How Else Would I Know?

[Can I Help Your A$$?]

My husband is Mediterranean, with olive skin and luscious lips, and the body of a greek statue.

With very curly auburn hair, and he's French.

[Pixagi]

I get the same stuff all the time, it can be either really funny, or really annoying. Most people assume I'm Hispanic, so at work I get a lot of Hispanic customers coming up to me, talking to me in Spanish, and getting annoyed when I don't understand them.

I also once had a car service guy tell me I should speak Spanish because I look it. Yeah, he didn't get a good tip.

[Flood]

My Dad is Filipino, with a bit of Spanish and French dashed in. My Mom is mostly duch/germanic, but with enough Cherokee thrown in so that her and my uncles tan really well. All grandparents, aunts, and uncles on both sides have either black or dark brown hair.

Together, my parents have created three of the whitest boys you'll ever see. Me and my brothers all have light blond hair that matches my mom's (even though she has to use dye to get hers to look like ours). Her cherokee ability to tan seems to have neutralized his natural dark tendencies to create three boys who turn into lobsters at the slightest mention of sunlight. His eyes are brown, her eyes are blue, and nobody can agree as to what color mine are.

I was basically raised Filipino. Rice was a standard for any meal I was eating, to the point where I never ate potatoes until I graduated High School. I've had and enjoyed Balut. Cracked me up when it was featured on an episode of Fear Factor.

I used to get pissed off when people would assume that I'm white just 'cause that's my skin color. I remain entirely unconvinced that 'caucasian' comes with any set of shared cultural experineces. Growing up, I had to literally wear my pinoy pride on my sleeve to keep from getting harassed by racist little black kids. I was actually told once that "Only white people can be racists" while a group of black kids were beating me up because I was white.

[booger]

I am almost all of European ancestry, but I am 1/64 Nez Perce, so I have pasty white skin, brown hair, dark dark brown eyes, and high cheekbones. To me, I look like a white chick with dark eyes, but I guess I look (and sound, apparently) odd enough to make people question. When I was little, my younger brother thought I was Chinese. And I've been asked if I was Hispanic at least once. It doesn't really bother me much. No one has ever said anything racist about or toward me. I think one of my sisters (who tans easily) has been called Mexican before. *shrugs* People are people, I could care less what color they are. Idiocy transcends race.

[iradney]

If you were to look at my cousins (fraternal twins), you'd never say they were related. Their dad is half Italian, so the son has got gorgeous coffee coloured skin, thick black hair and dark brown eyes. He definitely looks mediterranean. The daughter is pale, with freckles, green eyes and brown hair. She's definitely taking after our grandma. And if you put my cousin and I next to each other, you would actually say we were sisters, not cousins.

[ebonyknight]

The most beautiful person I ever met had a Japanese mother and a VERY dark African-American father. She had gorgeous skin that looked like a light tan (well, a light tan on ME, I'm Norwegian/Irish/German), thick, wavy black hair, and facial features that were impossible to place until she told you her heritige. Oh, and she had just a hint of a Southern drawl that threw people off even more.

She loved saying that she hated 'ethnicity' questions on college applications and other forms, because most places don't have an 'other' field or let you pick more than one.

Well in the south, the "one drop rule" is still in effect. My Father was black, mother phenotypically white. They put black on her death certificate.

Gotta love the south.

[Shironu-Akaineko]

I'm half native (don't look it at all) 1/4 Irish (really look it, I'm so white I'm blue) and 1/4 French.

Hard to believe my cousin M is my cousin because he's REALLY native looking (He IS 3/4 native, 1/4 French)...

And on St Patrick's day, my boss asked me why I wore a "Kiss me I'm Irish" ribbon.

I don't look like anything, I guess.

[Racket_Man]

heck I am pure "old world" half german and half polish. when I moved up to NE wisconsin and grew my hair long (now about half way down my back) I have been getting alot of "what tribe are you??" this questions comes not from whites/blacks/asians/etc but from LIP = Local Indiginious Persons ie Native Americans

[TryNotToBeThatOne]

Well in the south, the "one drop rule" is still in effect. My Father was black, mother phenotypically white. They put black on her death certificate.

Gotta love the south.

*snicker* College friend from NC is listed as white on her driver license, despite her very African features, because her mom went with her to the Dept Motor Vehicles. M has skin just a bit darker than cafe au lait, dark brown/black kinky hair (sort of), brown eyes, broad nose and is 6' tall. The sort of was because that's the hair she had until her senior year in high school when she went with the 1/2" crop. After that, she has red hair with brown roots. It just grew that way.

I suppose that if her Dad had gone with her, they'd have listed her as black. I think that the person at DMV just didn't want to ask and was trying not to be rude.
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One of my aunts is so white, she's practically blue, although she was dark-haired (grey now). She married a man whose parents came from Jordan. Guess whose phenotype won the dominance battle? Yep, their kids all have straight dark hair, dark eyes & olive skin that tans at the drop of a sunbeam.

Back in the 60's aunt & youngest son went to visit sister in Miami for awhile. Uncle had to return home early to tend to business. He didn't want his wife & son travelling alone, so he sent a friend down to travel back with them.

Picture this: it's the early to mid-60's, Atlanta airport; small, delicate, very white woman, African-American man, & a very darkskinned child. Yeah, they got some very hostile looks, but according to my aunt, no one actually said anything.

[Horsetuna]

My looks have never gotten me this, mostly its my 'wandering accent'. I dont know how it happens but sometimes my accent starts to lean in a certain direction. I've been mistaken, over the years, for French, English, Scottish, Newfie, Australian, American (?) and spanish. People asked me where I'm from at the casino all the time and I'd try to explain I was born in canada and never left the continent. I dont know if they believed me.

I blame it on the fact that some of my favorite TV shows are from britain and I learned to read words before I learned how they were pronounced, so I have a kind of 'speech impediment.' For the longest time Indianapolis was pronounced Indiana (Like the state)-Polis, and chameleon was Sha-Mel-Lee-on.

I never got called slurs for that though, thankfully.

[Stormraven]

No problems for people with me - Irish abounds in my blood, and it shows. However, as with Horsetuna, I have a problem with accents. Specifically, I tend to unconsciously mimic them. When I'm talking to someone with an accent, I will tend to pick up their accent and use it myself.

I've been accused of making fun of people because of it.

[TryNotToBeThatOne]

Oh gods, you too? I've been asked, in my own hometown, 'where are you from?' I have had to consciously stop myself from copying the accent of the person I'm talking to. At a study abroad fair, the Brit rep asked when I'd visited Britain.

And after watching 4 hours of Brit tv? :shudder: It takes me 30 minutes to get 'my' accent back.

Appearance-wise? I'm pure European. Genealogically speaking? I'm a west European mutt, as far as I know. There are 2 orphans in the tree with no info about parents at this point in the research, and one line's been in the US since c1700, so who knows what's hiding in there.

[Stormraven]

I'm fortunate enough that it - so far - seems to be only when I'm talking to people, and if I'm paying attention, I can keep it from happening.

TV shows don't do it yet. As near as I can tell, it happened when - for a reason I no longer recall - at around the age of 16 or so, I decided to eradicate any trace of accent from my speech. Since then, I've been quite the accent mimic.

[Argabarga]

I'm as white as a loaf of Wonder bread, but somehow, no matter where I go, people assume that I'm local and start asking me for directions, and that's pretty wierd, ethnicity aside, I must look generically harmless.