re: #496 Gus 802

It’s difficult to tell based on appearance or even accents. I once met a woman architect and I asked her if she was Italian. No, she responded, she was from Iran. My dad who is from Argentina has been described as “that Indian guy” or once as Russian. There are plenty of examples. Like having “olive skin” and a beard can confuse a lot of already confused people.

Exactly. What was so surprising to me was that my friend, in the US, is never identified as Indian at all. People would think he might be Greek, or Spanish, or Italian, or Hispanic. Just olive skin and dark eyes and hair.

But in the UK, the classifications are very different. For example, the word ‘black’ is used to cover not merely Africans or people of african descent, but Asians— South Asians, not East Asians. So someone from Pakistan is called ‘a black’.

It does give one an idea about just how fluid our notions of ‘race’ are, though. I’ve heard that the concept as we know it now was essentially unknown in the ancient world, for example.