All Orientals Look Alike

A few weeks ago, I met a man in his 20s. He looked Chinese, but what I noticed most about him is that he had a strong accent that was clearly not from the area where I live. I was sure he was English, so I asked him where he was from. He looked offended and said, “Well, my parents come from Hong Kong, but I was born and raised in England.” I realized immediately that he thought that I thought he was “foreign” and so he was defending himself against my presumed prejudice. I quickly said, “No, no, I meant, I thought I could hear that you were English, so I just wanted to know for sure.” But I don’t think he believed me.

Then last week, I ran into a different man on my university campus. I had met him at a party last winter and I remembered he was from Taiwan, but I was surprised to see him, since I had thought he was doing a Master’s degree and thus would have finished by now. It turned out, however, that he was working towards a PhD. So I admitted that I hadn’t remembered what he was studying or what degree he was working towards and that I’d thought he was getting an MA. He said, “You must have confused me with someone else. You probably think all Orientals look the same.” Again, I stuttered a defense of myself, but he cut me off and didn’t seem to accept my explanations.

So what is my peeve here, exactly? Well, it’s two-fold, I suppose. First of all, I feel sorry for the people who look “foreign” and thus have to suffer through a lot of questions about where they are from, even if they grew up in the country where people ask those questions. I, too, have a somewhat foreign look and have lived in a country where I was not native and where I was frequently questioned about my ethnicity. I know it gets tiresome, especially if there is a sense that your background is not equal to that of the “natives.” So I am annoyed at all the people who believe that if someone looks a little different, they must be from elsewhere, and that it is acceptable to ask people about where they are “really” from. It’s one thing to be curious and interested, but quite another thing to ask questions in a nasty or prejudiced way.

But the second part of my peeve is about people like me, who are used to being asked about our foreignness and our apparent lack of belonging. We tend to get defensive sometimes and to assume that whenever the subject of our ethnicity comes up, it must be a criticism or a veiled racist remark. We need to remember that questions can actually stem from an honest interest, or they can be about something other than what we assume (our accent, for example, rather than the shape of our eyes).

So, no, all Orientals don’t look alike. And, no, not everyone thinks they do, anyway.

--Curly