Being colored

A naughty man's point of view.

If that's you in your avatar, you're pretty.
Personality makes a difference, skin colour does not.

100% agree with fred.

It is also my experience that racism does exist to a certain degree in most places.
Thankfully, it is usually just an annoying minority who practise it, but some countries (your native Malaysia among them) do even have a government-sponsored variety.
But with nowadays globalisation mixed, cosmopolitan (and open-minded) people like you are the future and monocultural bigots hopefully a thing of the past one day.

If only there was a topic on racism somewhere.

HaileyinHongKong wrote:

If only there was a topic on racism somewhere.

It's a subject that brings out strong feelings.
We're seeing it in Indonesian politics at the moment, where one candidate is pushing the "evil foreigners" card.

Beppi mention racism in Malaysia, and he's right. The races rarely mix and there's a lot of distrust, mostly because of some rather nasty history since independence.
The Malaysian government is doing a balancing act, one that is far from perfect, but it keeps the idiot end in check, avoiding violence.

HaileyinHongKong wrote:

If only there was a topic on racism somewhere.

Nice one, Hailey!

Actually, in my observation nationalism is far more dangerous in the world than racism. Wars are fought between nations much more than between races. Yet racism gets all the flak while nationalism gets a free pass most of the time. Why is that?

I don't quite understand the intent of your comment.  People notice you are dark?  People notice you have a different accent?  So what?  Millions of people notice many things about the people about them.  Blondes who are noticed in southern Europe or the Middle-East,  East Africans noticed by Sub-Saharan Africans that their noses are thin and their facial bones are shaped differently.  Brown-eyed Caucasians who notice the ones who have blue eyes or talk  with  a Swedish accent.  I think you are being too self-conscious about your appearance and maybe a bit insecure when you are around people who do not look like you or talk like you.   Just relax!  Only real black people (negro blacks) can feel that kind of self-consciousness.   

One of the things I learned when I am in Asia is that Asians are very conscious of their "White" skin.  They know they are not Caucasians but skin color is not the same as race.  Most Asians- Chinese, Philippinos, Koreans, Japanese, Thais and others, have white skin and they value their whiteness. And I have noticed that many feel they do not want to have dark skin and try and avoid the sun.  Many, too many, dark skinned Philippinos, Asians in general, feel insecure with the color of their skin and this is felt from their society itself, not from Western society.  I personally prefer dark-skinned women in general.  My pinay is on the dark side and I love her skin.  So sexy!  But she says she does not like her morena skin. 

Why do you think that Japanese, Koreans and Chinese operas have the women in heavy white pancake makeup?  Its because the ideal of beauty is having very white skin.  This is not just a Western ideal.  It has been an ideal of beauty in Asia for thousands of years.   Also, it has something to do with labor.  If you have dark skin,  it means you worked as a laborer in the sun and thus there is that  negative connotation.  In India, there is the same situation.  Just remember, diversity is the spice of life.  There are many beautiful white women in the world, but I would not trade my pinay morena for anything.

Gordon Barlow wrote:

Actually, in my observation nationalism is far more dangerous in the world than racism.

Nationalism, "be the best you can be to help your country be the best it can be", is great. Salute your flag all day long and pull together to improve everyone's lives, and I'll support you without reservation.

Nationalism that excludes foreigners or creates enemies within sections of a society is clearly stupid, and usually damages the country these fools claim to love.
It always turns to racism or bigotry in one form or another, and that always brings trouble to everyone.

Well, from my point of view you're either completely mistaken about people looking at you because of the color of your skin; or you're in a country where everyone is "whiter than the driven snow!" If you said you were attracting people's attention because of your accent alright, but color I find that a bit hard to buy. Perhaps as Ate1 wrote, your just being overly sensitive to it, but I really don't think that's quite it. Could it be that it's more related to the geographical area you're in? For instance, my late father many years ago took a trip to Japan to visit my uncle. Japanese people are not used to seeing people with body hair and to my understanding most Asians don't have much body hair themselves. He had rather hairy arms and legs and he told me stories of how Japanese people would tug at the hair on his arms, run their fingers through it to see if it was real. Is something else attracting this attention to you and you're simply getting the mistaken idea that it's because of color? Because to me you're not "colored", end of story! My wife is pure Afro-Brazilian. While not the darkest of the Afro-Brazilians she's certainly way beyond "chocolate", our beautiful son too is "chocolate brown", so you can see that I have no problems with race in any way and I wanted to point that out so you'll understand why I'm using the quote marks when I talk about the actual (physical) color of one's skin.

You've been to Canada for a few years and just what did you experience there? Canada is a true melting pot with people of every different race and color. Did you feel uncomfortable there or feel that people were paying too much attention to your color? I ask that because to me you wouldn't even be considered "colored" in any way. You would get lumped in with all the "whites" and I don't even think you'd get called "tanned" by most Canadians. I'm certain that you didn't attract one bit of unwanted attention in Canada.

Here in Brazil where I've lived for almost 13 years now you'd pass completely unnoticed, with the obvious exception of you good looks. I doubt that even your mixed accent would get any attention here either. The only "white" people here are those who've just arrived from the frozen north, within a few days they're "red as lobsters" and depending on how long we stay we start tanning quickly until we're almost all "bronze". Brazilians, due to the ethnic mix of the colonizers of this country range from the "near white" blond haired blue-eyed, to "coffee colored", to "ebony". The only people in this enormous country that attract attention because of the color of their skin are the ones I've previously mentioned who've nearly killed themselves with sunburn those who are redder than the Maple Leaf on my Canadian flag.

While you may not be as light skinned as a Swedish girl, you're certainly not what anyone I know would even consider "colored". I really find it difficult therefore to understand the thrust of your entire posting. Is it really about racism or are you really mistaking something else for racism?

Perhaps what you are really talking about here is xenophobia, the fear or dislike of foreigners. While almost as bad as racism, xenephobia is not the same as racism per se. It's the US v. THEM attitude that you find in some countries. Some people (not many thankfully) dislike anybody from other countries and actively discriminate against them. To some degree it exists in many countries and may single out certain nationalities over others. It's a sad fact in the post-9/11 world we live in, unfortunately. For example, I certainly would not want to be someone from an Islamic nation who travels to many parts of the globe. They are often discriminated against not only for their ethnicity, but also their religious beliefs. They can be treated very badly because some narrow minded people see them all as terrorists, blame all of the terrorist attacks on the whole population rather than the very few extremists who are actually the responsible ones. So you can see that in some cases xenophobia can actually be even worse than racism. Thankfully in many countries it doesn't go far beyond the US v. THEM attitude, because even that is bad enough.

A good friend of mine from Indonesia was offered a Ph.D. scholarship at Stanford university shortly after 9/11. When applying for his USA visa, he was told that be will be subjected to a Muslim terrorism background check that takes three months. Since this would have caused him to miss the course start and thus lose his scholarship, he pointed out to the authorities that Indonesia is multi-cultural and he himself of Chinese ethnicity and practising Christian. The reply: "Due to anti-rascism regulations, we cannot take these facts into consideration."
(In the end, luckily, Stanford university allowed his delayed start of studies without loss of the scholarship and he is now a fairly famous scientist in the USA.)
Moral of the story: The biggest obstacle to achieving "one world" are not the colours of our skins, but religious fanatism and official stupidity!

Just goes to show how ridiculous some rules can really be... It's perfectly OK to consider that if some people might be Muslims and thus potential terrorists to subject them to different rules, discrimination based on their religion seems to be OK. But, when the individual points out that they are not of Middle Eastern ethnicity and non-Muslims, you can't use that information to their benefit.

In the no-win situation you described, you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.

You really can't fix DUMB, can you?????

You made many good points.  Europeans use the world "black", or "smoky", or "dark" in a completely unique way. At least this was done so in the past.  Italians would often call olive skinned Italians or darkly tanned Italians "Blacky".  What some of the old-time gangster movies and every once-in-a-while you will come across a character called "Blacky".  But the Italians used the Italian version of the word when speaking in Italian.  The Spaniards use the term "Moreno" or "Morena" for addressing dark people.  It does not mean black people (as in Negro).  You must have heard the term "Black Irish" or "Black German".  It often is used to refer to people with  black hair and dark eyes.  All these Europeans were originally very light skinned and original populations where brunettes. Hence the terms for dark people, who are not viewed as African in any way.  Philippinos are very conscious of their skin tone, as are all Asians, but Philippinos often will refer to themselves as black or "moreno" if they have tanned skin or skin that is not very very white.  It has always surprised me.  I kept telling my pinay gf that she was not black, so stop saying that you are.  I was darker than her, and I am Caucasian.  Many dark-skinned women do not perceive themselves to be beautiful and are surprised that they often  get a great deal of attention from light-skinned Caucasians.  Personally speaking, although I find beauty in all kinds of women, I find women of varying dark skin to often  be very beautiful, especially Ethiopian, Eretrean, Somali and Senegalese women.

beppi wrote:

he was told that be will be subjected to a Muslim terrorism background check that takes three months

What is the name of this program?  I've never heard of such a thing.

HaileyinHongKong wrote:

beppi wrote:

he was told that be will be subjected to a Muslim terrorism background check that takes three months

What is the name of this program?  I've never heard of such a thing.

No idea - this was over 10 years ago (and I just posted it to show the stupidity of some regulations).

Fair enough.  I live in China.  I know all too well about stupid regulations.