Are you ever mistaken for a race/ethnicity/ancestry that you are not?

[1973PINTO]

how am i supposed to know the dif between a Ukrainian and a russian ? i recently said das vadanya to a person and he very nearly fought with me .. i did not know he was Ukrainian . you can speak hindain to a person from india and insult them .. they have like a dozen dialects in their own country ;; i know a black man who is as white as i am and has blue eyes .. i have said yes sir and thank you ma`am to persons of the opposite sex numerous times ..

[Count David]

This subject is one of the banes of my existence.

I'm American. I'm from Southern California. I speak native English. I'm 6'7", male, I have dark hair and eyes, and a bit of a tan (which tans darkly {and quickly} in sunny/warm climates).

To most people, I'm either a plain White American, or somewhere between a 1st-3rd generation Chicano/Mexican/Mexican-American. No in between, no both. One, or the other. Any explanation confuses most people, even if I try and simplify it by saying that I'm what you would get if George Lopez and Peg Bundy had a kid.

I will also say that for whatever reason, my racial/ethnic background is of most concern to both White American and Hispanic/Latino people, and to me, what feels like their own internal purposes of classification. Nobody else cares.

AncestryDNA says I'm this:
25% Swedish
20% Mexican
14% Scottish
12% Spanish
9% English
6% Portuguese
4% Basque
And 2% or less of Cameroon/Congo, Norwegian, Southern Italian, Mali, North African, Yucatan, and Germanic.

You wouldn't think this would be too complicated, but it is, especially when the greater culture(s) appropriate you, and usually to the opposite one of them.

I've had Asians ask me if I was Asian. I've had Native-Americans assume I was one of them. I've had mixed black people ask about my experience, and when I speak to my siblings, we occasionally commiserate about their experiences as well.

So I guess the answer is yes.

[NearFantastica]

I've been mistaken for being Jewish because I have a nose with a bump in the middle

[reneeh63]

Originally Posted by SkyLark2019

I'm of Mexican descent but I look Asian. I have consistently made the brains of racists implode. lol

This is so funny!

My SO and I were vacationing in Mexico and were getting a shakedown for a bribe by the local constabulary. They were speaking in Spanish to my SO who is Asian Indian and getting mad that he kept saying he didn't speak Spanish (they wouldn't even look at me since I'm obviously white and not Hispanic in any way).

He finally had to outright tell them he wasn't actually from Mexico, but from India to speed up the conversation...we settled on a $50 bribe for our "traffic infraction" so we could catch our flight back to the U.S. - could have been worse!