Weird/incorrect race assumptions you've made?

[Howallergic]

My first was Tracy Chapman. I presumed, despite the first name Tracy, that she was a white male. I was shocked to see from a picture that she was not only female, but that she was also black.
My Mum's ex partner presumed that Millie who sang My Boy Lollipop was white and was disappointed (80's) to discover that they were all black. From how he described it to me, it was almost as if he had fancied a girl who turned out to be trans - he felt ashamed.
Latest I can think of is an Irish singer called Hozier who my father assumed was a black man. He's a white Irish singer.
My most recent one was this very posh lady I had to deal with at work, and I presumed she was white, don't know why, but that bias was there. When a black girl turned up in jeans and a hoodie to meet me, I was a little shocked.

This is not a race row argument thread. I'm just wondering whether you've ever made incorrect assumptions based on accents or whatever. Jesus I hope it doesn't get me deleted. I started this with the intention of showing just how stupid our assumptions can be, not the opposite.

Anyway, I'll leave it to you.

I thought the singer Tom Walker was a gorgeous black Jamaican with waist long dreadlocks - definitely wasn’t expecting ginger beany wearing Scottish when I googled him

[quote PopsicleHustler]@Karwomannghia sorry to hear you're ex religious. That's a shame. In islam there is no racism everyone is one.[/quote]
I have been forbidden from debating with you about your sweeping pronouncements about ‘Islam’ as if it a single entity, but I may retort that it is not a shame that I left religion. It’s a joy, a freedom and a rebirth. I feel like I truly have seen the light. In fact shame is the overriding feeling I left behind.

I thought the singers Anastacia and Rory Charles Graham-Rag n Bone man were black

@Karwomannghia
Your life. Your choice.
Farewell

Yes. At a MN meet-up, I was greeted by the words ‘I don’t know you were black’. Shocking.

Due to my last name and actually first name too, back in the pre-Google days many people assumed I was a white Jewish woman. I am definitely not. This was and is also coupled with my speech patterns over the phone and my academic degrees. There were lots of surprised looks at job or roommate interviews.

About Little Millie and “My Boy Lollipop”... why would you assume she was white? It was one of the first ska songs ever and she had a Jamaican accent and patois. Yes, there are white Jamaicans but at the time they weren’t really in the common media.

I thought Bill Withers was a white American with slightly long hair and a 1970s beard, no idea why.

@Karwomannghia

No one has 'forbidden' you from debating - you do have a knack for misinterpreting to the extreme
You've simply been asked not to derail the thread with personal attacks which have no basis.
If you struggle with men telling women what they can and cannot do as you state, then it seems counterintuitive and victim-blaming to me, to criticise women that you perceive as victims of control

As a note general point Islam, Christianity or any other organised religion has problems and all of those issues are up for discussion and debate - that's not 'forbidden' but if that's what you want to do then it's general MN etiquette to start your own thread rather than derailing this one.

@earlydoors42

The girl who sang "My.boy Lollipop" went to the same school.as my mum in rural Jamaica.

I am white - I guess you weren't expecting that?

Even I would be fascinated by that one I must confess! Was your mum born in Jamaica?

I thought Rick Astley was black too.

But the weirdest example I have of this was when I was quite small. My best friend was a mixed race boy, it was quite clear from his colouring and features. But he lived with his mum and grandmother who were white. I assumed he must be white too, because obviously if his parents were white he had to be as well. I was surprised when I met his dad one day who was a very dark skinned black man with a huge afro.

@Howallergic I suppose we all assume things at some point. You do sound as though you need to educate yourself though OP. I get comments about my accent too all the time (how I sound white). I do to be fair even though I’m not both my parents were born in England so sometimes I think well what are you expecting to hear?

@FredaFrogspawn

This is behind our unconscious biases. And it is something we need to think about - why a ‘posh lady’ has to be white for example.

I’m not blaming you or calling you racist because many of us white people are there or have been there, but this is exactly what we need to be ‘doing better’ because I’m so many cases, this thinking is the very thing which means that some ethnicities have a more raw deal than others in numerous areas.

A brave post by the way. And you are right, we do make assumptions based on stereotypes.

Oh come on... this is not a thing only white people do! Everyone on the planet is prone to cultural bias. The fact that only white's get called out on it is farcical at best.

I have an eastern european name, but i'm bilingual. And many times I got the line "oh, how can you be so fluent in english?" or are you sure you're not american? :)

mistakes I've made: thought the singer of Placebo was a not-so-pretty girl. Turns out he is an okay looking guy.

I had a client whose name I had seen written down but not heard how to pronounce and I hadn’t met them or seen a picture. From how the name was spelt I thought they were Chinese and from his voice I’d thought he was young. It took me ages to find the elderly Argentinian man in the foyer!

In specsavers last week my 13 year old was sat there, me in the other chair. The woman asks him if hes part Japenese because of his eyes. He tells her no, she then goes on a list of... Chinese then.... from Thailand then..... He was like... I'm British. Then I had to go into the whole back story about how a past relative was adopted but we dont know their background and yes we have slightly oriental looking eyes. I'm used to it but my son found it embarrassing.

@PopsicleHustler That just irritates me. Why should she/me have to adjust our accents so we can fit neatly into the box expected of us? God forbid we go off script 🙄

I thought Mick Hucknall was black and female the first few times I heard Money's Too Tight.

I'm a taxi driver and was picking up a couple from Saudi Arabia at Heathrow. I have a short name with mostly consonants like 'Ruth' (but not, obviously).

The man upon meeting me looked a bit shocked and said, "Oh. You're a woman."

That was an interesting day! (this was before the Saudi Arabian ban on women being able to drive was lifted a few years ago, so in their heads, maybe, you only get male drivers wherever you are)

As a child, I thought that the Osmonds were black. I also thought that Shirley Temple was black.

A few decades later, a colleagues young daughter was at work. I refused to believe she was his daughter because I had for no reason thought that his wife was black.

I was surprised recently when an acquaintance said she was from the Caribbean, I had always thought she was an East Indian African.

I meant East African Indian not East Indian African.

When I saw Tom Jones on Top Gear (first time I'd ever seen him), I thought he was mixed race, and went on a big spiel about how good it was to finally have an ethnic minority presence on the show. My dad thought I was just really over-egging the Welsh identity, until I said the same years later when I noticed him on an ad for The Voice with Will I Am and my Mum finally asked what I was going on about

I always assume that someone with a Welsh or Irish name is either going to have dark brown hair and blue eyes or red hair and green eyes. I've recently emailed people called Sinead and Carys and been really surprised on meeting them to find they both had Jamaican parents. That seems like two lots of unconscious bias in there....

Totally thought the singer Becky Hill was black. And also Rag n Bone Man.

I live in Canada and if I encounter a Calvin, a Bertha, a Margaret, a Richard, an Elmer, a Barbara etc they are always young Indigenous people or kids whose parents are Chinese Immigrants. With the Indigenous kids they’re named after elderly family, with Chinese kids I’m assuming their parents are in a time warp. I’ve gotten used to it now, but they used to sound like old people names to me.

I once had a couple of conversations with a prospective client on the phone who had quite a strong Irish accent. For some reason I was quite surprised when I arrived at her house and discovered she was Jewish.

I don't know why I'd never thought that there might be Jewish people in Ireland, but I'd obviously never considered it to be a possibility.

Someone who worked with DH came to the conclusion that I was Japanese because of my name (no it’s not Japanese and nowhere near Japanese sounding).

I once jokingly referred to DS as ‘Ichi-ban‘ in the office and later someone asked me how my son, Ichiban was.

My sister calls people ‘ducks’ and I was speaking to her on the phone when I was at work - responded as ‘ok ducks’ and was then asked by a colleague what type of name ‘Dax was for a girl’.

MistressMounthaven - I’ve heard that show advertised. It’s just a rehash of theory I learned when I was studying psychology/sociology a million years ago where to could show that people do (not always consciously) adapt their speech, behaviour, (bad/good) language, physical stance, hand gestures to ‘adapt’ to the surroundings (so the sex of the group, age, race, class, region, etc) - so she hasn’t exactly discovered anything. Some people mirror accents when speaking to someone else. It’s what we all do, love...