haha funny) here. The part of town where I'm from is very white, since it's well-to-do, it's where all the doctors and engineers live, things like that. My elementary school was almost entirely white, with a couple of black kids spread around here and there. In middle and high school, we had a lot more Asians, Hispanic, and black kids, though I was still generally the majority. I had some really good friends in elementary school who were black, though when we went to middle school, they wanted to be more a part of "their ethnic group," so I was cast out. It was weird.

I remember being really offended that a friend's professor (when I was visiting her in Maine) wanted me to speak to my friend's religion class because I was "from the Bible Belt." This person had an idea that because I was from the South, I automatically only knew and accepted Protestanism, when kids who went to my school were Catholic, Jewish (we made a biiiig deal about Hanukkah at my elementary school), Sikh, Hindu, etc... I've had less of an issue because of my ethnicity than because of where I'm from.

Funny thing. You're talking about how people classify you as Jewish when you get out of your area, right? Well, back before I dyed my hair, people would ask me aaaaall the time if I was Jewish (no), Italian (possibly), or Native American (partly). But since I started dyeing my hair, everyone asks me if I'm Irish, and almost never anything but. We're generally a mash-up of English/Scottish/Welsh/German, with a liiiittle Cherokee tossed in there. I just think it's crazy that a change of haircolor and I go from "possibly non-White" (not my opinion, but hey, South) to "as white as they come."

[zia-narratora.livejournal.com]

Man, I am trying to reply to every comment and I feel bad that I have only gotten this far.

That is so weird, the haircolor thing. Obviously only certain people can have certain haircolors.

I think it is interesting to see what kinds of prejudices people from different parts of the US have against others, or toward ethnic groups they don't interact with. People definitely make certain assumptions about me because I'm a New Yorker (some people assume I'm Jewish based just on that alone, which is just plain weird).

[skirmish-of-wit.livejournal.com]

I am white, white, white. I could not be more white. Blonde hair, blue eyes, pale untannable skin, the works. My background is pretty typical American mutt: both sides of my family came over from Europe in the 19th century, but from all over Western Europe -- some came over from Ireland during the Potato Famine, but mostly I'm English, Scottish, and German.

I put "Caucasian" consciously because that's what I always check when I have to check a box for my ethnicity.

Also: I put "no" because I wouldn't feel uncomfortable as the only white girl in a non-white group merely as a result of skin color or ethnicity. What would make me uncomfortable is behavior: if it were an issue of not knowing the correct cues, or being unfamiliar with the appropriate type discourse or even the language. Plus I just tend to feel uncomfortable in ANY group.

[zia-narratora.livejournal.com]

Hahaha, I'm a bit uncomfortable in groups, too.

See, for me, I don't like defining ethnicity and race as the same thing. Race is a "here are these major physiological differences, and this race is more this way, and this race is more this way," whereas ethnicity is more about culture? I don't mean this as a disagreement so much as a thought about how people view the word differently. For me, my race might be white, but my ethnicity is determined by language, culture, religion, etc, and would be different even if I had the same genetic stock, if I had been raised differently.

[lady-brightside.livejournal.com]

My hometown is pretty much entirely white, and the town I'm currently living in at university is predominantly white, but also has a large Indo-Asian community (I'm near Birmingham, which has a very large Indo-Asian presence). My university campus, on the other hand, is extremely mixed - in my first year I lived with a girl who was half Chinese, an American exchange student, a Bulgarian guy and a girl from Jordan, amongst others, and the ethnic societies are very active. The majority of students are still white, but Asian students (as in Chinese, Japanese, Malaysian, Korean etc this time) come a very close second. There are still relatively few black students, however.

So I've always been in a majority, although friends of mine now live in areas of London where they're a minority and I do feel a difference when I'm visiting them. My most vivid memory of being treated as a minority is actually when I was in Sri Lanka when I was 16, and I can remember being surrounded by Sri Lankan schoolchildren on their school trips who were photographing me because I was white.
That was quite fun. The older men (and I mean MUCH older) who approached me wanting to take me out to drink or exchange addresses with me for the same reason was not.

As for your other questions - my ex boyfriend, who is white, identifies as predominantly Jewish. He's not strongly religious, but the cultural heritage part of it is very important to him, even if he does start every morning with a bacon sandwich.

Actually, the main thing I noticed answering this is how I'm struggling to differentiate between blanket terms for people who live in different areas of Asia - I want to differentiate between people who live in the India-Pakistan area and people who are from far east Asia, but I don't know the politically correct terms to do it - we just use the word 'Asian' to refer to the entire continent (and beyond as well, I guess). It seems ridiculous, when I think of how many terms I could find to refer to people just from different areas of Europe alone. It makes me wonder: is this just ignorance on my part, or are tehre generally a lack of acceptable terms to use?

[oxymoronassoc.livejournal.com]

I always found it interesting how my use of Asian differed from my English friends' use. India-Pakistan can be very touchy, because it is a very politically charged area and where you are from/identify as can play a key role in the way you see your country/nation/province.

[rattsu.livejournal.com]

Well, I am a swede and live in sweden, though in a predominately immigrant area. Honestly I've never really noticed much. I've never had any problems with people from a different ethnicity, not more than noting that tons of immigrant males flirt with me when I have my hair colored black, but none when I have it colored red.

No, for me it is all about that little thing called 'class'. I know few people want to talk about it these days, but once you've started noticing, it's almost impossible to ignore. And yeah, when it comes to that I DO feel like a minority.

Case in point: I am lower middle class. My parents are working class people who never studied, but worked themselves up to be more well off than their parents. I got a LOT of encouragement to study from home, so I went to the university, and eventually got a position as a product developer. During all this time I felt exceedingly uncomfortable. Why? Because while I might have the education, I shared nothing with these people. I didn't know what to talk about, how to dress, how to act. Everything that was natural to them felt odd and stilted and very alien to me. I felt that everybody was judging me, even when i tried to fit in. I could just not fake being one of them.

Now I work in an environment with mainly working class men, and feel completely at home. These people I know how they work, and I never feel awkward. In many situations race and class are nearly indivisible, and very hard to separate from one another, at least over here.

Feeling like the odd one out like this was extremely uncomfortable, and very different from the way I was treated when I was an open and out metalhead. Then I had voluntarily set myself apart, and didn't try to fit in. When I tried on that suit camouflage I died a little inside...

[zia-narratora.livejournal.com]

So do you feel like you belong to a certain class group regardless of how much money you make? Like, it has more to do with acquired habits and values than it does with what job you have?

[pikacharma.livejournal.com]

OY! This was a tough one.

I generally consider myself white, though I'm definitely not Little Miss Madame Aryan. I'm half Irish\Welsh mutt, and half Sicilian...the latter of which definitely has the dominant genes. The Sicilian is my dad's side of the family too, so I have an "ethnic" sounding last name, in addition to having dark hair (when not doing dangerous things with dye), dark eyes (when not doing ridiculous things with colored contacts), and being very distinctly olive complected (when not taking great pains to keep my skin as light as possible.*) According to some people I'm white, and according to others I'm biracial, and others say I'm a "person of color", and...yeah, whatever. Only color I give a fuck about is neon green.

I live in Texas, and nobody down here has any idea what Italians even are (we're mythical creatures who make pizza and run the Mafia!), but I've been called ethnic slurs for Hispanics and Middle Eastern people before. This probably should have upset me, but all I could do was LMAO and just sit there being all like "white supremacy: UR DOIN IT RONG." It's also really common for people with non hostile intentions to assume I'm Hispanic based on my appearance and\or my last name - I get people speaking Spanish to me all the time, and I've gotten several calls from people in the substitute office asking me to cover an ESL class because they saw my last name on the employee list and assumed I was Hispanic and spoke Spanish. (Why they thought I'd automatically speak Spanish even if I was Hispanic is beyond me. I certainly don't speak Italian!) So basically, I'm a member of one debatably-white ethnicity that often gets mistaken for a member of a different debatably-white ethnicity. Something that is interesting though, is that more people tend to classify me as "white" after finding out I'm Italian as opposed to Hispanic, regardless of the fact that my skin does not, in fact, magically change color when I start reciting my family lineage.

*As for why I keep my skin as pasty as possible - I hate the way I look with dark skin, because it makes me look terrible in bright colors. Like, seriously, if I let my skin get anything darker than the second or third lightest shade of makeup you see at the drugstore, it turns this dark yellow-based olive shade, and the only colors I can wear are neutral earth tones. BORING. There goes 90% of my wardrobe, my bright pink lipstick, nearly all my eyeshadow...yeah fuck that. I'm a whore. I'll gladly sell out to western euro-centric beauty standards if it's more enjoyable to do so. And as for the colored contacts and hair dye...that's just too fun to pass up.

[ninepointfivemm.livejournal.com]

Funny, from the few pictures I've seen of you, I'd have pegged you as slightly exotic WASPish.

I have the olivey skin, too, though it only comes across if I have lots of sun. And I mean lots of sun, since I generally have to buy the lightest shade of foundation. Bright colors are a lot more fun, that's for sure.

[sunnyrea.livejournal.com]

The minority experience that I had trouble with most growing up with being part of a minority religion, so much of a minority that most people had never heard of it. Most people when they meet a white girl like me with no obvious signs to Judism or Catholicism or any of the major religions would assume I was Christian. I often just let them assume what they wanted. Growing up Unitarian Universalist can be difficult and almost impossible to explain, especially when you're very young. I have trouble explaining it now. But while most children grew up in a religion bound by a book or testaments or "laws" or scripture, I grew up in a religion that was open and free and as a result difficult to understand as a child when you still don't even understand yourself.

Thus, I often would have to stay silent if a religion discussion came up or the topic of God. I remember feeling afraid sometimes that people would ask and I would have to say 'no, I am not Christian' and deal with their confusion and often hostility. Once in second grade I was verbally berated by a fellow student in art class for "not believing in God."

Looking back I am glad I grew up as I did but at the time it was hard now and then.

-----

When it comes to ethnicity I really just consider myself American. I'm a 13th generation American so any ties I might have had to a "mother country" or "homeland" are long since gone. Most of my ancestry can be traced back to Germany but I don't feel any ties to there. However, I do feel a bit strange having my ethnicity be a country that was made by the ethnicities and customs of other countries and which had hardly any customs and traditions that are uniquely its own. (though I suppose that is debatable)

[zia-narratora.livejournal.com]

Wow. 13 generations is a LOT.

I think America has traditions and customs that are uniquely American, but on the other hand, I think that we all have our own separate ones on top of that.

I had a teacher who was UU and explained it to us in 8th grade. The concept always fascinated and it's something where if I ever have kids and want them to have a religious experience, I would definitely look into UU again.

[tigera4j.livejournal.com]

I think my case is different than most of the Americans, unless they happen to live on the West Coast (coastal California, to be specific) or maybe NYC.
The San Francisco Bay Area is pretty much predominantly mostly Asian.
I went to university that is supposedly 70% Asian, but it's not too surprising to hear that high a number as most (all?) of the students are Berkeley or UCLA and maybe UCSD rejects, and it's California.

So I have never been in the minority. I haven't been to the East Coast or anywhere out of the West Coast in America, except Disneyworld, so I only know second-hand how different it is. So it was very odd to hear someone from Jersey saying how difficult it is to find good Chinese (Asian) food. I have no limit of choices here.
And as for going out of America, I've only been to areas predominantly Chinese (Vancouver, Melbourne, China).

[kikithepirate.livejournal.com]

I went to university that is supposedly 70% Asian, but it's not too surprising to hear that high a number as most (all?) of the students are Berkeley or UCLA and maybe UCSD rejects, and it's California.

Wait, where did you go to school? (I went to UCSB, which is why I asked. You know, the white UC.) Also, lol, the way you phrased that makes it sound sort of like obviously it's the Asians who get rejected from Berkeley and UCLA.

[henpecked.livejournal.com]

My answers are all over the place... mainly because I've lived in so many different places that all had their own minority/majority, ethnic, religion ... things... going on.

[themis.livejournal.com]

Have you ever...felt as if you were being singled out because of your skin color?

I answered yes to this question because I was very pale growing up (and still am) and got teased about it or picked on for the fact a lot. I still do get teased about it, but usually not in the same way.

[zia-narratora.livejournal.com]

Mmm, I think there's a difference though between getting singled out for being a redhead or having large ears or being pale, or something that is not identifiable with a certain ethnic group, and being singled out for skin color in racial terms.