re: #593 Chrysicat

I’m totally understanding of this. I’m blonde and blue-eyed with an Angelina accent.

I’m also the proud owner of a name that ends in “-aba” (well, actually, “-baba”) despite probably not having any ancestors in the past 10 centuries who hailed from any further east than Kyiv, and no, I didn’t marry into it either.

One of the last jobs I held down was incoming CS for the Postal Service (the semi-governmental company, not the band), and one customer, having already escalated herself enough to demand my name (and yes, we were still to give first and last in those days), started blaming me personally for 9/11 for being allowed in the country. I keep telling my family that it’s likely to get dangerous for anyone who sees our last name but doesn’t see our faces, partly because of that experience in the spring of 2003.

I’m so sorry. It’s awfuk. I’ve never experienced hardships due to my surname and ethnic background.