B, unlike you, I don't believe in promiscuously launching wars. I want do this in an orderly, manageable fashion. We'll go after the other pretty ones after we've wrapped up in Sweden/Italy/S. Korea.
I couldn't believe it happened to me. I was in the middle of making love, when all of a sudden I thought about Iran's nuclear ambitions. Instantly, I became limp. I'm really worried I'm going to lose her -- she's been patient with me these last few months, but if this diplomatic impasse isn't resolved soon, she's going to start looking elsewhere, and I can't say I blame her. [sob.]
But then "is so", especially italicized "is so", is wrong, because it's not rebutting anything. No one goes around saying, "The singular of 'anecdote' isn't 'data'".
"Is so" can be used preemptively, to anticipate arguments like "that doesn't make any sense" or "it's the plural of anecdote, doofus" or "what does that mean?"
21: Not enough to know the negative stereotypes. I've just met some pretty Korean women, and seen some good-looking Korean men. I'm happy to settle on any other country; I just threw mine out there.
We could also just go to war against France for being kind of bitchy.
I don't know any negative stereotypes (except dog-eating, of course), but I do know a lot of Koreans and I don't see any evidence that they are generally more or less attractive than any other group.
I'm not sure I believe that there is a nationality that is more or less attractive to all or even most people than any other group. I just threw out mine.
34: The first time I watched Better Off Dead was with a friend of mine and her South Korean roommate, who was silent the entire time until I commented during a break for snacks or smokes or something that I thought the drag-racing kid with the Howard Cosell voice was hot. At that point he turned to me and roared, "A Chinese? The dogs of my race?" It was really very strange.
"A Chinese? The dogs of my race?" It was really very strange.
Asia is not a paradise of racial harmony. And while many Americans lump Koreans, Japanese and Chinese together as "orientals," the distinctions are very clear to them.
I kid. It's funnier if you've trained with them. Imagine a guy picking up a pad used to practice kicking, and holding up at head level. "Jump up and kick. With both feet. At same time."
But bad tempered? Most of them don't strike me that way. But I'm bad tempered, so that's probably pretty accurate.
I'm trying to stay a one remove from the stereotypng business by reporting the stereotypes I have heard from others. But I would add in all candor based on my personal experience that there can be bad temperedness.
My mom's boss once told her that he couldn't believe she was Korean, because she was so pretty he thought she just "had to be Japanese." She told him off, whereupon he spluttered, "But that was a compliment."
wait, whats wrong with (a white guy) lumping the three nationalities together? i realise they think they're different, but irish protestants & catholics think they're different too; i'd still not be able to distinguish them without trailing them on sunday morning.
In fact, they are different. And there's a great deal of history of, say, Japanese treatment of Koreans or Chinese invasion of Korea or war between China and Japan, etc. Which is why the lumping might kind of bug people.
Much like the Irish Protestant/Catholic analogy, I know.
50: There are a lot of Koreans at my school, so now I am able to pick out Koreans from among "Asians" without much difficulty. Presumably, this would be possible for the other major nationalities as well.
People of European descent all look different, too, though we in the US are such mutts that it has faded. But you can tell a French person from a Scandinavian, surely! And you would never dream of laughing off an Italian who thought Italians were different from Scots. Presumably, since Asia is much larger, you would get even more distinct groups.
Well, of course the locals always see differences that are hard for others to see. People from Arab countries don't all look alike, and Iranians are pretty different looking from Arabs as a whole. The difference between Chinese, Japanese and Koreans is also not too subtle, although I can't always tell what someone is.
I can pretty easily tell Japanese apart from Koreans and Chinese, but I've never been able to distinguish Chinese from Koreans.
We've also been treating the Chinese as a pretty homogenous group, which they aren't really. There can be more physical distinction between Chinese than between Koreans and mainland Japanese.
And for all that, I still don't really see a problem with using the word "Asian" to describe someone's appearance. I'm not quite so on board with using it to lump cultures together, but it seems like a necessary shorthand.
That's interesting. It's pretty easy, just from the way that the facial muscles are held, esp. around the mouth. The languages all "look" different.
I'm unreliable on Chinese/Japanese/Korean, can't distinguish Cambodians from Vietnamese, but can definitely tell who's Filipino.
Arabs, on the other hand--let alone the whole debate about "such-and-such people aren't actually Arab"--well, not much of a clue. Except that ime Afghanis seem to be really light skinned, comparatively.
The Vietnam War makes more sense in the context of the Global War on Looking Better Than Us. Curbing Communism always seemed liked a flimsy pretext, but allowing Vietnamese beauty to spread unchecked would have been irreparably damaging to our national pride.
Arcadia, where I grew up, is heavily Asian. Schools are majority Asian, mostly Chinese/Taiwanese, and qyute a lot of Koreans and Japanese as well. "Oriental" was bad times, but I can't recall anyone ever having a problem with "Asian."
And calling a Korean Japanese? Not good. Still a lot of bad blood there from WWII.
What's kind of strange is that "Oriental" is generally unobjectionable in Hawaii, although I think that's changing as a generation of local kids come back from college on the mainland with their consciousness raised. I had a hell of a time convincing my wife, who are one, that she should avoid using that word around the law school (UW).
Many Japanese take great pride in being able to distinguish fellow Japanese from everyone else. An Indonesian-American woman I knew in Tokyo liked to mock them for it, because pretty much everybody there assumed she was Japanese.
Another story about my mom, and racial lumping -- this time from the other side: A couple of years ago, my mom announced that a family friend was getting married. To whom? I ask, and she says, "I don't know her, some white person." I look at the wedding invitation, and the woman's last name is "Tam" or "Tang," and the photo looks distinctly non-white. I suggest to her that the bride is probably Chinese, or at least half, to which she replies, dismissively, "Well, anyway. She's not Korean."
45 -- I recommend you do it. They are excellent. There seem to be only two novels so far and some uncollected short stories. (Near as I can tell -- if I'm missing something, somebody please enlighten me.) Have you read any novels yet where you've had a strong feeling of being in the same generation as the novelist? Because I'm getting that from both of Shteyngart's books, and I think it's the first time it's happened. (And lo and behold, it meshes with the data -- GS was born only 2 years after I was. Since reading Shteyngart I have also gotten that reaction to Jennifer Egan, who is 8 years my senior.)
I have really mixed feelings about the "lumping" problem, and also the anger expresed about mistaken Asian identities. On the one hand, I cringe when I hear my unbelievably clueless friend (from Lufkin, Texas, no less) refers to any Asian person as "that Chinese guy/girl." I'm always having to say "Dude, she's Thai," or if I don't actually know the person's nationality (and sometimes without even having seen the person in question), I say, "Do you actually know for a fact this person is from China?" Frankly, it's really not that hard to tell, at least, Chinese/Japanese/Korean apart. And everyone should, after a brief survey of names, be able to tell the names apart. It annoys me greatly when people can't do this.
On the other hand, part of the problem with, say, South Koreans being annoyed at being called Chinese is pretty ill-concealed racism. I'm Egyptian, but I would never be offended at someone thinking I was Persian (although, from appearances, that would probably never happen), or Lebanese, or Moroccan, or whatever. I've had lots of South Korean friends, some of my best friends, in fact, and we've talked a lot about South Korean disregard for the Chinese, especially among the upper classes. And of course, we all know about the Japanese thinking they're better than everyone else.
So part of the anger is righteous, because Americans are notoriously bad at paying attention to this shit, and part of it is pernicious, because it's racist as hell.
I think 83 is basically right. I make the distinction between the two "lumping" problems by recognizing that there are many different cultures in Asia, without agreeing that all the values in those cultures (virulent racism, for example) are good.
Insofar as the issue is one of ethnography, I think it's best just to reject the attempt to classify people into nationalities just by looking at them. When I first started dating my wife, she pointed out (as many Koreans do) that they are a pure race with 5000 years of history. Left out of the conversation that they have 5000 years of being invaded by the Chinese and, occasionally, the Japanese. And, of course, the Japanese do not like to talk about the apparently significant evidence that the first emperor of Japan was Korean. And this is not to mention Chinese immigration to South Asia or, for that matter, my kids, who have a Korean mother and an American (Irish, Swedish and Mexican, for those who care) father. So, my policy is to lump everyone into the classification "people," and if their cultural background matters and they have not already made clear what it is (which is almost always, when it matters), I ask.
I cringe when I hear my unbelievably clueless friend (from Lufkin, Texas, no less) refers to any Asian person as "that Chinese guy/girl." I'm always having to say "Dude, she's Thai," or if I don't actually know the person's nationality (and sometimes without even having seen the person in question), I say, "Do you actually know for a fact this person is from China?" Frankly, it's really not that hard to tell, at least, Chinese/Japanese/Korean apart. And everyone should, after a brief survey of names, be able to tell the names apart. It annoys me greatly when people can't do this.
So you're an elitest who enjoys pointing out the insignificant shortcomings of your "friends" and you get persnickity when everyone else doesn't meet your stupid expectations?
Sorry, that was overly harsh. I'm cranky. But there are certainly a lot of last names that I can't tell apart, so I'd fall in your "annoyed with" category, and the reason is it just doesn't matter to me. I also don't worry, at all, about being able to sight-identify chinest/thai/japanese or whomever. If need be, I'll ask, but I don't feel there's any responsibility on me to be able to distinguish. And, further, "we used to war!" is not a good excuse at getting upset at someone for mistaking your ethniticity.
I've had lots of South Korean friends, some of my best friends, in fact, and we've talked a lot about South Korean disregard for the Chinese, especially among the upper classes. And of course, we all know about the Japanese thinking they're better than everyone else.
What's funny about this is that, according to a half-Japanese friend, the Japanese believe the cultural history ordering of the three countries is China, Japan, Korea. Apparently, there's some evidence that the Japanese migrated from Korea, but the Japanese deny it, and claim Chinese ancestry. He said that the Japanese are quite vehement in their rejection of Korea as their point of origin.
Dude, it would be one thing if all the Asians were still living "over there." But there are tons of Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans living in the US right now. Seriously, if one can't tell the difference between the name Soon-Jeong Kim and Takeru Kobayashi, you just haven't been paying any attention.
And yeah, I get annoyed with people who don't pay attention to the people around them. Sue me.
I don't feel there's any responsibility on me to be able to distinguish.
It's not a responsibility, but like I said, I think paying attention and being observant, which will generally lead to being able to make these distinctions, is a virtue.
I think I'm sort of with Michael on this. If you have no faith in your ability to tell, you should probably stick with the broader category term "Asian." But I don't think it's incumbent on people to be able to sort out different ethnicities. (I wouldn't want to swear to my ability to distinguish "Mexican" from "Guatamalan," leaving aside the intra-national-identity variations.) If you're in an area in which there are significant Asian populations and you're not a jerk, you'll sort it out. Asking more than that is silly.
I think my best reply to 89 is that it's not so much I don't care how they feel, I just don't support the idea that it's an insult to mistake a country of origin. Best solution: don't presume. It is hard to ask, though. "So what ethniticity are you?" is an odd question. For some reason, "Are you X" flows easier. I'm offering this as an alternative explanation (other than ignorance) for why people do this.
And I hope the wide generalization in 90 wasn't derived from something I said.
To answer to Kotsko, way back upthread, no, you can't always tell French from Scandanavian. The Normands are heavily Scandanavian. Intermarrriage and all that. Relatedly, I have a handful of friends of mixed-Asian parentage. Another reason to worry less about nationality. We'll all stop worrying about this, eventually. I never ask a black person if he's Zulu, for god's sake.
Re: 91 I've experienced enough asian culture that, certainly, there are a lot of names that strike me as obviously chinese, or Korean, or Japanese, or Thai, or Vietnamese. Then there are others that don't. I have a friend, last name Namba. I could in no way tell her nationality from that name.
90: It's not, but I am always kind of surprised and a bit irritated when people who I think of as pretty smart and pretty well educated are completely ignorant (or say things that appear completely ignorant) about this kind of thing. I mean, there are plenty of ethnic groups I can't identify for shit, but at least I know that (1) this might annoy people and (2) it isn't a mark of my moral superiority but rather my ignorance.
I've experienced enough asian culture that, certainly, there are a lot of names that strike me as obviously chinese, or Korean, or Japanese, or Thai, or Vietnamese.
Then you're not in the "annoyed with" category. What are you complaining about? I certainly don't require that everyone have flawless identification skills. I don't. Not even close.
Just to at least have a general idea of the people around you, and also maybe to care where people are from, if you don't know. That's all I ask.
Just for the hell of it I'm going to call bullshit on the idea that people can ever confidently identify the ethnicity of a chance acquaintance. Can you tell, by looking at her, a Han Chinese from a Korean? No you can't. A group of 50 Chinese and a group of 50 Koreans, sure, but that's a completely different point. No people on earth look so distinct that you can identify a sample of one.
If you were given their names? Well, it so happens that most people are familiar with quite a few Chinese and Korean names - they see them in the paper - so maybe. But what if the two people were respectively Ibo and Yoruba? You know all those naming conventions, do you?
And BTW, if you used the term "Asian" to lump Chinese, Korean and Japanese in Britain, people would think you were weird. Here it means, more or less exclusively, Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Sri Lankan.
I mean, there are plenty of ethnic groups I can't identify for shit, but at least I know that (1) this might annoy people and (2) it isn't a mark of my moral superiority but rather my ignorance.
Fair enough. I would add, however, that neither is it a mark of moral superiority to assume that you know a lot about a person based on the shape of their eyes and the color of their skin, or even their names.
Can you tell, by looking at her, a Han Chinese from a Korean?
I completely agree with this. I hear people claim to be able to tell the difference between Chinese and Koreans, some even implying that you are racially insensitive if you cannot. But after living a lot of years in close proximity to people of both Chinese and Korean ancestery, I have found that even those of Chinese and Korean descent can't tell the difference simply on the basis of appearance.
Can you tell, by looking at her, a Han Chinese from a Korean?
Not always, but often.
No people on earth look so distinct that you can identify a sample of one.
I just don't think that's true. I can almost always tell when someone's Egyptian, for example, because they're pretty distinctive looking. Same with the Lebanese, though not quite as much. I've had random people in America address me in Farsi, because it's pretty damn obvious that I'm Iranian.
Ideal, I sooo hope your wife stumbles on #44. A just punishment for what I assume was your vote in '04.
My views on the matter are already well known to Mrs. Idealist who, when she is not yelling at me, mostly agrees (although she would argue that I am pretty bad tempered myself).
Well, of course caring a whole lot about the ethnicity of random people is stupid, and it's rude and probably annoying to ask people "so what are you?" But that's surely different from deliberately implying that these things don't matter.
neither is it a mark of moral superiority to assume that you know a lot about a person based on the shape of their eyes and the color of their skin, or even their names.
Who ever said it was? Defensive much? Especially since I wasn't griping at you, I was griping about Michael. Chill.
Oh, for Christ's sakes, people. I never said that there should be a sight-identification test. To refresh, I said that it's "not that hard to tell them apart." That means that if you look closely, you can see that say, Japanese generally have a "look" that is different from the way Koreans look.
No people on earth look so distinct that you can identify a sample of one.
I don't think I, or anyone else, would assert that that's possible with any level of complete accuracy. My original objection was to my friend's referring to everyone Asian as "Chinese," coupled with an expression of my annoyance that a lot of Americans seem to have no idea about names. Being able to identify correctly every name is not possible, nor is it desirable. But a lot of names are pretty easy to identify.
Quit overstating my arguments to absurd levels of vehemence and/or absoluteness.
I thought I was pretty decent at guessing Korean, Japanese, and Chinese people, but Felix's quiz linked in 103 was stumping me--until I broke it, so I don't know how well I was doing.
The situation with African-Americans is obviously not comparable.
There are differences, sure, but it is much closer than people realize. As has been mentioned above, there are more ethnic groups in China than the Han, and all of them have migrated--for thousands of years--to other parts of Asia (not to mention the Mongols' little foray into western Asia and eastern Europe). There are not any Asian countries that are as diverse as the US, but you still cannot tell for sure from someone's looks what their cultural backgrond is.
I took a quiz like that once and was surprised I did as badly as I did. But that one didn't require me to register, which I refuse to do, so I can't say if I've gotten better.
116: I think the point w/r/t African Americans is that since Africans were originally brought to this country as slaves, and subsequently bred like cattle and frequently raped, asking a black person if they were Zulu, for god's sake, is a shitty analogy to being able to tell the difference between Chinese and Koreans.
My recollection is that this is wrong, or that there is little evidence of this. The issue comes up in sports discussions when people are trying to explain why African-American dominance in various sports.
I can pretty regularly pick out Egyptian males, but not females, for some reason. They have a pretty distinctive honey coloring usually, and their foreheads are more square than other Arabs. Kinda strange.
I'm so completely non-racist that I've never even heard of the concept of "race" or "ethnicity," much less these specific ones like "Chinese," "Korean," "African American," "Iranian." This is all completely new to me, and frankly I'm horrified.
128: Not all slaves, of course. But it did happen. (The nonsense about "that's why blacks are better basketball players" is completely beside the point.) And of course slaveowners deliberately mixed people from different language groups in order to prevent insurrections.
130: WTF kind of name is Kotsko, anyway? It sure isn't American.
You know, what nobody's pointed out is that there are a lot of contexts where making some kind of snap judgement about someone else's ethnicity could get you a smack in the mouth. There are definitely locales around the Twin Cities where asking someone who appears to be of some Asian ethnicity if they are Japanese would be contraindicated if you don't want to find yourself in an extremely uncomfortable situation. Perhaps it comes of having a "funny name" myself, but I can't imagine what would posess someone to go around quizzing people, especially strangers, about their ethnicity.
A question for the white Gentiles: Has anyone ever come up to you and asked if you were Jewish? It's happened to me a couple of times, which just seems odd since I have fair skin, blue eyes and medium-brown hair. Unless the next question is "Nu, didn't I go to Talmud Torah school with your brother?" it seems like one of those questions that could be expected to provoke an extremely defensive reaction, even if the answer is in the affirmative.
128: Well, in any case, odds are that if you asked an African-American what specific African group they belonged to, they themselves would not know. And whether or not they were "bred like cattle," it seems obvious that there would've been some substantial cross-breeding of the various specific African ethnicities over the course of the centuries that African slaves and their descendants have been in North America.
It does seem like it'd be possible to tell apart people from various parts of Africa, and there are substantial numbers of Africans coming to the US now, so it's possible that an American could have a chance to get a feel for those differences. But the descendants of African slaves brought to American are not a helpful example in a discussion of being able to tell among different "ethnicities" within a broader "race."
136: I've been asked if I was Jewish once. Hilariously, it was by a friend in grad school who was himself Jewish, at a party at my place, where if my straight blond hair and blue eyes and Swedish/German features didn't suggest that I'm not (to be fair, I guess, there are blond Jews), the Guatemalen Last Supper enamel in my kitchen should have. I think he asked b/c I had a lot of books about the Holocaust on my shelves.
Mr. B. says that his Kentucky neighbors always thought he and his family were Jews. Which is actually kind of sickly ironic, since his parents were WWII-era German Catholics. Dark hair, though.
Has anyone ever come up to you and asked if you were Jewish?
Near where I work is one of those people who are like a sort of Jewish missionary, but focused on preventing backsliding rather than evangelizing to the heathen. Almost every day he stops me in the street, asks if I'm Jewish, and every time I say no, and he goes on to the next guy, who also brushes him off, and so on.
There's a name for people like him; I think it begins with a B; much appreciated if anyone can remind me of it.
I've been told that I look "either Jewish or English." (I ran immediately to the bathroom after that comment to see what was wrong with my teeth.)
Also, the Troll of Sorrow "accuses" me of being Jewish, but he seems to be one of the rare people for whom that is a general-purpose insult (parallel to more recent use of "gay" as a term of general abuse). Come to think of it, he seems to think of me primarily as a gay Jewish pedophile priest. But I don't think he counts, because he's never seen me in person (to my knowledge).
M. LeBlanc in 111: I don't think the fat englishman's spectacular comment was directed at you. There were a couple people upthread advocated that you should be able to tell different asian natioanalities on sight.
140: The other thing to keep in mind is that, as with anything else, antipathy towards the proximate can be much more pronounced than towards the distant (I know, I know, that's fatuous AND tautological). Consider Amhara and Oromo immigrants from Ethiopia for example. They might look much closer to each other than either of them would to Somalis or Sudanese people, but you'd be mistaken if you thought that meant it was wise to go mistaking an individual from one group for a member of the other.
136: A group of us were hanging around in front of a restaurant in the Village [NYC], when we were approached by a couple of Lubavitchers from a "mitzvah mobile", who triangulated in on the only two non-Jewish males in the group to ask 'Are you Jewish?'
On the other hand, my Kid confuses people all the time, as his last name sounds Jewish and he's Korean. Tho' no one ever asks him if he's Japanese.
Seriously, is not someone hitting another person over a misidentification of country of origin the epitome of an "antisocial punk". It's the "antisocial punk" par excellence!!
I would be interested in the factual basis for this claim.
I see your point in 140 and mostly agree, although you do ignore that there are a non-trivial number of Americans of African descent who are not the descentents of slaves.
Felix - they're usually members of Chabad-Lubavitch. If a male answers in the affirmative, they will haul him into their van and wrap tefillin around his arm and head.
Has anyone ever come up to you and asked if you were Jewish?
I won't venture to guess why, but I'm regularly assumed to be Jewish. A Jewish guy from New York went so far as to ID me as one of the tribe, then -- without waiting for a response -- triumphantly proclaim that spotting Jews out here (Portland, Ore.) is easy. Had to tell him I was Catholic, so at least he was close.
Oh, and to answer 90: I'm a white guy, and I care.
The Kid took the test, scored 12/18, complained the the making-faces pix were impossible. He kept picking the Chinese as Korean. [He pointed out that he's been mistaken for Chinese by immigrants in Chinatown.]
I don't understand how you could say I ignore a point which I in fact explicitly mention.
Because I noticed the parts of your comment where you talked about slaves but missed the part in your comment where you said and there are substantial numbers of Africans coming to the US now, so it's possible that an American could have a chance to get a feel for those differences.
Ask him for the appropriate name. And report back.
I think I'd have to lie and say I was Jewish in order to get him to stand still and answer my questions. And I'd feel guilty about that, because he already seems to be having a hard enough time, poor little guy.
It wasn't Lubavitch. I thought it was a word for a specific subset of Lubavitchers who go out in the streets asking "are you a Jew?" (___ is to Lubavitcher as missionary is to Mormon). But I may have been mistaken, because now I think about it "Chabadnik" sounds a lot like the word I half-remember. Thanks for all guesses.
I get asked if I'm Irish fairly often. Not by average Brits, obviously. But by people who don't read British accents well -- i.e. non-native speakers and Americans.
I'm fairly sure my japanese versus chinese discriminatory sense is pretty good. They generally, going by movie actors and the chinese and japanese people I know, don't look alike to me. However, I've met very few Koreans in my life so I have no idea how successful I'd be at distinguishing them.
Americans tend to have a hell of a time telling Irish and Scottish accents apart. We don't hear too many of either in daily life.
My school, like Adam's, is heavily Korean, so I know a lot of Koreans and I can generally tell them apart from Chinese people (lots of them here too), but I wouldn't bet on it. Japanese people do seem to have a distinctive "look" that sets them apart from both, but there aren't many of them here so I don't think I could reliably pick them out. The languages, of course, are all very different.
i get asked if i'm jewish occasionally. but i think thats because my mom's parents grew up amish, so from hanging out with gramps i've picked up use of words like 'schmutz' and 'putz'
I don't think I've ever been asked if I'm Jewish, which is odd since I am. I don't really look it, though, except when my hair grows out, and then people probably just assume.
I'm a white guy and I care!™ Now I get a cut too. (I think it actually should be 'SM', but I don't know if there's HTML for that.)
The Lubavitchers ask me if I'm Jewish, and I am, even though I've got fair skin, blue eyes, and medium-brown hair which I sometimes try to pass off as blonde.
B, I would call your hair red. Strawberry blonde, maybe.
I get asked if I'm Jewish a fair amount, most of the time by Jewish people, but at least a few times by nasty people who wanted to make anti-semitic comments without there being any Jewish people around. Hard to know what to reply in those latter cases.
Yeah, without a lot of exposure I suppose it's harder. The accents don't sound remotely alike to me, but then, they wouldn't.
On the other hand, while I can tell some US accents apart -- southern versus north eastern, stereotypical New York accents, Boston, deep South, etc. -- I'm sure there's a lot of distinctions that I just completely miss that a native US person with a decent ear for accents would pick up upon.
I do quite often know people are Scottish before I hear them speak, though. There are certain facial types that just look 'scottish' to me. Of course, there are lots of times I wouldn't have a clue, but sometimes it just jumps out.
The Jewish thing, in the sense of what would constitute Jewish in appearance, I'm pretty ignorant about. An American friend of mine, who is Jewish (I think), once referred to some acquaintance -- who I wasn't sure I knew -- as the 'Jewish' looking girl, among some group. I was none the wiser.
141, 181: I wouldn't necessarily think it was so odd to be misidentified as Jewish around here, since any casual outing in the western half of the Twin Cities will net several sightings of blond Jews, but one time it happened on the subway in New York. That seemed strange, but reading the comments above makes it sound fairly common. You learn something new every day I guess.
177: Does anyone else walk around in the US and see faces that are stereotypically Scots-Irish to an alarming degree? There's one or two modes of fair, red-headed, somewhat doughy facial structure that just leap out at me (due to their uncanny resemblence to some members of my family) as peculiarly Scots-Irish. I try to stay clear of these people, since as we all know, the Scots/Northern English who went to colonize Ireland and then wised up and came to the US to colonize the wild, wild east have some terrible tempers.
Re: Scots-Irish faces, etc. I suppose. Red hair is a bit of a giveaway, or, in my case brown hair and variegated gingery beard. However, most of the stereotypical Scottish faces that jump into my mind -- leaving aside the gingers -- have pretty dark facial colouring and eyes and dark brown hair.
The slightly doughy face thing, though, yeah. Or a certain cadaverous flat-face + cheekbones thing. But in a way that's distinct from the eastern european cheekbone thing.
202: I suppose by Asian countries you relly mean north east asian countries, presumably because asian-american stands for north east, and you were talking about them. Am I right? That's not what Asian country generally refers to, though.
136- I am regularly assumed to be Jewish, by Jewish people and non-Jewish people. (I am in fact only infrequently asked if I am Jewish, but only because everyone seems to just assume that I am. I've had acquaintances I'd known for several years express shock on learning I was *not*, in fact, Jewish.) I don't really know why. I have dark (non-curly!) hair and eyes, and a large nose, and I guess that's what does it. I don't really know.
Regardless, it's never really bothered me terribly much, and I think that's part of the reason why I don't really understand why someone else is so terribly offended if I can't tell whether they are Taiwanese or Korean or Vietnamese. (And no, I don't just *assume* one or the other). But, you know, white male and all, so I suppose I'm just situtationally incapable of proper empathy.
I once was accused of being anti-Semetic because I looked shocked when a guy in a bar told me he was Jewish. He didn't believe my explanation that this was because he had (1) asked me if I was Jewish earlier, and (2) scolded me for not appreciating "the true spirit of Christmas" when I'd said something mildly cynical at some point. I decided he was an asshole.
206 -- yeah this is what I've been thinking all thread long -- "Asian" in contemporary American usage means "somebody who looks approximately Chinese" -- vast areas of Asia (including much of China) are not home to "Asian" people according to this usage. I'm pretty sure the term came into use only because people started realizing "Oriental" gave offense.
The American usage makes sense in context, though, because the vast majority of immigration from Asia to the United States has been from the countries of East Asia. "Asia" is of course an artificial construct covering a truly gigantic variety of terrains, climates and cultures, so "Asian" is more or less meaningless in and of itself. In different places outside of Asia it means different things, and I see no problem with that.
Cl - I don't think Americans are generally aware that "Asia" comprises more than the Pacific Rim any more than they are aware that Native Americans were called "Indians" because Columbus thought he'd reached India. I finally put a map on my dining room wall so that my child might have a glancing awareness of parts-o'-the-world other than LA and east Asia.
An inability to differentiate among nationalities isn't restricted to Murricans - an aquaintance of mine, who is immigrant Korean, can't tell the round-eyes apart. She says that when people say 'so-and-so looks Irish', she has no idea what they're referring to. Given that people of all skin colours sport red hair these days, even that isn't the signifier it once was. But she can pick a Japanese person out at 30 paces and loathes them with a passion.
There used to be a quiz show on Japanese television in which people would try to guess the nationalities of a gaijin guest's parents. They were supposed to be nationalities with some definable ethnic characteristics, but an appearance on the show was stupid easy money, so people with American or Canadian parents would just make shit up to get on.
I suppose by Asian countries you relly mean north east asian countries, presumably because asian-american stands for north east, and you were talking about them. Am I right? That's not what Asian country generally refers to, though.
Although generally "Asian" in the U.S. does generally refer to east Asia, that's not what I mean.
I'm no expert, but glancing at a map, I don't think it's the case that "nearly all" of those countries are as diverse as the U.S.
It depends what you mean by "diversity," which is a slippery concept. If you mean "having a large number of different ethnicities present without regard to the number of people in each" then the US is surely more diverse than most countries in Asia; India and Indonesia are the only ones I can think of that might be more diverse by that measure. But if you mean "not being dominated demographically by a single ethnocultural group but rather having several large, influential ones" then many Asian countries probably are more diverse than the US. There are probably other ways to define diversity as well.
I was thinking along the lines of the tables "Ancestries with 100,000 or more people..." in the 2000 Census. Pages 4 and 5 here.(warning: 12 page pdf file) That's a pretty impressive array, and it's not apparent to me that nearly all countries in Asia show that kind of range.
Indeed. The only reason I know about it is because of the recent controversy concerning the New York Department of Health and some infants who had contracted Herpes virus from mohelim.
Right, I'd heard that story too. It also gets dragged out whenever there's some tiresome internet debate on circumcision. What people don't seem to realize is that it's a very, very marginal practice and the overwhelming majority of Jews have never heard of it.
That headline should read "The Plural of Anecdote Is So Data".
Posted by Brock | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 5:56 PM
I think every other country makes us look fat. Except maybe Tonga.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 6:04 PM
I would totally support a war against a country for being prettier than us. So, Sweden, Italy, or South Korea?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 6:07 PM
But then supposedly we're making the other countries fatter, so in the end, they'll be as fat as we are. It's the master plan.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 6:09 PM
South Korea?
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 6:09 PM
1: ogged may have been making a joke. I can't tell. If he was, it was over my head, but I wouldn't put it past him.
Posted by Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 6:10 PM
What about Indonesia or Thailand? Both gorgeous, yes?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 6:15 PM
B, unlike you, I don't believe in promiscuously launching wars. I want do this in an orderly, manageable fashion. We'll go after the other pretty ones after we've wrapped up in Sweden/Italy/S. Korea.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 6:19 PM
Again, why South Korea? Are they known for being pretty?
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 6:22 PM
South Korea?
He must not have ever been there.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 6:22 PM
I couldn't believe it happened to me. I was in the middle of making love, when all of a sudden I thought about Iran's nuclear ambitions. Instantly, I became limp. I'm really worried I'm going to lose her -- she's been patient with me these last few months, but if this diplomatic impasse isn't resolved soon, she's going to start looking elsewhere, and I can't say I blame her. [sob.]
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 6:23 PM
Is Adam talking about Leily?
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 6:25 PM
The point is that Asian countries are way prettier.
Also demure and easily conquered.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 6:26 PM
The point is that Asian countries are way prettier.
Also demure and easily conquered.
Apparently B has not been there either.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 6:28 PM
I still don't see why Tim sees SK as a greater threat than Thailand and Indonesia in terms of prettiness.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 6:29 PM
Do you all see me not taking part in this discussion? Good.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 6:29 PM
Will you at least tell us what the title is supposed to mean?
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 6:32 PM
MSNBC, a single example, proves that Greenwald's argument is right. That's what the title means.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 6:33 PM
Huh. That makes sense.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 6:34 PM
9: I've replaced my Iranian fascination with a Korean one.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 6:34 PM
Uh, how many Koreans do you know?
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 6:35 PM
But then "is so", especially italicized "is so", is wrong, because it's not rebutting anything. No one goes around saying, "The singular of 'anecdote' isn't 'data'".
Posted by standpipe b | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 6:37 PM
Thailand is one of the most beautiful countries on earth, on a per capita basis, according to a recent UN-sponsored study.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 6:37 PM
"Is so" can be used preemptively, to anticipate arguments like "that doesn't make any sense" or "it's the plural of anecdote, doofus" or "what does that mean?"
Can too.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 6:38 PM
Pre-emptive "is so" works like "infinity no touchbacks"?
Posted by standpipe b | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 6:40 PM
Reverse puberty on my mark.
Mark.
Posted by standpipe b | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 6:40 PM
Wow, B totally speaks my language.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 6:41 PM
21: Not enough to know the negative stereotypes. I've just met some pretty Korean women, and seen some good-looking Korean men. I'm happy to settle on any other country; I just threw mine out there.
We could also just go to war against France for being kind of bitchy.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 6:42 PM
I don't know any negative stereotypes (except dog-eating, of course), but I do know a lot of Koreans and I don't see any evidence that they are generally more or less attractive than any other group.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 6:45 PM
I'm not sure I believe that there is a nationality that is more or less attractive to all or even most people than any other group. I just threw out mine.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 6:50 PM
Ok, I'll grant you pre-emptive "is so", but I still think plain "is" would have been more effective.
Posted by standpipe b | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 6:52 PM
I don't see any evidence that they are generally more or less attractive than any other group.
Some people dig the Asian look more than others. I tend to think of Koreans as a bit sadistic, but that's probably from years in a hapkido studio.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 7:05 PM
27: Except when I don't.
31: But less amusing. C'mon, Standpipe, what's wrong with you today?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 7:14 PM
I tend to think of Koreans as a bit sadistic, but that's probably from years in a hapkido studio.
Sadistic I don't get. However, it is my impression that their asian neighbors view Koreans as being particularly bad tempered.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 7:19 PM
34: The first time I watched Better Off Dead was with a friend of mine and her South Korean roommate, who was silent the entire time until I commented during a break for snacks or smokes or something that I thought the drag-racing kid with the Howard Cosell voice was hot. At that point he turned to me and roared, "A Chinese? The dogs of my race?" It was really very strange.
Posted by Robust McManlyPants | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 7:27 PM
Here, SCMT, some eye candy for you.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 7:29 PM
You look as if you've read a post.
Posted by Joly | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 7:29 PM
Some wine and say what's going on!
Posted by Grantaire | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 7:30 PM
A post you say? A post, maybe. It looked just like a post to me. Its title I improved upon.
Posted by standpipe b | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 7:31 PM
"A Chinese? The dogs of my race?" It was really very strange.
Asia is not a paradise of racial harmony. And while many Americans lump Koreans, Japanese and Chinese together as "orientals," the distinctions are very clear to them.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 7:34 PM
I kid. It's funnier if you've trained with them. Imagine a guy picking up a pad used to practice kicking, and holding up at head level. "Jump up and kick. With both feet. At same time."
But bad tempered? Most of them don't strike me that way. But I'm bad tempered, so that's probably pretty accurate.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 7:34 PM
Veering sharply off topic, just because I wanted to let you guys know that I have found the greatest-ever book jacket photo, from the back cover of Gary Shteyngart's The Russian Debutante's Handbook.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 7:36 PM
40: Oh, I don't doubt it. What surprised me was the forcefulness of his opinion, not that he had one.
Posted by Robust McManlyPants | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 7:36 PM
But bad tempered?
I'm trying to stay a one remove from the stereotypng business by reporting the stereotypes I have heard from others. But I would add in all candor based on my personal experience that there can be bad temperedness.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 7:38 PM
42: I so want to read Shteyngart's books.
many Americans lump Koreans, Japanese and Chinese together as "orientals"
Surely, please god, this hasn't been true since the 1960s.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 7:40 PM
45: I'm not convinced that "Asian" is all that much better. Not that it's my call.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 7:42 PM
Well okay, fair point.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 7:46 PM
My mom's boss once told her that he couldn't believe she was Korean, because she was so pretty he thought she just "had to be Japanese." She told him off, whereupon he spluttered, "But that was a compliment."
Posted by Junior Mint | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 8:05 PM
Classic.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 8:30 PM
wait, whats wrong with (a white guy) lumping the three nationalities together? i realise they think they're different, but irish protestants & catholics think they're different too; i'd still not be able to distinguish them without trailing them on sunday morning.
Posted by yoyo | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 8:48 PM
Lumping might be forgivable, but telling a Korean that she's pretty enough to be Japanese isn't lumping.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 8:51 PM
i realise they think they're different
In fact, they are different. And there's a great deal of history of, say, Japanese treatment of Koreans or Chinese invasion of Korea or war between China and Japan, etc. Which is why the lumping might kind of bug people.
Much like the Irish Protestant/Catholic analogy, I know.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 8:56 PM
Jah, and don't be calling a Svede a Norski.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 8:59 PM
50: There are a lot of Koreans at my school, so now I am able to pick out Koreans from among "Asians" without much difficulty. Presumably, this would be possible for the other major nationalities as well.
People of European descent all look different, too, though we in the US are such mutts that it has faded. But you can tell a French person from a Scandinavian, surely! And you would never dream of laughing off an Italian who thought Italians were different from Scots. Presumably, since Asia is much larger, you would get even more distinct groups.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 9:01 PM
Swedes are better-looking.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 9:01 PM
Well, of course the locals always see differences that are hard for others to see. People from Arab countries don't all look alike, and Iranians are pretty different looking from Arabs as a whole. The difference between Chinese, Japanese and Koreans is also not too subtle, although I can't always tell what someone is.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 9:05 PM
55 gets it exactly right.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 9:06 PM
well, i've never been able to tell europeans apart, except some general blonde-germanic vs. dark mediteraneans.
Posted by yoyo | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 9:08 PM
I can pretty easily tell Japanese apart from Koreans and Chinese, but I've never been able to distinguish Chinese from Koreans.
We've also been treating the Chinese as a pretty homogenous group, which they aren't really. There can be more physical distinction between Chinese than between Koreans and mainland Japanese.
And for all that, I still don't really see a problem with using the word "Asian" to describe someone's appearance. I'm not quite so on board with using it to lump cultures together, but it seems like a necessary shorthand.
Posted by Tarrou | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 9:11 PM
That's interesting. It's pretty easy, just from the way that the facial muscles are held, esp. around the mouth. The languages all "look" different.
I'm unreliable on Chinese/Japanese/Korean, can't distinguish Cambodians from Vietnamese, but can definitely tell who's Filipino.
Arabs, on the other hand--let alone the whole debate about "such-and-such people aren't actually Arab"--well, not much of a clue. Except that ime Afghanis seem to be really light skinned, comparatively.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 9:13 PM
I still don't really see a problem with using the word "Asian" to describe someone's appearance.
There's subcontinent for you on line 1.
Posted by standpipe b | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 9:14 PM
Also: it's frequently possible to tell Japanese from Japanese-American at about 50 yards. Not always, but often.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 9:15 PM
a
Posted by standpipe b | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 9:15 PM
The Vietnam War makes more sense in the context of the Global War on Looking Better Than Us. Curbing Communism always seemed liked a flimsy pretext, but allowing Vietnamese beauty to spread unchecked would have been irreparably damaging to our national pride.
Posted by Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 9:15 PM
Arcadia, where I grew up, is heavily Asian. Schools are majority Asian, mostly Chinese/Taiwanese, and qyute a lot of Koreans and Japanese as well. "Oriental" was bad times, but I can't recall anyone ever having a problem with "Asian."
And calling a Korean Japanese? Not good. Still a lot of bad blood there from WWII.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 9:16 PM
64: Not to mention Vietnamese food, which is just fucking incredible.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 9:20 PM
There's a subcontinent for you on line 1.
Yeah, it's been texting me all day too. Take a message.
Posted by Tarrou | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 9:20 PM
What's kind of strange is that "Oriental" is generally unobjectionable in Hawaii, although I think that's changing as a generation of local kids come back from college on the mainland with their consciousness raised. I had a hell of a time convincing my wife, who are one, that she should avoid using that word around the law school (UW).
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 9:20 PM
Yeah, it's been texting me all day too. Take a message.
Are you sure? I think it "likes you" likes you.
Posted by standpipe b | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 9:22 PM
Bah. Time to call it quits. Good night.
Posted by standpipe b | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 9:24 PM
What, it's barely even drinking hours yet.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 9:25 PM
Many Japanese take great pride in being able to distinguish fellow Japanese from everyone else. An Indonesian-American woman I knew in Tokyo liked to mock them for it, because pretty much everybody there assumed she was Japanese.
Posted by Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 9:26 PM
71: I'll drink to that.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 9:32 PM
59 Are you talking about variation amongst Han Chinese? There are a lot of ethnic groups in China, but the Han are a huge majority. Wikipedia says 92%
Posted by rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 9:52 PM
I think we should bring back the term "celestial."
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 10:21 PM
Another story about my mom, and racial lumping -- this time from the other side: A couple of years ago, my mom announced that a family friend was getting married. To whom? I ask, and she says, "I don't know her, some white person." I look at the wedding invitation, and the woman's last name is "Tam" or "Tang," and the photo looks distinctly non-white. I suggest to her that the bride is probably Chinese, or at least half, to which she replies, dismissively, "Well, anyway. She's not Korean."
Posted by Junior Mint | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 10:40 PM
There's also some diversity even among the Han. See the Hakka, for example.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 10:40 PM
Another story about my mom, and racial lumping
Dear Penthouse,
I never thought it would happen to my mom...
Posted by TJ | Link to this comment | 09- 1-06 11:36 PM
Let us henceforth refer to the practice of Asian fetishism as "Orienteering".
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 6:22 AM
how then will we refer to the 'getting rid of some people of certain orientations' activity they do in the boy scouts?
Posted by yoyo | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 6:50 AM
Disorienting?
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 9:56 AM
45 -- I recommend you do it. They are excellent. There seem to be only two novels so far and some uncollected short stories. (Near as I can tell -- if I'm missing something, somebody please enlighten me.) Have you read any novels yet where you've had a strong feeling of being in the same generation as the novelist? Because I'm getting that from both of Shteyngart's books, and I think it's the first time it's happened. (And lo and behold, it meshes with the data -- GS was born only 2 years after I was. Since reading Shteyngart I have also gotten that reaction to Jennifer Egan, who is 8 years my senior.)
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 10:04 AM
I have really mixed feelings about the "lumping" problem, and also the anger expresed about mistaken Asian identities. On the one hand, I cringe when I hear my unbelievably clueless friend (from Lufkin, Texas, no less) refers to any Asian person as "that Chinese guy/girl." I'm always having to say "Dude, she's Thai," or if I don't actually know the person's nationality (and sometimes without even having seen the person in question), I say, "Do you actually know for a fact this person is from China?" Frankly, it's really not that hard to tell, at least, Chinese/Japanese/Korean apart. And everyone should, after a brief survey of names, be able to tell the names apart. It annoys me greatly when people can't do this.
On the other hand, part of the problem with, say, South Koreans being annoyed at being called Chinese is pretty ill-concealed racism. I'm Egyptian, but I would never be offended at someone thinking I was Persian (although, from appearances, that would probably never happen), or Lebanese, or Moroccan, or whatever. I've had lots of South Korean friends, some of my best friends, in fact, and we've talked a lot about South Korean disregard for the Chinese, especially among the upper classes. And of course, we all know about the Japanese thinking they're better than everyone else.
So part of the anger is righteous, because Americans are notoriously bad at paying attention to this shit, and part of it is pernicious, because it's racist as hell.
Posted by m. leblanc | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 10:29 AM
I can't believe Standpipe didn't get more credit for 37-39.
Posted by mrh | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 10:40 AM
I think 83 is basically right. I make the distinction between the two "lumping" problems by recognizing that there are many different cultures in Asia, without agreeing that all the values in those cultures (virulent racism, for example) are good.
Insofar as the issue is one of ethnography, I think it's best just to reject the attempt to classify people into nationalities just by looking at them. When I first started dating my wife, she pointed out (as many Koreans do) that they are a pure race with 5000 years of history. Left out of the conversation that they have 5000 years of being invaded by the Chinese and, occasionally, the Japanese. And, of course, the Japanese do not like to talk about the apparently significant evidence that the first emperor of Japan was Korean. And this is not to mention Chinese immigration to South Asia or, for that matter, my kids, who have a Korean mother and an American (Irish, Swedish and Mexican, for those who care) father. So, my policy is to lump everyone into the classification "people," and if their cultural background matters and they have not already made clear what it is (which is almost always, when it matters), I ask.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 10:55 AM
I cringe when I hear my unbelievably clueless friend (from Lufkin, Texas, no less) refers to any Asian person as "that Chinese guy/girl." I'm always having to say "Dude, she's Thai," or if I don't actually know the person's nationality (and sometimes without even having seen the person in question), I say, "Do you actually know for a fact this person is from China?" Frankly, it's really not that hard to tell, at least, Chinese/Japanese/Korean apart. And everyone should, after a brief survey of names, be able to tell the names apart. It annoys me greatly when people can't do this.
So you're an elitest who enjoys pointing out the insignificant shortcomings of your "friends" and you get persnickity when everyone else doesn't meet your stupid expectations?
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 11:22 AM
Sorry, that was overly harsh. I'm cranky. But there are certainly a lot of last names that I can't tell apart, so I'd fall in your "annoyed with" category, and the reason is it just doesn't matter to me. I also don't worry, at all, about being able to sight-identify chinest/thai/japanese or whomever. If need be, I'll ask, but I don't feel there's any responsibility on me to be able to distinguish. And, further, "we used to war!" is not a good excuse at getting upset at someone for mistaking your ethniticity.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 11:28 AM
I've had lots of South Korean friends, some of my best friends, in fact, and we've talked a lot about South Korean disregard for the Chinese, especially among the upper classes. And of course, we all know about the Japanese thinking they're better than everyone else.
What's funny about this is that, according to a half-Japanese friend, the Japanese believe the cultural history ordering of the three countries is China, Japan, Korea. Apparently, there's some evidence that the Japanese migrated from Korea, but the Japanese deny it, and claim Chinese ancestry. He said that the Japanese are quite vehement in their rejection of Korea as their point of origin.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 11:29 AM
87: Jeez, Michael. Why not just say "I don't really care about how other people feel" and leave it at that?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 11:32 AM
Is it surprising that the white guys think ethnicity doesn't matter? I'm genuinely asking.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 11:36 AM
Dude, it would be one thing if all the Asians were still living "over there." But there are tons of Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans living in the US right now. Seriously, if one can't tell the difference between the name Soon-Jeong Kim and Takeru Kobayashi, you just haven't been paying any attention.
And yeah, I get annoyed with people who don't pay attention to the people around them. Sue me.
Posted by m. leblanc | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 11:39 AM
I don't feel there's any responsibility on me to be able to distinguish.
It's not a responsibility, but like I said, I think paying attention and being observant, which will generally lead to being able to make these distinctions, is a virtue.
Posted by m. leblanc | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 11:41 AM
I think I'm sort of with Michael on this. If you have no faith in your ability to tell, you should probably stick with the broader category term "Asian." But I don't think it's incumbent on people to be able to sort out different ethnicities. (I wouldn't want to swear to my ability to distinguish "Mexican" from "Guatamalan," leaving aside the intra-national-identity variations.) If you're in an area in which there are significant Asian populations and you're not a jerk, you'll sort it out. Asking more than that is silly.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 11:46 AM
I think my best reply to 89 is that it's not so much I don't care how they feel, I just don't support the idea that it's an insult to mistake a country of origin. Best solution: don't presume. It is hard to ask, though. "So what ethniticity are you?" is an odd question. For some reason, "Are you X" flows easier. I'm offering this as an alternative explanation (other than ignorance) for why people do this.
And I hope the wide generalization in 90 wasn't derived from something I said.
To answer to Kotsko, way back upthread, no, you can't always tell French from Scandanavian. The Normands are heavily Scandanavian. Intermarrriage and all that. Relatedly, I have a handful of friends of mixed-Asian parentage. Another reason to worry less about nationality. We'll all stop worrying about this, eventually. I never ask a black person if he's Zulu, for god's sake.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 11:48 AM
If you have no faith in your ability to tell, you should probably stick with the broader category term "Asian."
I agree. My main objection was to my friend's referring to everyone vaguely Asian-looking as "Chinese."
Posted by m. leblanc | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 11:49 AM
Re: 91 I've experienced enough asian culture that, certainly, there are a lot of names that strike me as obviously chinese, or Korean, or Japanese, or Thai, or Vietnamese. Then there are others that don't. I have a friend, last name Namba. I could in no way tell her nationality from that name.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 11:54 AM
90: It's not, but I am always kind of surprised and a bit irritated when people who I think of as pretty smart and pretty well educated are completely ignorant (or say things that appear completely ignorant) about this kind of thing. I mean, there are plenty of ethnic groups I can't identify for shit, but at least I know that (1) this might annoy people and (2) it isn't a mark of my moral superiority but rather my ignorance.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 11:59 AM
I've experienced enough asian culture that, certainly, there are a lot of names that strike me as obviously chinese, or Korean, or Japanese, or Thai, or Vietnamese.
Then you're not in the "annoyed with" category. What are you complaining about? I certainly don't require that everyone have flawless identification skills. I don't. Not even close.
Just to at least have a general idea of the people around you, and also maybe to care where people are from, if you don't know. That's all I ask.
Posted by m. leblanc | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:04 PM
Just for the hell of it I'm going to call bullshit on the idea that people can ever confidently identify the ethnicity of a chance acquaintance. Can you tell, by looking at her, a Han Chinese from a Korean? No you can't. A group of 50 Chinese and a group of 50 Koreans, sure, but that's a completely different point. No people on earth look so distinct that you can identify a sample of one.
If you were given their names? Well, it so happens that most people are familiar with quite a few Chinese and Korean names - they see them in the paper - so maybe. But what if the two people were respectively Ibo and Yoruba? You know all those naming conventions, do you?
And BTW, if you used the term "Asian" to lump Chinese, Korean and Japanese in Britain, people would think you were weird. Here it means, more or less exclusively, Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Sri Lankan.
Posted by OneFatEnglishman | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:10 PM
I mean, there are plenty of ethnic groups I can't identify for shit, but at least I know that (1) this might annoy people and (2) it isn't a mark of my moral superiority but rather my ignorance.
Fair enough. I would add, however, that neither is it a mark of moral superiority to assume that you know a lot about a person based on the shape of their eyes and the color of their skin, or even their names.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:11 PM
Ideal, I sooo hope your wife stumbles on #44. A just punishment for what I assume was your vote in '04.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:17 PM
Can you tell, by looking at her, a Han Chinese from a Korean?
I completely agree with this. I hear people claim to be able to tell the difference between Chinese and Koreans, some even implying that you are racially insensitive if you cannot. But after living a lot of years in close proximity to people of both Chinese and Korean ancestery, I have found that even those of Chinese and Korean descent can't tell the difference simply on the basis of appearance.
Posted by Idealsit | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:17 PM
7 out of 18: Very Bad.
Am I going to hell?
Posted by Felix | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:19 PM
Can you tell, by looking at her, a Han Chinese from a Korean?
Not always, but often.
No people on earth look so distinct that you can identify a sample of one.
I just don't think that's true. I can almost always tell when someone's Egyptian, for example, because they're pretty distinctive looking. Same with the Lebanese, though not quite as much. I've had random people in America address me in Farsi, because it's pretty damn obvious that I'm Iranian.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:20 PM
Ideal, I sooo hope your wife stumbles on #44. A just punishment for what I assume was your vote in '04.
My views on the matter are already well known to Mrs. Idealist who, when she is not yelling at me, mostly agrees (although she would argue that I am pretty bad tempered myself).
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:20 PM
Well, of course caring a whole lot about the ethnicity of random people is stupid, and it's rude and probably annoying to ask people "so what are you?" But that's surely different from deliberately implying that these things don't matter.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:22 PM
But Iranians are pretty diverse as far as looks.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:23 PM
neither is it a mark of moral superiority to assume that you know a lot about a person based on the shape of their eyes and the color of their skin, or even their names.
Who ever said it was? Defensive much? Especially since I wasn't griping at you, I was griping about Michael. Chill.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:24 PM
I've had random people in America address me in Farsi, because it's pretty damn obvious that I'm Iranian.
And a Scottish friend of mine has been randomly addressed in Portuguese, because she looked Portuguese to the speaker. Win some, lose some.
Posted by OneFatEnglishman | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:25 PM
94: The situation with African-Americans is obviously not comparable.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:25 PM
Oh, for Christ's sakes, people. I never said that there should be a sight-identification test. To refresh, I said that it's "not that hard to tell them apart." That means that if you look closely, you can see that say, Japanese generally have a "look" that is different from the way Koreans look.
No people on earth look so distinct that you can identify a sample of one.
I don't think I, or anyone else, would assert that that's possible with any level of complete accuracy. My original objection was to my friend's referring to everyone Asian as "Chinese," coupled with an expression of my annoyance that a lot of Americans seem to have no idea about names. Being able to identify correctly every name is not possible, nor is it desirable. But a lot of names are pretty easy to identify.
Quit overstating my arguments to absurd levels of vehemence and/or absoluteness.
Posted by m. leblanc | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:27 PM
103: 10/7. Koreans and Chinese are the same. Let's just call them "coolies" and be done with it.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:29 PM
Quit overstating my arguments to absurd levels of vehemence and/or absoluteness.
Leblanc, you're obviously saying that we should immediately pigeonhole people based on their ethnic characteristics. Racist!
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:31 PM
Same with the Lebanese, though not quite as much.
Don't believe that.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:31 PM
I thought I was pretty decent at guessing Korean, Japanese, and Chinese people, but Felix's quiz linked in 103 was stumping me--until I broke it, so I don't know how well I was doing.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:31 PM
Defensive much?
Yes.
The situation with African-Americans is obviously not comparable.
There are differences, sure, but it is much closer than people realize. As has been mentioned above, there are more ethnic groups in China than the Han, and all of them have migrated--for thousands of years--to other parts of Asia (not to mention the Mongols' little foray into western Asia and eastern Europe). There are not any Asian countries that are as diverse as the US, but you still cannot tell for sure from someone's looks what their cultural backgrond is.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:33 PM
I took a quiz like that once and was surprised I did as badly as I did. But that one didn't require me to register, which I refuse to do, so I can't say if I've gotten better.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:33 PM
Okay, color me ashamed. 12 out of 18 right on the quiz. Not terrible, but not great either.
Posted by m. leblanc | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:34 PM
Still photos are much more difficult to distinguish than live people.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:34 PM
113 should obviously read 10 out of 18. Which makes me teh moral-est! At least on Unfogged. So far.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:35 PM
Damn.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:36 PM
"There are not any Asian countries that are as diverse as the US"
Except nearly all of them.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:36 PM
116: I think the point w/r/t African Americans is that since Africans were originally brought to this country as slaves, and subsequently bred like cattle and frequently raped, asking a black person if they were Zulu, for god's sake, is a shitty analogy to being able to tell the difference between Chinese and Koreans.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:36 PM
I can tell your ethnicities just from your comments.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:38 PM
B, you could have registered as an 80 year-old man named Johnny Poodle, as I did.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:38 PM
119: Ogged's Iranian, so he's an expert on this stuff.
124: Okay, shoot.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:39 PM
ogged, can you really pick out Egyptians? I can't, not until I hear them speak. But maybe that's just because they look like "people" to me.
Racist.
Posted by m. leblanc | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:39 PM
and subsequently bred like cattle
My recollection is that this is wrong, or that there is little evidence of this. The issue comes up in sports discussions when people are trying to explain why African-American dominance in various sports.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:40 PM
ogged, can you really pick out Egyptians?
I can pretty regularly pick out Egyptian males, but not females, for some reason. They have a pretty distinctive honey coloring usually, and their foreheads are more square than other Arabs. Kinda strange.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:41 PM
I'm so completely non-racist that I've never even heard of the concept of "race" or "ethnicity," much less these specific ones like "Chinese," "Korean," "African American," "Iranian." This is all completely new to me, and frankly I'm horrified.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:42 PM
"Adam Kotsko" s/b "Gary Farber"
Posted by m. leblanc | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:43 PM
Although, to be honest, I'm sure there's a ton of confirmation bias in my reports, so don't believe me; it is pretty hard to tell.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:44 PM
128: Not all slaves, of course. But it did happen. (The nonsense about "that's why blacks are better basketball players" is completely beside the point.) And of course slaveowners deliberately mixed people from different language groups in order to prevent insurrections.
130: WTF kind of name is Kotsko, anyway? It sure isn't American.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:46 PM
Never could tell Americans. They look just like Canadians.
Posted by OneFatEnglishman | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:47 PM
Way to illustrate the pertinence of the post-title, y'all!
Posted by ahab | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:47 PM
You know, what nobody's pointed out is that there are a lot of contexts where making some kind of snap judgement about someone else's ethnicity could get you a smack in the mouth. There are definitely locales around the Twin Cities where asking someone who appears to be of some Asian ethnicity if they are Japanese would be contraindicated if you don't want to find yourself in an extremely uncomfortable situation. Perhaps it comes of having a "funny name" myself, but I can't imagine what would posess someone to go around quizzing people, especially strangers, about their ethnicity.
A question for the white Gentiles: Has anyone ever come up to you and asked if you were Jewish? It's happened to me a couple of times, which just seems odd since I have fair skin, blue eyes and medium-brown hair. Unless the next question is "Nu, didn't I go to Talmud Torah school with your brother?" it seems like one of those questions that could be expected to provoke an extremely defensive reaction, even if the answer is in the affirmative.
Posted by minneapolitan | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:48 PM
134: Except better-looking.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:48 PM
Well, my Korean friend just got back to me and her score was only 10/18, so I feel a little more smug now.
Posted by m. leblanc | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:48 PM
137: Except in person.
Posted by ahab | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:51 PM
128: Well, in any case, odds are that if you asked an African-American what specific African group they belonged to, they themselves would not know. And whether or not they were "bred like cattle," it seems obvious that there would've been some substantial cross-breeding of the various specific African ethnicities over the course of the centuries that African slaves and their descendants have been in North America.
It does seem like it'd be possible to tell apart people from various parts of Africa, and there are substantial numbers of Africans coming to the US now, so it's possible that an American could have a chance to get a feel for those differences. But the descendants of African slaves brought to American are not a helpful example in a discussion of being able to tell among different "ethnicities" within a broader "race."
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:52 PM
134: We're ruder.
136: I've been asked if I was Jewish once. Hilariously, it was by a friend in grad school who was himself Jewish, at a party at my place, where if my straight blond hair and blue eyes and Swedish/German features didn't suggest that I'm not (to be fair, I guess, there are blond Jews), the Guatemalen Last Supper enamel in my kitchen should have. I think he asked b/c I had a lot of books about the Holocaust on my shelves.
Mr. B. says that his Kentucky neighbors always thought he and his family were Jews. Which is actually kind of sickly ironic, since his parents were WWII-era German Catholics. Dark hair, though.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:53 PM
Has anyone ever come up to you and asked if you were Jewish?
Near where I work is one of those people who are like a sort of Jewish missionary, but focused on preventing backsliding rather than evangelizing to the heathen. Almost every day he stops me in the street, asks if I'm Jewish, and every time I say no, and he goes on to the next guy, who also brushes him off, and so on.
There's a name for people like him; I think it begins with a B; much appreciated if anyone can remind me of it.
Posted by Felix | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:53 PM
it seems like one of those questions that could be expected to provoke an extremely defensive reaction
I've been asked a number of times, and I see no reason to be defensive about it. Unless one is an antisocial punk, I suppose.
Yeah, fuck comity. Fuck it. Cock.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:54 PM
139: Keep hunting the whale that is America, Canuck. Maybe we'll let you in this here union, someday.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:54 PM
I've been told that I look "either Jewish or English." (I ran immediately to the bathroom after that comment to see what was wrong with my teeth.)
Also, the Troll of Sorrow "accuses" me of being Jewish, but he seems to be one of the rare people for whom that is a general-purpose insult (parallel to more recent use of "gay" as a term of general abuse). Come to think of it, he seems to think of me primarily as a gay Jewish pedophile priest. But I don't think he counts, because he's never seen me in person (to my knowledge).
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:56 PM
M. LeBlanc in 111: I don't think the fat englishman's spectacular comment was directed at you. There were a couple people upthread advocated that you should be able to tell different asian natioanalities on sight.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:57 PM
Her other response was "I think these were Chinese-Americans, Japanese-Americans, and Korean-Americans. Bring me some real CJKs."
Posted by m. leblanc | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 12:59 PM
140: The other thing to keep in mind is that, as with anything else, antipathy towards the proximate can be much more pronounced than towards the distant (I know, I know, that's fatuous AND tautological). Consider Amhara and Oromo immigrants from Ethiopia for example. They might look much closer to each other than either of them would to Somalis or Sudanese people, but you'd be mistaken if you thought that meant it was wise to go mistaking an individual from one group for a member of the other.
Posted by minneapolitan | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 1:00 PM
natioanalities
Goatse: Anus as big as a Nation.
Posted by m. leblanc | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 1:02 PM
148: Yeah, but as Michael points out, that's just because they're antisocial punks.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 1:02 PM
144: Hmm... Moby Dick the country - an analogy that stands up to a little stretching.
Posted by ahab | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 1:03 PM
M. Leblanc is banned.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 1:03 PM
149 and 151: better together.
Posted by m. leblanc | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 1:04 PM
136: A group of us were hanging around in front of a restaurant in the Village [NYC], when we were approached by a couple of Lubavitchers from a "mitzvah mobile", who triangulated in on the only two non-Jewish males in the group to ask 'Are you Jewish?'
On the other hand, my Kid confuses people all the time, as his last name sounds Jewish and he's Korean. Tho' no one ever asks him if he's Japanese.
Posted by DominEditrix | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 1:05 PM
143, 150: As an anti-social punk, I take offense at your callous insensitivity to my class! Brutes!
Posted by minneapolitan | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 1:09 PM
150: Right!
Seriously, is not someone hitting another person over a misidentification of country of origin the epitome of an "antisocial punk". It's the "antisocial punk" par excellence!!
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 1:12 PM
Except nearly all of them.
I would be interested in the factual basis for this claim.
I see your point in 140 and mostly agree, although you do ignore that there are a non-trivial number of Americans of African descent who are not the descentents of slaves.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 1:15 PM
Ask your wife to take the test, Ideal. I want to know how she scores.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 1:17 PM
Nobody knows the name for the guys who stand in the street all day asking if you're Jewish?
There's a specific name. Someone told me once but I forgot.
This is going to bug me for hours.
Posted by Felix | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 1:24 PM
Felix - they're usually members of Chabad-Lubavitch. If a male answers in the affirmative, they will haul him into their van and wrap tefillin around his arm and head.
Then there's this group...
Posted by DominEditrix | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 1:38 PM
Has anyone ever come up to you and asked if you were Jewish?
I won't venture to guess why, but I'm regularly assumed to be Jewish. A Jewish guy from New York went so far as to ID me as one of the tribe, then -- without waiting for a response -- triumphantly proclaim that spotting Jews out here (Portland, Ore.) is easy. Had to tell him I was Catholic, so at least he was close.
Oh, and to answer 90: I'm a white guy, and I care.
Posted by Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 1:45 PM
157: I don't understand how you could say I ignore a point which I in fact explicitly mention.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 1:48 PM
160: Hmm. I'm sure someone told me there was a specific name for the kind of Lubavitcher whose job it is to do that.
It's possible the word I'm thinking of is Chabadnik, and I'm just a bit confused about what precisely it was supposed to designate.
The one I see every day operates solo, is about 4'9'', and isn't hauling nobody nowhere.
161: I'm a white guy, and I care.
The Democrats have found their slogan for '08!
Posted by Felix | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 1:49 PM
The Kid took the test, scored 12/18, complained the the making-faces pix were impossible. He kept picking the Chinese as Korean. [He pointed out that he's been mistaken for Chinese by immigrants in Chinatown.]
Posted by DominEditrix | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 1:51 PM
The one I see every day operates solo, is about 4'9'', and isn't hauling nobody nowhere.
Ask him for the appropriate name. And report back.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 1:51 PM
I don't understand how you could say I ignore a point which I in fact explicitly mention.
Because I noticed the parts of your comment where you talked about slaves but missed the part in your comment where you said and there are substantial numbers of Africans coming to the US now, so it's possible that an American could have a chance to get a feel for those differences.
Sorry.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 1:51 PM
Felix, I spent a few minutes trying to find the html code for a superscript TM before I gave up. So I'm entitled to a cut of the t-shirt proceeds.
Posted by Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 1:52 PM
Ask him for the appropriate name. And report back.
I think I'd have to lie and say I was Jewish in order to get him to stand still and answer my questions. And I'd feel guilty about that, because he already seems to be having a hard enough time, poor little guy.
Posted by Felix | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 1:55 PM
163: "Chabadnik" = member of Chabad movement
Posted by DominEditrix | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 1:55 PM
165: "report" s/b "stand"
Posted by Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 1:56 PM
168: Ask a Jew to ask him.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 2:04 PM
Actually, maybe you're thinking of "Lubavitchers." I base this on the Wikipedia entry for Chabad Lubavitch -- which seems like it was created largely by supporters of the movement -- and the related article on the Mitzvah tank (see also here).
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 2:10 PM
It wasn't Lubavitch. I thought it was a word for a specific subset of Lubavitchers who go out in the streets asking "are you a Jew?" (___ is to Lubavitcher as missionary is to Mormon). But I may have been mistaken, because now I think about it "Chabadnik" sounds a lot like the word I half-remember. Thanks for all guesses.
Posted by Felix | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 2:20 PM
"is so data" in the title to this post reminds me of the hook from the curry n' rice girl.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 2:25 PM
What a can of worms I appear to have opened up.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 2:29 PM
I get asked if I'm Irish fairly often. Not by average Brits, obviously. But by people who don't read British accents well -- i.e. non-native speakers and Americans.
I'm fairly sure my japanese versus chinese discriminatory sense is pretty good. They generally, going by movie actors and the chinese and japanese people I know, don't look alike to me. However, I've met very few Koreans in my life so I have no idea how successful I'd be at distinguishing them.
Posted by nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 2:56 PM
Americans tend to have a hell of a time telling Irish and Scottish accents apart. We don't hear too many of either in daily life.
My school, like Adam's, is heavily Korean, so I know a lot of Koreans and I can generally tell them apart from Chinese people (lots of them here too), but I wouldn't bet on it. Japanese people do seem to have a distinctive "look" that sets them apart from both, but there aren't many of them here so I don't think I could reliably pick them out. The languages, of course, are all very different.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 3:01 PM
i get asked if i'm jewish occasionally. but i think thats because my mom's parents grew up amish, so from hanging out with gramps i've picked up use of words like 'schmutz' and 'putz'
Posted by yoyo | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 3:04 PM
I don't think I've ever been asked if I'm Jewish, which is odd since I am. I don't really look it, though, except when my hair grows out, and then people probably just assume.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 3:08 PM
Hey, my Dad's parents grew up Amish. Represent.
Posted by Tarrou | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 3:08 PM
I'm a white guy and I care!™ Now I get a cut too. (I think it actually should be 'SM', but I don't know if there's HTML for that.)
The Lubavitchers ask me if I'm Jewish, and I am, even though I've got fair skin, blue eyes, and medium-brown hair which I sometimes try to pass off as blonde.
B, I would call your hair red. Strawberry blonde, maybe.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 3:56 PM
I get asked if I'm Jewish a fair amount, most of the time by Jewish people, but at least a few times by nasty people who wanted to make anti-semitic comments without there being any Jewish people around. Hard to know what to reply in those latter cases.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 3:56 PM
re: 177
Yeah, without a lot of exposure I suppose it's harder. The accents don't sound remotely alike to me, but then, they wouldn't.
On the other hand, while I can tell some US accents apart -- southern versus north eastern, stereotypical New York accents, Boston, deep South, etc. -- I'm sure there's a lot of distinctions that I just completely miss that a native US person with a decent ear for accents would pick up upon.
I do quite often know people are Scottish before I hear them speak, though. There are certain facial types that just look 'scottish' to me. Of course, there are lots of times I wouldn't have a clue, but sometimes it just jumps out.
The Jewish thing, in the sense of what would constitute Jewish in appearance, I'm pretty ignorant about. An American friend of mine, who is Jewish (I think), once referred to some acquaintance -- who I wasn't sure I knew -- as the 'Jewish' looking girl, among some group. I was none the wiser.
Posted by nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 4:09 PM
On looking Jewish:
http://www.azarajokes.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=53
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 4:35 PM
Curly dark hair is the main criterion for looking Jewish, along with a big nose. Curly hair alone is often enough; cf. Weiner's comment above.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 4:46 PM
141, 181: I wouldn't necessarily think it was so odd to be misidentified as Jewish around here, since any casual outing in the western half of the Twin Cities will net several sightings of blond Jews, but one time it happened on the subway in New York. That seemed strange, but reading the comments above makes it sound fairly common. You learn something new every day I guess.
177: Does anyone else walk around in the US and see faces that are stereotypically Scots-Irish to an alarming degree? There's one or two modes of fair, red-headed, somewhat doughy facial structure that just leap out at me (due to their uncanny resemblence to some members of my family) as peculiarly Scots-Irish. I try to stay clear of these people, since as we all know, the Scots/Northern English who went to colonize Ireland and then wised up and came to the US to colonize the wild, wild east have some terrible tempers.
Posted by minneapolitan | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 5:09 PM
181: So, Weiner, how do you do it? The normal thing with brackets and "sup" doesn't work.
B, I would call your hair red. Strawberry blonde, maybe.
Does anyone here miss an opportunity to hint at some greater-than-merely-internetical familiarity with B? Lubavitchers, meet the Love-a-Bitchers.
Posted by Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 5:40 PM
™
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 5:47 PM
Thanks, man. You get Weiner's cut.
Posted by Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 5:51 PM
You're welcome.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 5:54 PM
re: 186
Re: Scots-Irish faces, etc. I suppose. Red hair is a bit of a giveaway, or, in my case brown hair and variegated gingery beard. However, most of the stereotypical Scottish faces that jump into my mind -- leaving aside the gingers -- have pretty dark facial colouring and eyes and dark brown hair.
The slightly doughy face thing, though, yeah. Or a certain cadaverous flat-face + cheekbones thing. But in a way that's distinct from the eastern european cheekbone thing.
Posted by nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 5:57 PM
B, I would call your hair red. Strawberry blonde, maybe.
That's b/c when you met me I was still dying it.
187: What can I say, I'm America's Sweetheart.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 6:14 PM
Dyeing.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 6:15 PM
"Love-a-Bitchers" is great, but it doesn't fit the stress pattern of the original (which is accented on the a).
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 6:19 PM
NTTAWWT.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 6:57 PM
You'll not achieve blogging stardom with that kind of decency, young pup.
Posted by Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 7:16 PM
somewhat doughy facial structure that just leap out at me...as peculiarly Scots-Irish.
Hey!
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 7:23 PM
You can tell my terrible temper is roused because I forget to do italics.
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 7:25 PM
196: Blogofascist.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 7:26 PM
That's better.
Posted by Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 7:38 PM
103: I got 10 out of 17, but I was mostly responding to fashion than physique. (dyed brown hair --> probably Japanese.)
Posted by rob helpy-chalk | Link to this comment | 09- 2-06 9:33 PM
"There are not any Asian countries that are as diverse as the US"
Except nearly all of them.
I would be interested in the factual basis for this claim.
I second Idealist on this. No offense Weman, but I think you're smoking the crack on this one.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 2:15 AM
Ask your wife to take the test, Ideal. I want to know how she scores.
Her response when I showed he the quiz--"I don't know. I don't care" [walks off muttering disgustedly in Korean]
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 9:04 AM
Heh, I think I like Mrs. Idealist.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 9:53 AM
sometimes try to pass off as blonde
How come no one else has zeroed in on this? Matt, you dye your hair, don't you? Don't you? I need to find that "hair products" thread again.
Posted by m. leblanc | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 11:03 AM
202: I suppose by Asian countries you relly mean north east asian countries, presumably because asian-american stands for north east, and you were talking about them. Am I right? That's not what Asian country generally refers to, though.
Otherwise I'm confused.
Posted by David Weman | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 11:18 AM
Matt, you dye your hair, don't you?
What? No. I mean, once when I was 23 I had it rinsed copper, which was kind of cool, but that's it.
Are you thinking of this thread? I was driving across the country at the time, I didn't even read it.
This is the other thread that Yahoo! recognizes as containing the phrase "hair products."
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 11:54 AM
136- I am regularly assumed to be Jewish, by Jewish people and non-Jewish people. (I am in fact only infrequently asked if I am Jewish, but only because everyone seems to just assume that I am. I've had acquaintances I'd known for several years express shock on learning I was *not*, in fact, Jewish.) I don't really know why. I have dark (non-curly!) hair and eyes, and a large nose, and I guess that's what does it. I don't really know.
Regardless, it's never really bothered me terribly much, and I think that's part of the reason why I don't really understand why someone else is so terribly offended if I can't tell whether they are Taiwanese or Korean or Vietnamese. (And no, I don't just *assume* one or the other). But, you know, white male and all, so I suppose I'm just situtationally incapable of proper empathy.
Posted by Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 12:29 PM
Did anyone even make a half-hearted effort actually to comment on ogged's post? I skimmed, but I think the answer is no.
Posted by Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 12:33 PM
pwned
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 12:34 PM
I once was accused of being anti-Semetic because I looked shocked when a guy in a bar told me he was Jewish. He didn't believe my explanation that this was because he had (1) asked me if I was Jewish earlier, and (2) scolded me for not appreciating "the true spirit of Christmas" when I'd said something mildly cynical at some point. I decided he was an asshole.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 12:41 PM
206 -- yeah this is what I've been thinking all thread long -- "Asian" in contemporary American usage means "somebody who looks approximately Chinese" -- vast areas of Asia (including much of China) are not home to "Asian" people according to this usage. I'm pretty sure the term came into use only because people started realizing "Oriental" gave offense.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 1:38 PM
The American usage makes sense in context, though, because the vast majority of immigration from Asia to the United States has been from the countries of East Asia. "Asia" is of course an artificial construct covering a truly gigantic variety of terrains, climates and cultures, so "Asian" is more or less meaningless in and of itself. In different places outside of Asia it means different things, and I see no problem with that.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 2:57 PM
Cl - I don't think Americans are generally aware that "Asia" comprises more than the Pacific Rim any more than they are aware that Native Americans were called "Indians" because Columbus thought he'd reached India. I finally put a map on my dining room wall so that my child might have a glancing awareness of parts-o'-the-world other than LA and east Asia.
An inability to differentiate among nationalities isn't restricted to Murricans - an aquaintance of mine, who is immigrant Korean, can't tell the round-eyes apart. She says that when people say 'so-and-so looks Irish', she has no idea what they're referring to. Given that people of all skin colours sport red hair these days, even that isn't the signifier it once was. But she can pick a Japanese person out at 30 paces and loathes them with a passion.
Posted by DominEditrix | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 3:03 PM
I'm with teofolio's 213.
Posted by Tarrou | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 4:13 PM
teofolio?
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 4:36 PM
The Folio of the Ghods.
Posted by Clownæsthesiologist | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 5:15 PM
There used to be a quiz show on Japanese television in which people would try to guess the nationalities of a gaijin guest's parents. They were supposed to be nationalities with some definable ethnic characteristics, but an appearance on the show was stupid easy money, so people with American or Canadian parents would just make shit up to get on.
teofolio?
A larger format than teoquarto.
Posted by Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 5:18 PM
I suppose by Asian countries you relly mean north east asian countries, presumably because asian-american stands for north east, and you were talking about them. Am I right? That's not what Asian country generally refers to, though.
Although generally "Asian" in the U.S. does generally refer to east Asia, that's not what I mean.
I'm no expert, but glancing at a map, I don't think it's the case that "nearly all" of those countries are as diverse as the U.S.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 6:50 PM
It depends what you mean by "diversity," which is a slippery concept. If you mean "having a large number of different ethnicities present without regard to the number of people in each" then the US is surely more diverse than most countries in Asia; India and Indonesia are the only ones I can think of that might be more diverse by that measure. But if you mean "not being dominated demographically by a single ethnocultural group but rather having several large, influential ones" then many Asian countries probably are more diverse than the US. There are probably other ways to define diversity as well.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 6:59 PM
I was thinking along the lines of the tables "Ancestries with 100,000 or more people..." in the 2000 Census. Pages 4 and 5 here.(warning: 12 page pdf file) That's a pretty impressive array, and it's not apparent to me that nearly all countries in Asia show that kind of range.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 7:20 PM
I cannot believe I wrote that. I always underestimate the distance tossed-off thoughts need travel to reach the keyboard.
Posted by Tarrou | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 7:48 PM
Don't worry, you're in good company.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 7:51 PM
221: Right, probably only India and Indonesia have numbers like that. Maybe China and a couple others. Japan? Not so much.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 7:53 PM
Thanks, man. You get Weiner's cut.
teofolio the mohel.
Posted by standpipe b | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 8:54 PM
Awesome. Given that he's off discussing fellatio in the new thread, I'd add a mezizah joke, but, well, consider it made.
Posted by Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 9:10 PM
Mezizah?
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 9:21 PM
Mezizah.
Posted by Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 9:28 PM
Ah, okay. Not a common or well-known practice.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 9:45 PM
Indeed. The only reason I know about it is because of the recent controversy concerning the New York Department of Health and some infants who had contracted Herpes virus from mohelim.
Posted by Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 10:02 PM
Right, I'd heard that story too. It also gets dragged out whenever there's some tiresome internet debate on circumcision. What people don't seem to realize is that it's a very, very marginal practice and the overwhelming majority of Jews have never heard of it.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 09- 3-06 10:09 PM