Community for asking and answering any question related to the life, the people or anything related to the USA. Non-US people are welcome to provide their perspective! Please keep in mind:
As an American, not usually. Depends on where I am. Around my own city or something like that I would assume they speak English in most cases.
If I was at a theme park or other touristy place, I probably wouldn't. I also wouldn't if I was on a farm out here, since a lot of the Mexican and Portugese workers don't speak English.
There's so much diversity where I live, I see "foreign" looking people every single day and yet they're usually still Americans just like me.
Lol no. It's wild to me that people are like that. I can only assume they must be completely surrounded by people who are very similar to them at all times.
I'm a Chicagoan. No one looks foreign in the city of immigrants.
Fellow Chicagoan!
Fellow Chicagoan!
Depends what you mean by "looks foreign." If you mean their skin is a different color than mine, then no. Half my neighbors and coworkers are different ethnicities than me.
If you're Asian and you walked into my old office building and then stood in the elevator looking helpless, then I assumed that you were there looking for the embassy in that building and when I hit floor 8 for myself I also smiled at you and hit floor 4 for you to get where I assume you were going. (Seeing faces light up every time and thankful nods as they walked into the embassy just confirmed it.)
So: no, not just if you're another race. Yes, if you go somewhere I expect people from out of the country to go and then demonstrate a lack of English.
In your particular case OP I'm betting you live in a small town in the south, where every random white person barely ever even meets someone who was born more than 100 miles away. Shit I've met people who have never left the county they were born in. (Not a typo, I meant county not country)
I live in a deep blue city 💀
Then I kind of assume, like the folks in the elevator, you were doing some behavior which, unbeknown to you, signaled that you felt lost or out of place.
If you disagree, feel free to share a story that you remember in specific detail. And of course, even "blue cities" have racist assholes, could have just been some bigoted piece of shit.
But you haven't told us what you mean by "looks foreign". What does that mean?
That doesn't answer my question. If I'm looking at a human being that "looks foreign", what am i seeing about them with my eyeballs? What are the physical characteristics of their appearance that visually can be seen?
No. Because most people in the USA speak English. Even immigrants and children of immigrants often speak English.
If by foreign you mean wearing a red ball cap and not understanding the laws of this nation then yes, I assume and am mostly correct that they can’t speak English.
I’ve never been asked that and would feel offended if some whitey asked me that. But then I also live in California where it’s very diverse.
Not usually. If they are speaking another language when I encounter them and look like a tourist, it might occur me to.
But I live in New York where there's a wide variety of people.
Nope. Even when they say they don't, they probably do (but don't think they speak it well enough).
I assume everyone i see is American here. (Portland, OR)
Hell, I assume most people speak English when I travel to foreign countries, and they usually do.
I assume basically everyone around me can speak English even if I hear them speaking a different language. Kind of hard to get by in America without learning a little English.
If their English is difficult for me to understand then I’ll profile them like asking if they speak Spanish if they look Latino. My Spanish is bad but if they talk slow I can understand it pretty well.
If they don’t look like they speak Spanish (or their accent doesn’t sound like it) we just have to keep trying to communicate in English because I don’t know any other languages well enough to be useful lol
Outside of tourists areas, No.
In tourist areas generally I assume that the “ Foreigner” Can’t speak English.
Nope, I generally assume people I run into speak english even if it's not fluent. That includes all the asians I interact with, there's a lot by where I live.
Even newer immigrants speak at least some english.
Lol, no. I grew up in pretty diverse US communities though. I've had Asian friends who've traveled to the southern states of the US though and have had people talk slow to them and act shocked when they can speak perfect English.
It's just racism, whether overt or unintentional, it is.
It's good and safe to assume everyone around you, regardless of skin color or appearance, speaks the local language. And if they don't, don't be a dick about it. Pretty simple shit that apparently makes certain asshats in this country uncomfortable.
Maybe it's just from living in the Midwest, but that seems strange to me. I've certainly met plenty of people that don't speak English natively, but I wouldn't assume that by looks. Where did you have people making that assumption? It might be more of a rural thing?
Tbh I can't quite remember the specific locations. But it's almost always adults making the assumption when I was a kid/teen/young-adult, my peers never made that assumption.
Like... once a teacher made the assumption. I guess perhaps I was doing introvert things so he made the assumption?
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.
But Hispanic/Latino/Asian are usually presumed “foreign”.
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.
every I see a mainsteam media portrayal of a “foreigner” in America, its never a White or Black person
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.
Generally no, and I’ll still typically try talking in English first. I’m in a pretty diverse area. There are also a lot of immigrants here but the vast majority speak English even if it’s not their native language. The only times I might suspect someone doesn’t speak English would typically revolve around the person being older, especially if they’re wearing clothes more typical of another culture. In my neighborhood we have a lot of immigrants from South Asia, mostly Indian, maybe Bangladesh or Pakistan, and some Chinese. It’s not uncommon for them to have parents visiting or moving in with them, and sometimes they don’t speak English or at least don’t feel confident enough to respond beyond a smile and wave if I greet them in passing while on a walk. Especially with the people from South Asia they’ll typically be wearing more traditional clothing, flowing and robe-like. I am more likely to just smile and nod with them than try to have a conversation that might make them uncomfortable.
If I were not in America, I would assume that everyone I met spoke the language of the country I was in.
In America, I would assume they speak English regardless of how they look.
I know I shouldn't think that, but the apartment complex I live in has a lot of Middle Easterners that don't speak English. So in my mind I kinda mentally double take because I assume the adults don't speak English, at least not as well as their kids. I know I shouldn't assume like that, but it happens, more than I'd like to admit.
More to the point, why "assume" one way or the other - why not just ask, if in doubt? But of course that would be a question for them doing it, not you:-).
It might very well be the case that you are literally the first Asian-looking person that they have ever met, who speaks English natively. So merely by being present, you are helping break down cultural barriers and helping them realize that the world is larger than they had assumed:-).
Media, by increasing Asian representation, has also helped broaden people's experiences beyond what they see in their small hometowns. So if you had these experiences as a child, and at least one or perhaps multiple decades have passed since then, it might be far less common today to do that. Especially for younger people who have watched such media (TV, movies, YouTube, Instagram, Tiktok, etc.), and therefore realize that people can come from more diverse backgrounds than literally all of the people that they see around their small area - in their churches, grocery stores, and so on.
Im guessing your not from a large city. I mean if im in a very ethnic store in chinatown or in a heavily hispanic neighborhood or maybe on the bus and they are actively speaking a foreign language with someone.