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Post by Subuatai on May 26, 2009 4:43:06 GMT -5
^ It's weird...
Other Mongols view me as Mongol, but other Asians view me as mixed... *shrug*
=/ As a Kalmyk, I don't think intermixing between Kalmyks and Russians are that common... though others tell me otherwise. There is a lot of pressure against marrying Russians since 1940s, many Kalmyks nowadays prefer Kazakh brides then Russian brides.
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Post by jefe on May 26, 2009 12:00:57 GMT -5
but to me language is the biggest barrier to culture and unfortunately thanks to my father that's been more or less cut off. My children have greater chance of speaking French or Hebrew than Mandarin at this stage. There is a PUBLICLY FUNDED school in suburban Maryland which teaches most of its subjects in Mandarin, and many NON-Chinese families aim to send their kids there. There is a significant Jewish community in the area and many of the parents compete with the ethnic Chinese to get their kids to go there -- they want to make sure their kids grow up speaking Mandarin and reading Chinese. If non-ethnic Chinese in the USA can do this, I really don't see why persons of Chinese or other Asian descent cannot do something similar. At a certain point, I think kids need to stop attributing being cut off from a culture due to what their parents did. After my paternal grandparents passed away, my father decided to distance himself even further from the Chinese-American community. However, I did not follow that at all. None of my relatives even spoke any Mandarin dialect, but I went and learned it, went to Church in Mandarin (learned to read the Bible in Chinese) and joined some activities with Chinese speaking groups, and also worked at a Chinese restaurant in Virginia -- after a while I learned to communicate with them. Was I 100% accepted? NO. But I could still engage in a wide variety of activities with a wide variety of people, and being 100% accepted was never a pre-requisite. I truly believe that after about age 16-18, you can choose yourself what culture(s) you want to be exposed to and participate in, REGARDLESS of your parents influence and your physical appearance.
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Post by ashhfacce on Jun 4, 2009 10:05:18 GMT -5
I hate when people sit there and stare at me trying to figure out what "flavor" I am. 5 min. later they get the guts to ask, lol.
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Post by soulsonick on Jun 4, 2009 12:48:21 GMT -5
hey ash i dont think theyre trying to be offensive - for the most part i think its genuine curiosity ... unfortunately we are living in the times of sometimes unnecessary Hip Hop vernacular
- fortunately for me i grew up in a very multicultural area so everyone pretty much got along so my cultural makeup was never really brought up - "whats your background?" was a very common question
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Post by ashhfacce on Jun 4, 2009 14:56:15 GMT -5
You are lucky, growing up in the south it's unusual to see an interracial couple; most people think I'm adopted when I'm out with my dad (he's Caucasian). There's also only about 10 Asians in my school system, definitely not a culturally diverse area.
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Post by amalgam on Jun 4, 2009 19:16:00 GMT -5
I hate when people sit there and stare at me trying to figure out what "flavor" I am. 5 min. later they get the guts to ask, lol. Heck, I stare at people all the time trying to figure out what they are, or, just for the sake of looking at peoples faces. : P
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Post by ashhfacce on Jun 4, 2009 20:25:49 GMT -5
Haha, that's true. Most people in the south assume I'm Latina, to them I'm ethnically ambiguous.. :/
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Post by jefe on Jun 4, 2009 22:37:22 GMT -5
^ What part of the South are you from?
My white mother is from a small city in Alabama and we spent summers there when I was growing up in the segregated 60s and 70s, way before they started to have any Latinos in the area. My parents travelled only once there when I was growing up and only after anti-miscegenation laws were overturned (Alabama did not repeal their state laws until Nov. 2000).
For me, my white grandparents did not even want to give people a chance to stare and ask questions -- WAY too embarassing for them.
^ Many Latinos look ethnically ambiguous. If you do not seem to act Hispanic, then I suppose you just remain ethnically ambiguous NON-HISPANIC to them.
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Post by ashhfacce on Jun 5, 2009 9:43:24 GMT -5
Georgia. Lol, I worded that wrong. Other than white there are a lot of Mexicans around where I live, well that, or black. So when it comes to assumptions they automatically think Latina.
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Post by stray on Jun 5, 2009 9:58:03 GMT -5
Same here ash.. Where I live practically was Mexico a hundred years ago. I live on the north side of San Antonio, which is a little more diverse, more whites. If I go on the southside or something though, people assume I'm just Mexican, or even speak Spanish to me.
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Post by Flat Top on Jun 5, 2009 18:52:53 GMT -5
Georgia. Lol, I worded that wrong. Other than white there are a lot of Mexicans around where I live, well that, or black. So when it comes to assumptions they automatically think Latina. But where in Georgia? It can't be Atlanta. There are way too many Asians here and a good number of mixed people of any racial/ethnic mix. Maybe Valdosta? LaGrange?
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Post by ashhfacce on Jun 6, 2009 11:47:42 GMT -5
Suburb of Atlanta, small town.
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Kush
Junior Member
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Posts: 153
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Post by Kush on Jun 6, 2009 13:47:11 GMT -5
There's also only about 10 Asians in my school system, definitely not a culturally diverse area. Lucky you, there's about 5 at my school. And that's counting the mixed kids
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Post by mingzayni88 on Jun 6, 2009 18:39:18 GMT -5
lol...ppl just see "muslim" as my race!
In school, my class was doing some kinda racial survey thingy (idk why), and the kids were counting like "...ok, there's 10 black student, 7 portuguese, 1 muslim (me)....."
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Post by indy on Jun 7, 2009 9:47:16 GMT -5
Your racial appearance influences your experience of the world and the way people respond to you. I'm usually taken as being 100% white by both westerners and asians. So as a result of that I've never experienced the type of racism some of my asian relatives received, but then, i've never been perceived as asian by extended family or the asian community, of course, I always feel welcome but I'm well aware they think of me as being white.
Therefore, my daily experiences of the world has been very similar to that of someone who is 100% white, if I looked more asian I imagine it would be completely different, I'd be more likely to be perceived as a foreigner by white Australians, I'd probably have asian people attempt to speak to me in their language and think of me as being like them. Maybe that would then in turn make me feel more aligned to the asian community.
I guess it's neither good nor bad, it just is, just like my whole experience of the world would be different if I was born a boy.
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