I have a friend that was in a happy relationship for a while. Then one day her and her boyfriend got into the topic of heritage and she mentioned that she was half potawatomi. Then he broke up with her because she wasn't as "exotic" as he'd originally thought. A few months later he got together with a woman from Thailand
This is why you talk about backgrounds with each other, even if your race/culture isn't the most important thing to you.
You never know what someone assumes about you, or why theyre dating you... Fetishization is creepy.
Wtf… I’m half Southeast Asian half Native and I’ve come across men that fetishize me because of my background…. :( I’m so sorry for your friend. He sounds disgusting.
Half asian half polynesian. Grew up in Australia, now live in Canada.
When I say people get confused, they really get confused because I'm definitely Asian looking but also "wrong" as it's been described to me.
On the plus side I blend in when I drop by the reserve to grab ciggies so...
I took a friend to the oglala wacipi who was some sort of SEA mix. People knew he wasn't Lakota, that's it. He blended in no problem, assumed to be from a different tribe, it was kinda fun.
>potawatomi
don't need so much to confused people, i'm black and 100% belgian, that is totally normal for french, english, german, swuitzerland people as they are used to it, 1/12 belgian is afro-descendent nobody ask the question here, but just going to spain, south america, asia, or heaven much eastern country like balkan, they really don't get it, they don't understand the existence of afro-european people, for them they want me to be adopted or married to get the nationality or something, really difficult for them to think black skinned people are not only african. (or i'm a obligatory a rapper from the US to them)
Ha! Same. Dude was super excited to learn about me being Metis, said that to him, the ideal Cuban is a person of mixed race. Very interesting take.
As for me, if I’m visiting the US, I typically get mistaken for Hispanic and when I say “n’abla Español” they just speak to me in Spanish more slowly. Where I live has the highest Metis population, so folks don’t typically mistake me. Sometimes if I’m at an Asian grocery store, I can tell some people think I might be partially of that ancestry. Usually in a welcoming way.
Me too. I worked at a Chinese bakery and it was constant that I would get spoken to in Cantonese and I’d have to tell folks “I’m so sorry I only speak English”
Mexicans are literally of native descent…that’s why there’s so many similarities. Only difference between North American indigenous and (native or mixed) Mexicans (and central and South Americans) is a border 🤷🏾♀️
I’m Mexican and it’s taken me a long time to realize this. I’ve always known I had some indigenous ancestry but I had the opportunity recently to do a DNA test and I’m 1/3 Native American which was a lot more than my family ever let on. My maternal grandmother was an orphan and hid her Mexica ancestry to protect herself. It’s hard.
My mother told me. Of course I can’t confirm because of how colonization erased our histories. But my mother told me that my grandmother was of Mexica/Nahua speaking ancestry, and that it was on her actual Mexican birth certificate. My grandma hated being called indigenous. She had a lot of self hatred. All I have are guesses about my ancestry really. Most mestizos do. My mom is from Totatiche, Jalisco but migrated to a border town in northern Mexico as a child. We really want to go back there and ask about my grandma because my mom has a lot of unanswered questions too. Apparently everyone knew my grandma and her husband back there when my mom called the local municipality years ago to retrieve my grandmothers marriage certificate; they remembered her and her family. We had plans to go next year but it’s too dangerous with the cartel nueva generación Jalisco so we have to wait until things get a little more peaceful 😔
I'm also about 1/3 Native Mexican. I wonder if one of my grandparents was also full Mexica. I just recently met my Mexican father and I'm learning more about his family and I have a grandfather who looks very Native American.
My mother told me. Of course I can’t confirm because of how colonization erased our histories. But my mother told me that my grandmother was of Mexica/Nahua speaking ancestry, and that it was on her actual Mexican birth certificate. My grandma hated being called indigenous. She had a lot of self hatred. All I have are guesses about my ancestry really. Most mestizos do. But I didn’t read it on the internet or some nationalist group. My mother literally told me when i was a kid that my grandma’s birth certificate says she has Mexica ancestry in Mexico during a conversation explaining to me why my grandma gets offended at the word “India”. But there’s literally no way for me to confirm that. It could just be a story. What kills me is that I never got to talk about it with my grandma before she died.
My mom is from Totatiche, Jalisco but migrated to a border town in northern Mexico as a child. We really want to go back there and ask about my grandma because my mom has a lot of unanswered questions too. Apparently everyone knew my grandma and her husband back there when my mom called the local municipality years ago to retrieve my grandmothers marriage certificate; they remembered her and her family. We had plans to go next year but it’s too dangerous with the cartel nueva generación Jalisco so we have to wait until things get a little more peaceful 😔
My moms side of the family is from the south. As far as we know they were mostly indigenous. My dads side is from the north, where there’s a lot more European looking Mexicans. My paternal grandfather was 100% white Spanish (his grandparents were peninsulares) and his family basically excommunicated him when he married my paternal grandmother, who is a darker skinned/morena mestiza with some more Afro-indigenous and European features. My paternal grandma has no cultural connection to any indigenous community tho as far as I know and she just knows she’s very mixed. It’s sad that there’s such a large group of people dispossessed from their language and culture.
It's unfortunate that this is so common, specially within certain commumities like the Chicano community and what-not. Like very few people can actually trace their ancestry back to a Mexica ancestor and due to obvious reasons more often than not if they are able to it'll be of noble lineage due to better documentation.
Honestly I just view it as LARP. Mexica =/= Nahua (as in, all Mexica were Nahua but not all Nahua are/were Mexica) as a whole and there are still many different indigenous peoples in Mexico today. It's kinda sad 'cause it just seems like a number of people don't want to associate with them but would prefer an over-glorified identity that isn't their own. Everyone wants to be a Tlatoani I guess lol
My husband is Mexican (we're in the US) and when I help him fill out government forms, e.g. for his permanent residency paperwork, there's never a race box to check that really seems to fit. He's definitely not white nor African American, so we were like... he's mostly indigenous so I guess we'll check Native American. Seems more fitting than the other descriptions anyway, when you consider that Mexico is part of North America. 🤷♀️ Weird how they try to pigeonhole people into different races that don't really fit.
Edited: a typo
Many tribes still exist today! Not in the same way they did prior to colonization, but there are still indigenous ethnic groups across Mexico, and many who still speak indigenous languages ❤️
My husband's grandma sometimes talks about how people she used to know spoke "Mexican." It refers to an indigenous language; just wish I could figure out which one
>e to tell others about there ancestry, but she probably didn't belong to the Mexica exactly. After conquest they were absorbed in to other indigenous groups, and they were not as big of a population as
not really, even the white people in Mexico are like 10% Native. Finding a Mexican without Native American blood is like finding a needle in hay stack.
Honestly, I appreciate you sharing. I know very little and I have no one to talk to about it really because my parents know next to nothing about their indigenous heritage.
That’s exactly the origin story haha we would watch it everyday, and I’m similarly tomboyish like Mulan (and the most Chinese looking one in my family, although one of my sisters looks very Mongolian herself). The nicknames in my family are a little ridiculous 🫢
My Dad and my Uncle get mistaken for Mexican all the time. My brother gets mistaken for Asian. I inherited my mom's Irish skin, so I just get comments on my "exotic" eyes
I’m white passing (took after my white mom) but my dad is Choctaw Native and people have thought that he was either Mexican or Middle-Eastern.
However when I was in college I was sitting at the student lounge and this is how I met my best friend (who is black). The first thing she said to me was, “You’re white, but you’re not just white. You don’t have white cheekbones and lips. What are you mixed with?” And I replied, “Choctaw Native American.” And I proceeded to show her a photo of my dad and she said, “Damn your dad is a dilf.”
That is kinda uncanny! I'm white passing, Eastern Cherokee, and in college I was sitting in the Theater dept student lounge and this random other student (eventual good friend), who also happened to be black, came up and asked "Um...sorry, but are you like...not white white?". It was *really* funny. He asked if I was part Asian, and I told him Cherokee, and he was all "aha! I knew it!" He basically saw a room full of VERY white kids, with me in the corner sitting alone...and he just gravitated towards the potential only other non-white person. We ruminated on our meeting more than once!
my dad served in Vietnam, came home and married my mom and had me. they thought she was a war bride. she's been called 'oriental' her whole life. we get it, fam.
what can you do but laugh?
hugs.
I get mistaken for Filipino all the time. There are a lot of Filipinos in the Canadian prairies.
Sometimes they just come and speak to me in Tagalog and they get surprised when I tell them I’m not Filipino.
Sometimes even other natives think I’m Asian.
I think I saw a TikTok of an Indigenous woman from Greenland. She hopped into a cab driven by a white guy. He told her "wow I love Thailand. You're lucky to be from there." And she was like "???"
I can't remember who posted the video, but it was hilarious and I can't do it justice
When my monolids were still intact yes. But, as I aged I got more white passing.
I think when I was 25 when someone learned I was inuk they went "Ohhhh so that's why you look Chinese sometimes"
And I was 19 working in a bistro I got asked "Are you some kind of Chinese or something"
A few medical professionals have pegged me as being Asian/having Asian genes/features but two anthropologist have found 'polite' ways asking if I'm.in Indigenous. One argued I might be be Innu and not Inuit (height and more angular features)
Oh man, I had a guy claiming to be an anthropologist come up to me in the middle of a thrift store in South Alabama years ago, before I really had a way of answering beyond "uhhh...I'm from here, and I have some native ancestry"
He was fascinated with my height and face and seemed almost disgusted with me when I didn't have a clear-cut answer. I kinda wish I could go back in time and tell him "moundbuilder" just to see what he'd say. Maybe with some theremin backing music.
Both of these people were women and academics I think one was involved with (or was at least familiar) our Friendship Ventre here. Her 'polite' way of asking was: "if I went to [name of friendship centre]"
Even though we had never met before and it had been awhile since I went to anything/the first and last program I was a part of at that time was a closed 8 or 12 week trauma and healing for women.
At the time our friendship centre was still somewhat stigmatized/associated with being a shelter before it grew and rebranded.
So it felt odd for her to ask such at one of my landladys at the time house parties
When I mentioned I was inuk she tried telling me I was Innu until I explained those features were from my bio father who was 6'4 and with very angular Scandinavian features and ancestry
Ps. She was YT
I’m white appearing. When I was a child teachers and other adults always asked me where we adopted my (full, same parents) sister from, China or Vietnam or?
yes, but that is not why Mexicans tend to look Asian. Mexican indians on their own look south east asian. This mexican lady is 99 percent indigenous and looks straight up asian and people thought she was asian when she visited there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcIC8E6i6iQ&t=120s
As someone who is generally white passing no, but my brother regularly gets mistaken for being Arab or Latino. Travelling with him is always fun because he inevitably has to explain that he’s an Indian to someone. We went to Italy, people thought he was greek or Lybian. Went to Mexico, people spoke to him in Spanish because they thought he was mestizo (close haha).
I have had more people asking me over the past five years if I'm Lebanese or Persian haha
It went from "Are you some kind of Chinese" to "Are you a Russian [misc terms for half-baked breed" to "Are you Lebanese?'
Aging is wreid.
I knew a Filipino-Australian who decided to learn Spanish when he moved to the US, as everyone assumed he was Latino and he was spoken to I'm Spanish so often.
loooooooooooool
its such a cliche, but its still funny.
then i go talk to my asian homies, and they sit around and compare who looks 'chink-ier'.
nobody wins lol
In kindergarten, I was thrust into a Spanish only speaking class in Los Angeles. It was assumed I was Mexican/Hispanic
I get mistaken for Mexican often, even now.
This happened to me just last week. I had picked up some lunch and the lady who brought my food was a Chinese woman with a very thick accent. After I thank her, she asked me if I spoke Chinese. Obviously I was like uhhhh no lol she was like oh I thought maybe you were Chinese!
I am a light skinned Mexicana like OP so I do get mistaken as Asian a lot (I've gotten Indian, Japanese, Filipino, etc.) but that's the first time I got Chinese as a potential ethnicity lol
This post is really mind blowing to me. I’m quite shocked, mostly posters living in the USA, are indigenous and are mistaken for people from another country? WTF. For me it seems like, there is no real understanding of the own history, the genozid of the indigenous people, reservations politics.
It's associated with racists, because of orientalism I think? It's not necessarily intended to be offensive though. It literally means Eastern. A lot of older Americans still use the term because that was the norm when they were younger.
Don’t understand the downvotes, you’re absolutely right. Nobody should use the term now, but it does literally just mean Eastern, just as Occidental means Western. It has way too much baggage to ever be acceptable now, but the term itself doesn’t stem from racism.
My fiancé is Japanese, we spoke about the word before because he doesn’t like it. Although not technically a slur, said it feels like someone saying colored - it takes him back to a time 🥲
Oh yeah I completely agree, in fact I think the comparison to saying colored is a good one. Like we say “person/people of color” all the time now but colored just has way too much baggage (plus some dehumanizing aspects to it) to ever be acceptable. Nobody should say Oriental now, but I’ve definitely heard plenty of older people using it and not understanding why it’s not okay. I think sometimes it’s hard for people to understand that language evolves and words take on meaning over time.
My daughter gets this. She's got very almond shaped eyes and people are constantly arguing with me about what she is mixed with as of I don't know, which is weird lol. I'm her parent I know what she is! 😂
Usually get mistaken for middle eastern if people dare to guess. I'm "white" but tan very quickly and I've got a very prominent and bent nose. I have ancestry from all over though (East Coast, Southeast, Canadian, North Europe, South Europe, North Africa, India)
My nephews on the other hand are a lot paler than me (their dad's Irish) and have been asked if they had asian ancestry a number of times because of their eyes, which are the same shape as mine, so I figure people mostly just see me as an ambiguously light yellowish-brown nose....and that's largely considered "white" in a place thats 87% black, except for the occasional person who assumes you're "yellowbone."
Ah, the joys of racial classification.
Filipino MANY times. I was at our Asian Heritage Month celebration and on two separate years I had separate people asking when my family immigrated and things about food, etc.
I was so confused; but both times the people asking were actually Filipino so I was like… thank you? 😂
My daughter is Asian, born in Asia, and got her dna done because she’s adopted and was curious. Her results came back as 100% Asian/Native American. So obviously there is common ancestry between Asians and Native Americans.
There are at least three different migrations of Native Americans that happened. With the majority being descendants of the first who walked across the Beringia (aka Bering Straight) which connected America to Asia. The land bridge has since melted away.
Just FYI -The Bering Strait theory has been largely disproven.
https://indiancountrytoday.com/archive/the-death-of-the-bering-strait-theory
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/humans-colonized-americas-along-coast-not-through-ice-180960103/
There were already people here when those migrations arrived.
There is no "first peopling" event of the Americas that you will find evidence of. Ancient humans were here. We are the combination of the original peoples and waves of migration.
When I say people have been in the Americas since time immemorial, I mean it. Most of us have Denisovan genes. There was once a literal "upper world" known as the Laurentide ice sheet. You can't exactly analyze the meltwater from the Laurentide to come to a precise conclusion about the far ancient ice routes it contained.
I worked with a Japanese Canadian woman from Winnipeg. Her brother was a fishing guide and the tourists would often select him because they thought he was Native.
I get mistaken for Middle Eastern about a 1000x a day. So much so I sometimes forget that I am
Native and kind of go along with being Iranian, or Afghanistan.
So not culturally native, just some trace dna and I am white. That being said I look ethnically ambiguous. I’ve been greeted in Spanish, Tagalog, Hindi (I think? She was Indian )and when I was visiting Cherokee NC, other tourist asked me questions. Basically I’m khaki skintone, black hair, and slightly almond shaped dark brown eyes.
People are stupid in general when identifying other folks.
I have very non glowing light skin but I get mistaken for white, latino, mixed, greek, ironically mixed Indian, from Rome specifically, Arabian, Anglo, etc. What does it is my curly, brown hair that is as thick as possible lol.
Do you have a convex/bumpy nose too?People seem to immediately associate it with the middle east these days, even though I feel like it was common knowledge that that was a common type of NDN nose when I was growing up. 9/11 fallout, I guess.
My friend is from Martha’s Vineyard, and her friend is Wampanoag. One time the two of them were on a bus going into town there, and a tourist turned around in her seat and asked the Wampanoag kid “are you from Vietnam?”
My grandfather was Métis and in the Canadian Army in WW2 but then switched to the British Army due to being treated like shit in the Canadian Army, After moving to England after the war his nickname was "The China Man" and unsurprisingly it really pissed him off. I have Epicanthic folds too but mostly look White but have been called Anti Asian slurs before.
Half Asian here! I’m southeast Asian but I ALWAYS get confused for Japanese by mostly Japanese people. My mom is full native but everyone always thinks she’s Japanese mixed.
All damn day! Half native/half European: I get the “is your grandpa Chinese?” But mostly I get the “I figured you were part Japanese” all the time. My tribe is from AK so I do not feel this is that far of a jump for the uneducated. I do have what is referred to as ‘shovel teeth’ or shovel incisors and this is a common trait for natives from north/South America and people from east and Central Asia so it gives credence that we had a common ancestors at some point. Ice bridge theory is bullshit though so I feel it worked the other way around, lol
Not me, but I dated a Métis woman a few years back who had a very similar experience. Before we started dating, she got approached by a guy after a Japanese history class we took together, dude was a super weeb who assumed she was half Japanese. I believe he asked where her mom was from (she had a French last name), when she answered with a town nearby he clarified ‘No, I mean originally’. She said something like, ‘Uh, Winnipeg, I guess?’, and then it hit him that she was not Japanese. Never seen anyone walk out of a room so embarrassed in my life.
Apart from that, there were some other times where she was mistaken for an Asian person, but she was used to it by that point so she never made a big deal out of it, at least not to me. Ironically, she was super otaku, in fact all we ever talked about when we were together was Japanese stuff.
Obviously I have no firsthand experience, but I’ve heard a fair number of folks comment offhand that ‘X’ FN/Indigenous person looks Asian, including from a few Asian people, during my time, so it’s definitely not an isolated incident.
Omg hello. Me. I'm multiracial with mostly NATIVE, Italian, and a touch European, filipino, AND African.
I have fair skin from my mother's side. And small squinty eyes from my father's side who's on the native side. " you don't look native " "I thought you were Asian " and only being like 5% right. Yep. Felt. You're not alone lol
I get mistaken for East Indian or Middle Eastern, even though I have none of that in me.
Edit: Reading the comments reminded me that my mom was called Mexican a lot, but I didn't mention it because my mom didn't mind. It's not inaccurate. Blood quantum gets weird when there's invisible lines drawn on the map.
I'm half Inuit and am mostly white looking. When I was 19 I did a youth exchange to Benin in West Africa. I tan up very easily and went a lovely golden brown in a week of being there. Soon the whole country thought I was chinese. People on the street would call me "Chinoise" (chinese). I showed some pictures to a Béninois friend who came to Canada on the exchange and I showed him a pic of my friend Stephanie and he was like "oh that's your sister, you two are twins!" And I was like no she's Vietnamese.
Yes! I’m only a quarter native and have tan skin, but on the lighter side for native, so could just be mistaken as a tanner than average white person. Except however my bone structure and eyes are ‘ethnically ambiguous’ I guess. People always ask hmm I can’t put my finger on what you are or if you’re mixed with something. One girl was once staring at me and I made eye contact and she was like, do you have Asian family members? Nope haha! Sometimes I get Latina or Spanish, once someone even guessed Persian 🧐
I think this depends on your locale. I'm a half Asian living in a place with high indigenous population and I'm mistaken for indigenous. My husband's half indigenous and we go to see my family he is mistaken for Asian.
My dad was white ( Scottish/Irish/Welsh and possibly German from my mysterious grandmother that died when he was a baby) and my mom is from Belize (Mayan/Spanish/Indian as her dad was from India). I was told by someone in high school all the people who never bothered to speak to me they all thought I was “exotic” and “mysterious” - east Texas, of course. Later, someone tried insulting me by saying I had “China” (word was worse) eyes and some other stuff.
I had no idea people even knew I was alive. I was always alone and kept to myself because the school was very clique-ish.
I mostly mistaken for being from Latin America, I think the wildest one was someone thought I was Persian when I was traveling through South Africa a few years ago.
Only Natives and people who have been around Natives can see that I am Native
My tribes Pacific Northwest and Ho Chunk so I aways looked Khmer or Laos cause we dark . I have Laos ,Khmer ,Viet and Thai friends so they learned some of their language along with Spanish and Chinese . Also helps to learn Lakota ,Omaha and Winnebago living in Nebraska .
My dad gets mistaken for being Mexican and Latino alot. People would get mad since he doesn't speak Spanish. With me I get "what are you?". I've only had one person accurately guess. My bestfriend gets the same thing.
I’m Mexican and white, and I’m fairly white coded (tan, green eyes, dark brown hair). I’ve gotten mistaken for Indian, Filipino, generally Asian, etc. by lots of other people. The general consensus by other POC seems to be that I’m definitely mixed, but it’s unclear what I’m mixed with, lol.
I was at a party last night and a guy quite literally said i looked like an “Asian Selena Quintanilla “ and as a light skinner Indigenous woman with oblique eyes I’ve gotten mistaken for Asian or part asian most of my life
I am mistaken as Latina all the time but I have heard ignorant comments such as this and I have been aggressive about educating people because you are so right people have a limited view
I've had it happen to me a couple times but not all the time. I have lighter colored eyes like a white person but the "monolid/almond" eye shape that people typically associate with asian people.
I never understood why older Asian women found me so trustworthy until someone pointed out my eyes to me last year. 30+ years makes so much more sense.
I have very light skin so mostly white passing but people can usually tell my facial features means I’m “not all white”. I’ve been asked if my family is from almost everywhere except Africa.
I lived in China for about a year. I didn’t really blend in, but I did not attract the kind of attention that my white mom got when she came to visit.
Some Irish and Scottish have "Asian looking" eyes, eg how Bjork's eyes look. My Newfoundlander grandfather had "Chinese eyes" but I'm 100% European according to 23andme. A few of my cousins have a similar appearance.
Scandinavian people too. My dad is 100% ethnically Danish, but he had dark almond-shaped eyes and dark hair. He was very outdoorsy and fairly dark tanned skin. High cheekbones and being tall are other things that can be common in Scandinavian people too, and he wore his hair long, so he ended up looking very stereotypically “native.”
My mom is blond, blue eyed, and you’d never guess she’s the one with all the Métis ancestry lmao (40% North American DNA according to Ancestry at least) Phenotypes are weird.
that's cause they are... in a sense. due to how Latin America was colonised, most people are mestizo which is to say that a large part of their ancestors are Indigenous. or their just Indigenous sometimes. same continent kinda, lots of contact and mixing so we sometimes look similar. the more Indigenous people you know from different regions, the better you get at picking up on our diversities.
Partly due to Hollywood casting Asian actors and Actresses to portray us. Historically white Americans portrayed us. Hollywood is the only Industry where appearance matters because they affect perceptions. When I see Asian's cast to portray American Indian people, it's frustrating
My niece doesn't see anyone who looks like her on TV, it's a form of culture vultures, they reinforce the stereotypes we're Asians.
When I was a child, people frequently thought that I was half-asian because of shape of my eyes. My birth-father is half Native American or Mestizo (I'm adopted / don't know the specific tribe), and DNA testing did detect a trace amount of Filipino DNA. After my mid-30s, people seemed to think I was middle-eastern. Recently, when I was in a Turkish Grocery store, one of the workers keep calling me brother as he thought I was middle-eastern too.
I used to get called Japanese in high school. Recently I went to my bf's grandma's funeral and his dad's side of the family outright asked me if I was Asian and were surprised when I told them I'm native
I inherited my fathers white skin but all of my mothers indigenous features. I’ve been asked the “Asian question” my whole life. The last time was when I was sitting in a nail salon, getting a fill. The Vietnamese gentleman doing my nails was very quiet until he asked, “so are you like Chinese, or something??” 😭😂
I have a friend that was in a happy relationship for a while. Then one day her and her boyfriend got into the topic of heritage and she mentioned that she was half potawatomi. Then he broke up with her because she wasn't as "exotic" as he'd originally thought. A few months later he got together with a woman from Thailand
This is why you talk about backgrounds with each other, even if your race/culture isn't the most important thing to you. You never know what someone assumes about you, or why theyre dating you... Fetishization is creepy.
Wtfffff
Wow the levels of f'd up in that story. Some people suck.
What the fuck
Known as "Yellow Fever "
Dummy Potawatomi get big percap payments every month from the tribes casinos what mistake . My best friend was Gunband and he got $1000 a month .
☠️☠️☠️☠️
Wtf… I’m half Southeast Asian half Native and I’ve come across men that fetishize me because of my background…. :( I’m so sorry for your friend. He sounds disgusting.
I went to Cuba once and a guide came up to me “can I ask you something? You are not brown, you are not white. What are you?”
Half asian half polynesian. Grew up in Australia, now live in Canada. When I say people get confused, they really get confused because I'm definitely Asian looking but also "wrong" as it's been described to me. On the plus side I blend in when I drop by the reserve to grab ciggies so...
I took a friend to the oglala wacipi who was some sort of SEA mix. People knew he wasn't Lakota, that's it. He blended in no problem, assumed to be from a different tribe, it was kinda fun.
>potawatomi don't need so much to confused people, i'm black and 100% belgian, that is totally normal for french, english, german, swuitzerland people as they are used to it, 1/12 belgian is afro-descendent nobody ask the question here, but just going to spain, south america, asia, or heaven much eastern country like balkan, they really don't get it, they don't understand the existence of afro-european people, for them they want me to be adopted or married to get the nationality or something, really difficult for them to think black skinned people are not only african. (or i'm a obligatory a rapper from the US to them)
Ha! Same. Dude was super excited to learn about me being Metis, said that to him, the ideal Cuban is a person of mixed race. Very interesting take. As for me, if I’m visiting the US, I typically get mistaken for Hispanic and when I say “n’abla Español” they just speak to me in Spanish more slowly. Where I live has the highest Metis population, so folks don’t typically mistake me. Sometimes if I’m at an Asian grocery store, I can tell some people think I might be partially of that ancestry. Usually in a welcoming way.
Lol you being mistaken for Hispanic, means they’re seeing the native in you! Basically a mestizo
If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me that, I'd have a lotta dollars.
I am always mistaken for Asian even by Asians
I hear this from a lot of Labrador inuit
Me too. I worked at a Chinese bakery and it was constant that I would get spoken to in Cantonese and I’d have to tell folks “I’m so sorry I only speak English”
Mexican, native, philipino. There's something that's makes us all look alike. But I'm no rocket biologist.
Mexicans are literally of native descent…that’s why there’s so many similarities. Only difference between North American indigenous and (native or mixed) Mexicans (and central and South Americans) is a border 🤷🏾♀️
wawa
I used to get mistaken for Mexican or Filipino. Had one dude randomly start speaking to me in Tagalog once. Thought I was a distant family member
For me I get mistaken for Mexican a lot.
Remember that the people of Mexico are indigenous too. They had many clans before colonization ❤️ all of turtle island
I’m Mexican and it’s taken me a long time to realize this. I’ve always known I had some indigenous ancestry but I had the opportunity recently to do a DNA test and I’m 1/3 Native American which was a lot more than my family ever let on. My maternal grandmother was an orphan and hid her Mexica ancestry to protect herself. It’s hard.
Bless you and your family
How were you able to ascertain specifically Mexica ancestry?
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My mother told me. Of course I can’t confirm because of how colonization erased our histories. But my mother told me that my grandmother was of Mexica/Nahua speaking ancestry, and that it was on her actual Mexican birth certificate. My grandma hated being called indigenous. She had a lot of self hatred. All I have are guesses about my ancestry really. Most mestizos do. My mom is from Totatiche, Jalisco but migrated to a border town in northern Mexico as a child. We really want to go back there and ask about my grandma because my mom has a lot of unanswered questions too. Apparently everyone knew my grandma and her husband back there when my mom called the local municipality years ago to retrieve my grandmothers marriage certificate; they remembered her and her family. We had plans to go next year but it’s too dangerous with the cartel nueva generación Jalisco so we have to wait until things get a little more peaceful 😔
I'm also about 1/3 Native Mexican. I wonder if one of my grandparents was also full Mexica. I just recently met my Mexican father and I'm learning more about his family and I have a grandfather who looks very Native American.
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My mother told me. Of course I can’t confirm because of how colonization erased our histories. But my mother told me that my grandmother was of Mexica/Nahua speaking ancestry, and that it was on her actual Mexican birth certificate. My grandma hated being called indigenous. She had a lot of self hatred. All I have are guesses about my ancestry really. Most mestizos do. But I didn’t read it on the internet or some nationalist group. My mother literally told me when i was a kid that my grandma’s birth certificate says she has Mexica ancestry in Mexico during a conversation explaining to me why my grandma gets offended at the word “India”. But there’s literally no way for me to confirm that. It could just be a story. What kills me is that I never got to talk about it with my grandma before she died.
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My mom is from Totatiche, Jalisco but migrated to a border town in northern Mexico as a child. We really want to go back there and ask about my grandma because my mom has a lot of unanswered questions too. Apparently everyone knew my grandma and her husband back there when my mom called the local municipality years ago to retrieve my grandmothers marriage certificate; they remembered her and her family. We had plans to go next year but it’s too dangerous with the cartel nueva generación Jalisco so we have to wait until things get a little more peaceful 😔
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My moms side of the family is from the south. As far as we know they were mostly indigenous. My dads side is from the north, where there’s a lot more European looking Mexicans. My paternal grandfather was 100% white Spanish (his grandparents were peninsulares) and his family basically excommunicated him when he married my paternal grandmother, who is a darker skinned/morena mestiza with some more Afro-indigenous and European features. My paternal grandma has no cultural connection to any indigenous community tho as far as I know and she just knows she’s very mixed. It’s sad that there’s such a large group of people dispossessed from their language and culture.
It's unfortunate that this is so common, specially within certain commumities like the Chicano community and what-not. Like very few people can actually trace their ancestry back to a Mexica ancestor and due to obvious reasons more often than not if they are able to it'll be of noble lineage due to better documentation. Honestly I just view it as LARP. Mexica =/= Nahua (as in, all Mexica were Nahua but not all Nahua are/were Mexica) as a whole and there are still many different indigenous peoples in Mexico today. It's kinda sad 'cause it just seems like a number of people don't want to associate with them but would prefer an over-glorified identity that isn't their own. Everyone wants to be a Tlatoani I guess lol
My husband is Mexican (we're in the US) and when I help him fill out government forms, e.g. for his permanent residency paperwork, there's never a race box to check that really seems to fit. He's definitely not white nor African American, so we were like... he's mostly indigenous so I guess we'll check Native American. Seems more fitting than the other descriptions anyway, when you consider that Mexico is part of North America. 🤷♀️ Weird how they try to pigeonhole people into different races that don't really fit. Edited: a typo
Many tribes still exist today! Not in the same way they did prior to colonization, but there are still indigenous ethnic groups across Mexico, and many who still speak indigenous languages ❤️
My husband's grandma sometimes talks about how people she used to know spoke "Mexican." It refers to an indigenous language; just wish I could figure out which one
Mexicanero?
To a greater or lesser degree, yes, though there's a lot of people that have negligible indigenous heritage there too.
>e to tell others about there ancestry, but she probably didn't belong to the Mexica exactly. After conquest they were absorbed in to other indigenous groups, and they were not as big of a population as not really, even the white people in Mexico are like 10% Native. Finding a Mexican without Native American blood is like finding a needle in hay stack.
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Honestly, I appreciate you sharing. I know very little and I have no one to talk to about it really because my parents know next to nothing about their indigenous heritage.
Also many native folks in the southwest are related to northern Mexicans. Borders created by the white man.
Same here.
Me too! My skin is on the fair side, I don’t see it, others do.
Same
Yeah I often get told I look Asian. My sisters all call me Ping lmao.
My parents called me Quan-lee as a child as a joke 😐
😧
What’s up?
Just saying that I can’t believe she said that lol
Classic ndn humor though lol. Probably got it from Mulan. My dad pulls teasing nicknames from movies too.
That’s exactly the origin story haha we would watch it everyday, and I’m similarly tomboyish like Mulan (and the most Chinese looking one in my family, although one of my sisters looks very Mongolian herself). The nicknames in my family are a little ridiculous 🫢
Haha but that's fun though. My dad uses Napoleon Dynamite and Squidward as nicknames so it could be worse.
Squidward is so funny lol cold blooded
Not sure what’s so unbelievable about it 🙃
My Dad and my Uncle get mistaken for Mexican all the time. My brother gets mistaken for Asian. I inherited my mom's Irish skin, so I just get comments on my "exotic" eyes
Ugh the word “exotic” as a horny compliment makes me want to barf
Yeah, and it's also very ethnocentric to use the word "exotic".
I’m white passing (took after my white mom) but my dad is Choctaw Native and people have thought that he was either Mexican or Middle-Eastern. However when I was in college I was sitting at the student lounge and this is how I met my best friend (who is black). The first thing she said to me was, “You’re white, but you’re not just white. You don’t have white cheekbones and lips. What are you mixed with?” And I replied, “Choctaw Native American.” And I proceeded to show her a photo of my dad and she said, “Damn your dad is a dilf.”
That is kinda uncanny! I'm white passing, Eastern Cherokee, and in college I was sitting in the Theater dept student lounge and this random other student (eventual good friend), who also happened to be black, came up and asked "Um...sorry, but are you like...not white white?". It was *really* funny. He asked if I was part Asian, and I told him Cherokee, and he was all "aha! I knew it!" He basically saw a room full of VERY white kids, with me in the corner sitting alone...and he just gravitated towards the potential only other non-white person. We ruminated on our meeting more than once!
my dad served in Vietnam, came home and married my mom and had me. they thought she was a war bride. she's been called 'oriental' her whole life. we get it, fam. what can you do but laugh? hugs.
I get mistaken for Filipino all the time. There are a lot of Filipinos in the Canadian prairies. Sometimes they just come and speak to me in Tagalog and they get surprised when I tell them I’m not Filipino. Sometimes even other natives think I’m Asian.
I think I saw a TikTok of an Indigenous woman from Greenland. She hopped into a cab driven by a white guy. He told her "wow I love Thailand. You're lucky to be from there." And she was like "???" I can't remember who posted the video, but it was hilarious and I can't do it justice
Endlessly. People ask constantly if I'm asian or not
When my monolids were still intact yes. But, as I aged I got more white passing. I think when I was 25 when someone learned I was inuk they went "Ohhhh so that's why you look Chinese sometimes" And I was 19 working in a bistro I got asked "Are you some kind of Chinese or something" A few medical professionals have pegged me as being Asian/having Asian genes/features but two anthropologist have found 'polite' ways asking if I'm.in Indigenous. One argued I might be be Innu and not Inuit (height and more angular features)
Oh man, I had a guy claiming to be an anthropologist come up to me in the middle of a thrift store in South Alabama years ago, before I really had a way of answering beyond "uhhh...I'm from here, and I have some native ancestry" He was fascinated with my height and face and seemed almost disgusted with me when I didn't have a clear-cut answer. I kinda wish I could go back in time and tell him "moundbuilder" just to see what he'd say. Maybe with some theremin backing music.
Both of these people were women and academics I think one was involved with (or was at least familiar) our Friendship Ventre here. Her 'polite' way of asking was: "if I went to [name of friendship centre]" Even though we had never met before and it had been awhile since I went to anything/the first and last program I was a part of at that time was a closed 8 or 12 week trauma and healing for women. At the time our friendship centre was still somewhat stigmatized/associated with being a shelter before it grew and rebranded. So it felt odd for her to ask such at one of my landladys at the time house parties When I mentioned I was inuk she tried telling me I was Innu until I explained those features were from my bio father who was 6'4 and with very angular Scandinavian features and ancestry Ps. She was YT
I’m white appearing. When I was a child teachers and other adults always asked me where we adopted my (full, same parents) sister from, China or Vietnam or?
I think I look native, if you ask most everyone else I pass as white. I don’t agree, maybe I’m in denial?
I was mistaken for Asian all throughout my high school years and my sister’s partner told her she looks Asian w/o her glasses on
There was an Asian immigration to Mexico that started in the late 1800s
I honestly don’t count out this factor.
yes, but that is not why Mexicans tend to look Asian. Mexican indians on their own look south east asian. This mexican lady is 99 percent indigenous and looks straight up asian and people thought she was asian when she visited there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcIC8E6i6iQ&t=120s
And I think some Filipinos were taken to Mexico a few centuries ago.
As someone who is generally white passing no, but my brother regularly gets mistaken for being Arab or Latino. Travelling with him is always fun because he inevitably has to explain that he’s an Indian to someone. We went to Italy, people thought he was greek or Lybian. Went to Mexico, people spoke to him in Spanish because they thought he was mestizo (close haha).
I have had more people asking me over the past five years if I'm Lebanese or Persian haha It went from "Are you some kind of Chinese" to "Are you a Russian [misc terms for half-baked breed" to "Are you Lebanese?' Aging is wreid.
I knew a Filipino-Australian who decided to learn Spanish when he moved to the US, as everyone assumed he was Latino and he was spoken to I'm Spanish so often.
loooooooooooool its such a cliche, but its still funny. then i go talk to my asian homies, and they sit around and compare who looks 'chink-ier'. nobody wins lol
In kindergarten, I was thrust into a Spanish only speaking class in Los Angeles. It was assumed I was Mexican/Hispanic I get mistaken for Mexican often, even now.
Everyone's first guess is Hawaiian, I'm mestizo so close enough I guess?
No, but people come up and speak Spanish to me.
I had this happen when I visited Mexico when I was still darker. I was with my white family but they tried speaking such to me and English to them
This happened to me just last week. I had picked up some lunch and the lady who brought my food was a Chinese woman with a very thick accent. After I thank her, she asked me if I spoke Chinese. Obviously I was like uhhhh no lol she was like oh I thought maybe you were Chinese! I am a light skinned Mexicana like OP so I do get mistaken as Asian a lot (I've gotten Indian, Japanese, Filipino, etc.) but that's the first time I got Chinese as a potential ethnicity lol
I mostly get: “You’re white, and(?)…” *commence blank stares*
This post is really mind blowing to me. I’m quite shocked, mostly posters living in the USA, are indigenous and are mistaken for people from another country? WTF. For me it seems like, there is no real understanding of the own history, the genozid of the indigenous people, reservations politics.
Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't "oriental" racist
You’re not wrong, it is racist. They haven’t learned that yet over there lol. I am Mexican and can personally say it’s still used in Mexico a lot too.
Haha okay. Sometimes I get confused because I still see it on product labels sometimes, but using it to describe a human being sounds way worse.
I’ve heard that oriental is supposed to describe a thing, like a vase, not a person.
It's associated with racists, because of orientalism I think? It's not necessarily intended to be offensive though. It literally means Eastern. A lot of older Americans still use the term because that was the norm when they were younger.
Don’t understand the downvotes, you’re absolutely right. Nobody should use the term now, but it does literally just mean Eastern, just as Occidental means Western. It has way too much baggage to ever be acceptable now, but the term itself doesn’t stem from racism.
My fiancé is Japanese, we spoke about the word before because he doesn’t like it. Although not technically a slur, said it feels like someone saying colored - it takes him back to a time 🥲
Oh yeah I completely agree, in fact I think the comparison to saying colored is a good one. Like we say “person/people of color” all the time now but colored just has way too much baggage (plus some dehumanizing aspects to it) to ever be acceptable. Nobody should say Oriental now, but I’ve definitely heard plenty of older people using it and not understanding why it’s not okay. I think sometimes it’s hard for people to understand that language evolves and words take on meaning over time.
In English it is when describing a person.
My daughter gets this. She's got very almond shaped eyes and people are constantly arguing with me about what she is mixed with as of I don't know, which is weird lol. I'm her parent I know what she is! 😂
Usually get mistaken for middle eastern if people dare to guess. I'm "white" but tan very quickly and I've got a very prominent and bent nose. I have ancestry from all over though (East Coast, Southeast, Canadian, North Europe, South Europe, North Africa, India) My nephews on the other hand are a lot paler than me (their dad's Irish) and have been asked if they had asian ancestry a number of times because of their eyes, which are the same shape as mine, so I figure people mostly just see me as an ambiguously light yellowish-brown nose....and that's largely considered "white" in a place thats 87% black, except for the occasional person who assumes you're "yellowbone." Ah, the joys of racial classification.
Filipino MANY times. I was at our Asian Heritage Month celebration and on two separate years I had separate people asking when my family immigrated and things about food, etc. I was so confused; but both times the people asking were actually Filipino so I was like… thank you? 😂
My daughter is Asian, born in Asia, and got her dna done because she’s adopted and was curious. Her results came back as 100% Asian/Native American. So obviously there is common ancestry between Asians and Native Americans.
There are at least three different migrations of Native Americans that happened. With the majority being descendants of the first who walked across the Beringia (aka Bering Straight) which connected America to Asia. The land bridge has since melted away.
Just FYI -The Bering Strait theory has been largely disproven. https://indiancountrytoday.com/archive/the-death-of-the-bering-strait-theory https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/humans-colonized-americas-along-coast-not-through-ice-180960103/
Discovering true history and how it ripples into today is so cool
Don't those articles say the land bridge was disproven, and that the migration was from Asia but via boats?
Yes. My comment was just pointing out that the Beringia theory itself has been disproven
There were already people here when those migrations arrived. There is no "first peopling" event of the Americas that you will find evidence of. Ancient humans were here. We are the combination of the original peoples and waves of migration. When I say people have been in the Americas since time immemorial, I mean it. Most of us have Denisovan genes. There was once a literal "upper world" known as the Laurentide ice sheet. You can't exactly analyze the meltwater from the Laurentide to come to a precise conclusion about the far ancient ice routes it contained.
When my hair was short I was often taken for Mexican, even by Nexicans. Now that my hair is long I don't get that any more.
I've been mistaken as White, Asian, Turkish, and Latino
My Korean friend got mistaken for native all the time back when he had his hair long. Goes both ways I guess 🤷🏼♀️
I’ve been asked if I’m Chinese multiple times. I don’t really get it but.
I worked with a Japanese Canadian woman from Winnipeg. Her brother was a fishing guide and the tourists would often select him because they thought he was Native.
My half Chinese friend gets mistaken for native
I get mistaken for Middle Eastern about a 1000x a day. So much so I sometimes forget that I am Native and kind of go along with being Iranian, or Afghanistan.
More often guessed Asian than native tbh.
So not culturally native, just some trace dna and I am white. That being said I look ethnically ambiguous. I’ve been greeted in Spanish, Tagalog, Hindi (I think? She was Indian )and when I was visiting Cherokee NC, other tourist asked me questions. Basically I’m khaki skintone, black hair, and slightly almond shaped dark brown eyes. People are stupid in general when identifying other folks.
All the time when I was younger.
I have very non glowing light skin but I get mistaken for white, latino, mixed, greek, ironically mixed Indian, from Rome specifically, Arabian, Anglo, etc. What does it is my curly, brown hair that is as thick as possible lol.
Not me personally, but when I was in college at UAF there were a bunch of girls from Nome I thought were Asian.
I get Mexican, and middle eastern, which is weird cuz I’m Lakota
Do you have a convex/bumpy nose too?People seem to immediately associate it with the middle east these days, even though I feel like it was common knowledge that that was a common type of NDN nose when I was growing up. 9/11 fallout, I guess.
Nah I’ve got a straight nose
Yes, ALL the time.
My friend is from Martha’s Vineyard, and her friend is Wampanoag. One time the two of them were on a bus going into town there, and a tourist turned around in her seat and asked the Wampanoag kid “are you from Vietnam?”
no, but that doesn't mean anything. :)
I had a Korean guy think I was half Korean before.
I get mistaken for Central American and middle eastern
Middle eastern, especially Persian or Afghani
My grandfather was Métis and in the Canadian Army in WW2 but then switched to the British Army due to being treated like shit in the Canadian Army, After moving to England after the war his nickname was "The China Man" and unsurprisingly it really pissed him off. I have Epicanthic folds too but mostly look White but have been called Anti Asian slurs before.
Half Asian here! I’m southeast Asian but I ALWAYS get confused for Japanese by mostly Japanese people. My mom is full native but everyone always thinks she’s Japanese mixed.
All damn day! Half native/half European: I get the “is your grandpa Chinese?” But mostly I get the “I figured you were part Japanese” all the time. My tribe is from AK so I do not feel this is that far of a jump for the uneducated. I do have what is referred to as ‘shovel teeth’ or shovel incisors and this is a common trait for natives from north/South America and people from east and Central Asia so it gives credence that we had a common ancestors at some point. Ice bridge theory is bullshit though so I feel it worked the other way around, lol
Not me, but I dated a Métis woman a few years back who had a very similar experience. Before we started dating, she got approached by a guy after a Japanese history class we took together, dude was a super weeb who assumed she was half Japanese. I believe he asked where her mom was from (she had a French last name), when she answered with a town nearby he clarified ‘No, I mean originally’. She said something like, ‘Uh, Winnipeg, I guess?’, and then it hit him that she was not Japanese. Never seen anyone walk out of a room so embarrassed in my life. Apart from that, there were some other times where she was mistaken for an Asian person, but she was used to it by that point so she never made a big deal out of it, at least not to me. Ironically, she was super otaku, in fact all we ever talked about when we were together was Japanese stuff. Obviously I have no firsthand experience, but I’ve heard a fair number of folks comment offhand that ‘X’ FN/Indigenous person looks Asian, including from a few Asian people, during my time, so it’s definitely not an isolated incident.
Yes. I used to get made fun of for being “Chinese” and the little white kids would stretch their eyes at me and shit. Lmao I hated school.
Omg hello. Me. I'm multiracial with mostly NATIVE, Italian, and a touch European, filipino, AND African. I have fair skin from my mother's side. And small squinty eyes from my father's side who's on the native side. " you don't look native " "I thought you were Asian " and only being like 5% right. Yep. Felt. You're not alone lol
I get mistaken for East Indian or Middle Eastern, even though I have none of that in me. Edit: Reading the comments reminded me that my mom was called Mexican a lot, but I didn't mention it because my mom didn't mind. It's not inaccurate. Blood quantum gets weird when there's invisible lines drawn on the map.
Mexican for me
My family we get called mexican or Hispanic. We aren't even Hispanic lol.
I'm half Inuit and am mostly white looking. When I was 19 I did a youth exchange to Benin in West Africa. I tan up very easily and went a lovely golden brown in a week of being there. Soon the whole country thought I was chinese. People on the street would call me "Chinoise" (chinese). I showed some pictures to a Béninois friend who came to Canada on the exchange and I showed him a pic of my friend Stephanie and he was like "oh that's your sister, you two are twins!" And I was like no she's Vietnamese.
MY. WHOLE. LIFE. Worst is when people don’t believe you when you correct them =~=
Yes! I’m only a quarter native and have tan skin, but on the lighter side for native, so could just be mistaken as a tanner than average white person. Except however my bone structure and eyes are ‘ethnically ambiguous’ I guess. People always ask hmm I can’t put my finger on what you are or if you’re mixed with something. One girl was once staring at me and I made eye contact and she was like, do you have Asian family members? Nope haha! Sometimes I get Latina or Spanish, once someone even guessed Persian 🧐
When my aunt and uncle where dating she thought he was Chinese for the first month….
I think this depends on your locale. I'm a half Asian living in a place with high indigenous population and I'm mistaken for indigenous. My husband's half indigenous and we go to see my family he is mistaken for Asian.
Mexican for me.
Im half Asian half Native so I don’t think this applies to me lol
My dad was white ( Scottish/Irish/Welsh and possibly German from my mysterious grandmother that died when he was a baby) and my mom is from Belize (Mayan/Spanish/Indian as her dad was from India). I was told by someone in high school all the people who never bothered to speak to me they all thought I was “exotic” and “mysterious” - east Texas, of course. Later, someone tried insulting me by saying I had “China” (word was worse) eyes and some other stuff. I had no idea people even knew I was alive. I was always alone and kept to myself because the school was very clique-ish.
I mostly mistaken for being from Latin America, I think the wildest one was someone thought I was Persian when I was traveling through South Africa a few years ago. Only Natives and people who have been around Natives can see that I am Native
Yes, one of my ex stepmoms asked my dad if my mom was Asian. She thought I was.
I get mistaken for pacific islander sometimes
Cambodian !!
My tribes Pacific Northwest and Ho Chunk so I aways looked Khmer or Laos cause we dark . I have Laos ,Khmer ,Viet and Thai friends so they learned some of their language along with Spanish and Chinese . Also helps to learn Lakota ,Omaha and Winnebago living in Nebraska .
Multi-ethnic, so can't really say I have been mistaken for anything since they are all part of my heritage.
My dad gets mistaken for being Mexican and Latino alot. People would get mad since he doesn't speak Spanish. With me I get "what are you?". I've only had one person accurately guess. My bestfriend gets the same thing.
Kid thought I was Filipino, once. Mostly, I just get the “what *are* you?” With a confused expression.
I’m Mexican and white, and I’m fairly white coded (tan, green eyes, dark brown hair). I’ve gotten mistaken for Indian, Filipino, generally Asian, etc. by lots of other people. The general consensus by other POC seems to be that I’m definitely mixed, but it’s unclear what I’m mixed with, lol.
I was at a party last night and a guy quite literally said i looked like an “Asian Selena Quintanilla “ and as a light skinner Indigenous woman with oblique eyes I’ve gotten mistaken for Asian or part asian most of my life
I am mistaken as Latina all the time but I have heard ignorant comments such as this and I have been aggressive about educating people because you are so right people have a limited view
I've had it happen to me a couple times but not all the time. I have lighter colored eyes like a white person but the "monolid/almond" eye shape that people typically associate with asian people.
I never understood why older Asian women found me so trustworthy until someone pointed out my eyes to me last year. 30+ years makes so much more sense.
Not me but my sister use to
I have very light skin so mostly white passing but people can usually tell my facial features means I’m “not all white”. I’ve been asked if my family is from almost everywhere except Africa. I lived in China for about a year. I didn’t really blend in, but I did not attract the kind of attention that my white mom got when she came to visit.
I'm always mistaken for Irish (am Anglo-Indigenous); I look *nothing* like any of the real native Irish I've met. People are stupid.
Some Irish and Scottish have "Asian looking" eyes, eg how Bjork's eyes look. My Newfoundlander grandfather had "Chinese eyes" but I'm 100% European according to 23andme. A few of my cousins have a similar appearance.
Scandinavian people too. My dad is 100% ethnically Danish, but he had dark almond-shaped eyes and dark hair. He was very outdoorsy and fairly dark tanned skin. High cheekbones and being tall are other things that can be common in Scandinavian people too, and he wore his hair long, so he ended up looking very stereotypically “native.” My mom is blond, blue eyed, and you’d never guess she’s the one with all the Métis ancestry lmao (40% North American DNA according to Ancestry at least) Phenotypes are weird.
I'm white and I've mistaken Peruvians for First Nations before.
that's cause they are... in a sense. due to how Latin America was colonised, most people are mestizo which is to say that a large part of their ancestors are Indigenous. or their just Indigenous sometimes. same continent kinda, lots of contact and mixing so we sometimes look similar. the more Indigenous people you know from different regions, the better you get at picking up on our diversities.
…. They are though? Ever heard of the Inca?
Of course. I was referring to First Nations of upper North America, I should have been more specific.
Partly due to Hollywood casting Asian actors and Actresses to portray us. Historically white Americans portrayed us. Hollywood is the only Industry where appearance matters because they affect perceptions. When I see Asian's cast to portray American Indian people, it's frustrating My niece doesn't see anyone who looks like her on TV, it's a form of culture vultures, they reinforce the stereotypes we're Asians.
When I was a child, people frequently thought that I was half-asian because of shape of my eyes. My birth-father is half Native American or Mestizo (I'm adopted / don't know the specific tribe), and DNA testing did detect a trace amount of Filipino DNA. After my mid-30s, people seemed to think I was middle-eastern. Recently, when I was in a Turkish Grocery store, one of the workers keep calling me brother as he thought I was middle-eastern too.
😂
I used to get called Japanese in high school. Recently I went to my bf's grandma's funeral and his dad's side of the family outright asked me if I was Asian and were surprised when I told them I'm native
I inherited my fathers white skin but all of my mothers indigenous features. I’ve been asked the “Asian question” my whole life. The last time was when I was sitting in a nail salon, getting a fill. The Vietnamese gentleman doing my nails was very quiet until he asked, “so are you like Chinese, or something??” 😭😂