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Well we are all light skinned and bright blue eyes and always mistaken for norweigan or sweedish heritage . Nope sorry we are irish ,italian . My b.i.l. however is always being mistaken egyptian yet he is of hawaiian heritage . His people are actually from the island of oahu . They are the nicest people you would ever want to meet. They always invite us to family occasions and offering to pay airfare , I might take them up on it someday LOL !!!
I'm Irish and Russian. Not once has someone thought I have an Irish background. If they don't think I'm Russian, it is usually one of the other countries around the perimeter of the Baltic Sea.
Constantly being mistaken as hispanic, especially by hispanic people who get all bent out of shape that I won't speak Spanish to them.
Actually, my parents came here from India. And I am fluent in Spanish, but it irks me so much that they would just assume I'm hispanic because I'm brown and they can't conceive of any other brown race outside of their own.
I dated a guy from Bangladesh. Whenever we were in a place where there were spanish-speaking (mostly Mexican immigrant) people, they would speak to him in Spanish as if he was one of them. Funny thing is, I am the one that can speak Spanish, not him.
My husband is from Egypt. When we lived in Connecticut in a town with a large Brazilian population, he often got taken to be Brazilian. Now where we live, a lot of people assume he's an anglo/african-american mix.
As far as defining race in general though, it's such a slippery slope in my mind. Almost anywhere you go anymore, the people are a mixture from the migration of peoples through and to their lands from different parts of the globe. I think the insistence by the govt to keep trying to categorize and stereotype and form racial issues, all of us, is just propaganda to try to keep us fighting with eachother, rather than fighting the elite establishment and restoring our rights to peace and true freedom.
Depends on the level of education. Educated people do not use slang.
Eww, I think someone's haughtiness is showing. Educated people use slang all the time, my friend.
Accountants, attorneys, physicians, physicists and rocket scientists are all educated people. Each of them uses terms and phrases that are unique to their professions, and those terms and phrases are characterized as "slang".
Perhaps you should look up the term again. This time, however, may I suggest that you read all of its meanings?
Last edited by Nighteyes; 12-08-2010 at 02:23 PM..
I am Cherokee/German/Scot. And, no, I do not claim to have a long-lost Cherokee princess in my family. I have a card.
So, anyway, it is automatically assumed that I am "white" because I have pink skin and blue eyes. I am actually one of the "whitest" people in my family by appearance.
One day, for kicks, I told some of my gullible high school students that I wasn't white and that I was actually mixed with Black and Mexican and they believed me! I let it go for a few days and finally broke it to them what my "real" ethnicity was. The point is- you don't know. And it is wrong to assume anything about someone's ethnicity because there are so many variations in the human genome.
Years ago when my hair was long and it was colored almost black, it was common for Native Americans to walk up to me out of the blue and ask what tribe I was from. (I thought I had the grunge look going..lol) Also, I would get comments from strangers about my cheekbones. I don't see it at all.
I'm not Native American that I know of. I wouldn't be surprised though if somewhere way down the family tree it turns up because of what people have said.
Yes many times. I am German, Norwegian, Latvian and Apache Indian. Of these, I have mostly German blood as I got lots of it from both my parents. I've got dark hair, olive skin and brown eyes.
In my life I've been mistaken for Mexican, Brazilian, Italian, Indian (India), Egyptian, basically everything that I'm not. (Keep in mind this is mostly by people who have never been anywhere else or studied any different people. I'd be surprised if any of these people know Native Americans as a people still exist lol.)
Anyhow, I live within a largely Latino population and recently, I decided to start learning Spanish after being spoken to in Spanish almost every day by people who assume I can speak it.
That's what you get when you live in a society that wants to break everyone down in separated groups and bind certain people together and alienate others from each other based on criteria that has no bearing at all in reality. I'm no expert on the subject but it's my understanding that race doesn't even exist as far as a scientific way to categorize people, right?
In any case I never assume anything about anyone and I don't understand people who do it regularly.
Someone mentioned "Black Irish" on this thread. I have a friend who is Irish, English, and German descent. She has olive skin and dark hair. I used to think she was part Native American, Italian, or Greek. She might have "Black Irish" in her.
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Educated people use slang all the time, my friend.
