"What are you" Questions...

[Gold Man]

Do you get asked "What are you" or after a long stare, "where do you come from" (while in Asia) ?? I get this all the time! The worst thing is going intoa Chinese restaurant and having the waiter/waitress bring you a fork.

[seryb]

I usually only get "What are you?" after the person (usually Chinese or Vietnamese) starts speaking to me in their language, and I tell them I can't understand them.

I don't mind getting a fork or chopsticks. I can deal with both. My girlfriend on the other hand, she's Filipina and she isn't too big into chopsticks since she doesn't use them at home. She always feels dumb about asking for a fork when none have been provided. She makes me ask for her. I guess she would rather I look dumb instead.

[Omega]

yea i get asked that but its mostly
them: "What are you?"
me: "asian"
them: "yeah i know but what kind are you: vietnamese, chinese, korean? I KNOW! YOU'RE JAPANESE"
me: "NO DAMNIT! im LAOS"
them: "WHAT THE HELL IS THAT????"
me: "GGGGGGRRRRR *pow pow pow pow * (bust out some muay thai shit)

haha not really but it gets annoying since people ask those questions

and over here they dont serve chopsticks to anyone in the restaurants

[ChinaLama]

i'd be funny if someone asked you, "what are you?" And you go, "you can't TELL that i'm human? you think i look like a monkey or something? or you think i'm from krypton? what are you? somekindofidiot?"

[seryb]

Originally posted by Omega@Nov 8 2002, 11:37 AM
me: "NO DAMNIT! im LAOS"
them: "WHAT THE HELL IS THAT????"
me: "GGGGGGRRRRR *pow pow pow pow * (bust out some muay thai shit)

Cool, another Lao person. Saibaidee, buc koi noi! Haha...just kidding. :lol:

You are a guy, right?

[kimpossible]

Check out the hapa forum. Only we get people guessing or assuming what we are as well as being asked.

[hormiga]

Originally posted by Gold Man@Nov 8 2002, 07:30 AM
Do you get asked "What are you" or after a long stare, "where do you come from" (while in Asia) ?? I get this all the time! The worst thing is going intoa Chinese restaurant and having the waiter/waitress bring you a fork.

How I wished a fork was brought to me everytime I sit down to eat in a Chinee restaurant.

[applehead]

Originally posted by Gold Man@Nov 7 2002, 11:30 PM
Do you get asked "What are you" or after a long stare, "where do you come from" (while in Asia) ?? I get this all the time! The worst thing is going intoa Chinese restaurant and having the waiter/waitress bring you a fork.

i don't get "what are you?" as much as "where are you from?"

that's kinda confusing because i don't really know if they're asking me where i'm from originally or.. where i live. or whatnot.


i feel insulted when people ask me what i am.
there's other ways to ask.. like.. what's your ethnicity?

[angel nympho]

Originally posted by applehead@Nov 8 2002, 10:51 PM

i don't get "what are you?" as much as "where are you from?"

that's kinda confusing because i don't really know if they're asking me where i'm from originally or.. where i live. or whatnot.


i feel insulted when people ask me what i am.
there's other ways to ask.. like.. what's your ethnicity?

Why does it insult you when somebody asks your ethnicity? A lot of times people ask and get asked that question. I actually get asked that by more Asians than by white people.

[ChinaLama]

ifsomeone asked me what i am, i'd feel insulted too. Cuz "what" is how you talk about animals or objects, "who" is how you talk about people? I guess if someone said "what country do you come fr?" i'd feel less insulted. and i do come fr another country. :)

[angel nympho]

Originally posted by ChinaLama@Nov 8 2002, 10:55 PM
ifsomeone asked me what i am, i'd feel insulted too. Cuz "what" is how you talk about animals or objects, "who" is how you talk about people? I guess if someone said "what country do you come fr?" i'd feel less insulted. and i do come fr another country. :)

OH oh oh. I get it. i thought he meant he was insulted when soembody said "what's your ethnicity." Okay, I get it now.

[suresquared]

Originally posted by angel nympho@Nov 8 2002, 02:52 PM
I actually get asked that by more Asians than by white people.

I've experienced this phenomenon as well. On a couple occasions, I've been asked if I was Japanese by Japanese students in San Francisco. When I visited Vietnam a couple years alot of people thought I was Japanese too. I guess it was the DV camera. If anything I look more flip or vietnamese than anything else. But I do not mind if people ask me what's my ethnicity.

though it's usually those few ignorant "white" people that ask me if I know "kah-ra-te" and if i do could i show them some moves ( in a heavily accented voice) that really annoys me. conversely, i say could you teach me a few genocide moves like the one you did on the native tribes of america or how about enslaving africans...

so i suppose "what are you" is such a bad question when the potential questions that come after can get shamefully worse.

[Hiroshi2]

I only get asked that question when people see my mom, who has been mistaken for Indian (Native American) even though she looks just as Asian as any other Asian IMO.

BTW, does anyone else thinks it's a little weird to eat Asian food with forks and knives. Eating it with chopsticks only seems natural to me. It always looks so backwards IMO.

[Adaon]

Originally posted by Hiroshi2@Nov 8 2002, 04:28 PM
BTW, does anyone else thinks it's a little weird to eat Asian food with forks and knives. Eating it with chopsticks only seems natural to me. It always looks so backwards IMO.

Now that ya mention it, yeah it does at times......but when all else fails ditch the stuff and just use ur hands... :lol:

"What are you?"
"Human...."
"Yeah yeah, what race?:
"human........."
"What nationality?"
"American........."
"WHere'd your parents come from"
"America........."
"WHere'd their parents come from?"
"Same place their siblings came from........"

[YuheiCarreau]

Originally posted by ChinaLama@Nov 8 2002, 04:55 PM
ifsomeone asked me what i am, i'd feel insulted too. Cuz "what" is how you talk about animals or objects, "who" is how you talk about people? I guess if someone said "what country do you come fr?" i'd feel less insulted. and i do come fr another country. :)

A lot of people dislike the "what country are you from" approach though, because it implies that Asian Americans are always foreign no matter how many generations they've been in the US. I have never in my life heard someone ask that question of a White person (who didn't have a foreign accent) in the US. To be fair, however, there are a lot more Asian Americans than White or Black who identify as their Asian ethnicity even if they were born in the US and only have US citizenship (the term 'overseas Chinese' comes to mind).

I myself even have trouble with identifying as Asian American; if only because my (Japanese) father has never taken US citizenship - he lived in the US for 16 years on a temporary work visa until the government threatened to kick him out if he didn't get a greencard - and my American citizenship comes from my mother, who is White. I have dual citizenship, and just because I'm an American of Japanese descent doesn't necessarily make me Japanese American; nationality, like race, can get pretty confusing when you really look closely at it.