Humans are very lookist.

One of the first indications that my boss was less egalatarian than she seemed occured when she asked me if I had met a professor in our building. I though I had not. She said

"Well, M. is not a pretty woman, but she is very smart. I like her."

And I though, you know, I am not a pretty woman either... is that how she describes me to people?

"Well, M. is not a pretty woman, but she is very smart. I like her."

Wow.

Here's another one I don't get. I have heard many "ethnic" or polish/irish/german people of my aquaintance wonder why African-Americans and Indians don't just assimilate like they did and make the best of everything. And I start to think that it isn't really rocket science to figure out that either being forcibly taken over or forced into slavery is not the same think as coming to America thinking the streets are paved with gold and then being treated like crap. I mean, the treated like crap sucked but the other stuff was a whole different ballgame... the indians and enslaved blacks weren't immigrants!

Word.

There's a world of difference between setting out to a new world and struggling with what cultural things you keep, what you discard and...

Having all those things deemed garbage, ripped from you, and largely lost to the winds of time.

The first, you get a foundation to build from. The second, you get a void to fill.

Not to mention that to assimilate the assimilatees have to want the assimilateors to do so and not, you know, pass laws for a couple hundred years prohibiting it.

I do have to say that she may mean "does not wear make-up" and "wears turtlenecks and jeans" and "allows her naturally curly hair to do whatever" and "wears glasses" rather than an actually assessment of her specific features. But still... I don't need pretty points just for trying, you know!

Weirdly, this professor now has the office next to me and across from my boss.

Humans are very lookist

I'm pretty sure I've told this story before, but I still boggle a little over what happened on a day trip in eastern Oklahoma with my step-mother. (She was born in Hayward CA, her parents had emigrated from southern China.) South of the river, some Choctaws asked if she was Cherokee. Later that day, north of the river, some Cherokees asked if she was Choctaw.

The assumptions being made were odd enough, but even odder to me was that they asked her outright.

Y closed down early. Luckily just after I finished my swim.

Snow is not the fluffy kind. It's the heavy wet kind. Uhg.

When I turned on the TV, LOST was on and the sound was weird. Loki totally meerkatted at the speakers and started biting at them.

Also, why do smoke alarm batteries always wait until nighttime to start their death beeps? Mine tore me out of bed at midnight last night, and then I couldn't figure out which it was, so I went to sleep between beeps.

The assumptions being made were odd enough, but even odder to me was that they asked her outright.

Imagine me being asked if I'm Korean.

Hello? And you ask me?

Aw, I just got invited to a communal birthday party for a trio of neighbors next Friday. I'm the only house in a row of 4 that doesn't have a bday this month. Have I mentioned I love my neighborhood??

Hello? And you ask me?

I've been asked (by different people) if I'm Indian, Puerto Rican, and black. And a few months ago, some guy came up to me on the street and asked, "Where your people from? They're not from this country, are they?"

On the other hand, last year, I was outside in DC and kind of watching a guy rant about Israel and try to get people to buy a communist newspaper. A woman came up behind me and said something to me like, "Kind of funny that he's probably a New York Jew," in a tone of voice that clearly meant that she was saying this as one New York Jew to another. I had nothing visibly New York on me, and it was January, so I was completely bundled up -- from where she was standing, she could maybe see the side of my face and the bottom of my ponytail.