this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2025
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My city has a lot of Indian and Chinese people that live there. What does someone who "looks foreign" look like?
Its a subjective question, but I'm referring the views of a lot of Americans whom usually views anyone that looks "Hispanic", "Latino", "Asian", "Middle Eastern", as "foreign". (I disagree with this view btw, but that's unfortunately what some people think)
White people are always assumed to be American. Black people in Blue states and Blue cities are usually also assumed to be American. But Hispanic/Latino/Asian are usually presumed "foreign".
Honestly, in certain contexts, it might not always be what you think.
As an example, I’m pasty faced white, and I almost immediately profile other pasty folks as European tourists a lot of the time, in certain touristy areas.
I don’t mean it that as an insult, certainly not as racial stereotyping… Perhaps I should work on that, as my intent is to make them feel comfortable, not the opposite.
That being said, I know what you mean.
I have older family that visited Florida and once made an amusing old person comment on “all these foreigners” (referring to locals with roots in Cuba). Or others make slights at “Chinese tourists” specifically (who obviously live in the area).
…I also know some horror stories from the South I wouldn’t even repeat on Lemmy. But I’ll just say you might have met pleasant-seeming folks that would consider shooting you if you dated their kids, just because you’re Asian and they are white, like is freaking 1850.
Anyone who says America isn’t racist, or that kind of profiling isn’t a thing, has not seen its underbelly. :(
I am completely unable to tell if someone is not an American citizen or not at glance. I can generally tell if someone is definitely American with high accuracy (mainly based on accent and how they talk), but detecting not an American would have very high false negative rates.
That is not universally true, though yeah is true in some areas. I think whether it is "usually" true or not depends whether you are measuring by geographic size of the land area or by population density. Inside the major cities where most people are, people tend not to presume anything until they hear someone speak, and then go by the sound rather than the look.
I think its the Hollywood engraining those ideas into the population.
I mean, every I see a mainsteam media portrayal of a "foreigner" in America, its never a White or Black person, the most common "foreigner" stereotype is a Mexican, Chinese, or Korean, or sometimes it's someone form Pakistan, India, somewhere in the "Middle East". I mean, of course I hate these stereotypes, but still, you watch enough movies and it gets internalized; and I assume many Americans who watch a lot of Movies will eventually, subconciously, have these biases.
That has not been my experience, I think you may have confirmation bias, but it depends so strongly on the particulars, and I'm only making this narrow point here. Like Marvel movies, to name a specific set of examples, has white+black+Asian-looking people from Europe, white from Scandinavia and Russia, black from Africa and India, and so on. Even much older movies like Coming to America with Eddie Murphy featured several black men and women ostensibly from Africa - so saying "never" is far too strong there. Though as for how "common" it is... that I don't know, and maybe you are only looking at a particular genre, and only at movies from the last year or five or some such, and perhaps it is true in that more limited sense.
On the other hand, we see Asian-Indian people like Aziz Ansari and Hispanic people like Gabriel Iglesias speaking English, and white people such as Arnold Schwarzenegger who infamously arrived here from another country (Austria in his case), and black people similarly such as Idris Elba and Sidney Poitier. Though definitely Asian (and Indian) representation has lagged behind non-white, since the days of Leave It To Beaver started off television. And comedians are one thing while movies are another - Hispanic people who speak English are definitely underrepresented (but still not "never", like The Mandalorian). George Takei (Sulu) famously appeared alongside Nichelle Nichols (Uhurha) and Walter Koenig (Checkov) in the original Star Trek series from the 60s - but nowadays the most Asian-American actor might be Steven Yeun (e.g. The Walking Dead) or John Cho.
So you definitely have a point, I just wanted to nit-pick some of the particulars in how you said it: "never" is a very strong word. Also, does Hollywood really "engrain" these ideas onto the population, or merely reflect the pre-existing biases back at us? Yes! As in, it does both, creating a feed-forward cycle that would require effort to overcome.