Ethnic labels on people are so moronic and trite.
"I'm Italian American" or "I'm Irish, kiss me!"
Who cares?
If you are here, and you legally have the right to be here, then you're an American. Stop trying to be something else, the rest of the world pretty much blows so be happy.
I once heard a great story about this subject matter a few years ago from a friend of mine who worked at the local welfare office. Some dude came in sometime around early 2002, looking for public assistance. He was a college graduate, had a master's degree in engineering if memory serves yet couldn't find a job to save his life. His main problem… his first name was "Osama" and was a dead ringer in the face for "Mohamed Atta."
Turns out that not surprisingly, nobody wanted to hire this asshole because he looked like a terrorist and had the same first name as the motherfucker who orchestrated 9/11. He had all the credentials in the world to find a job, but people were afraid he was sleeper cell material. Remember, this was only months after 9/11 so people were extremely paranoid.
Well, this Osama guy also had a wife and two small kids. His spouse, too, owned a four-year college degree but he refused to let her work because that would obviously make a lot of sense. In this man's mind, his wife's job was sitting at home raising kids not earning real money. For her, having a college degree was as useless as a bullfrog having one. That's how those dudes get down. Women are for babies, men are for pleasure!
Anyway, my friend was making "Osama" fill out a bunch of forms in order for him to get food stamps when my buddy noticed under "race," big "O" put "African American."
My friend, who was black, was dumbfounded and assumed the guy was in error.
"You put down you're African American," my compadre quipped sitting across a desk from "Captain Jihad."
"Yes," Osama shouted back. "I'm from ....Egypt..... ....Egypt.... is in ..Africa... That makes me an African American!"
By golly, the man was right. ....Egypt.... is in ..Africa... Indeed, he was more "African American" than most blacks in this country because he was actually born in the "Dark Continent."
But if you were to look at the guy, the last thing you would think was "African American."
The dude was trying to get an advantage by claiming to be such in order to make things easier for himself. With affirmative action, "African Americans" get some breaks that other may not receive. I'm not going to debate whether or not that's right or wrong, but it is, what it is. But it made me think of something…
Why not claim if you are Caucasian, that you're "African American" on a job application? Who's to say you don't have "South African" heritage or "Zimbabwean" and such? People have a misconception that African is all black folks with a few Arabs mixed in. There are quite a few whities there, especially in the southern part of the continent.
So who's to stop you from doing that? Nobody's going to do a Genealogy background check to see if you truly have family in "....Madagascar....." Hey, it's worth a shot if you need a job bad enough!
Just don't go out and make a demo-tape after you get the job!
(Just kidding)
Ok now that your through reading his story...his name is Dan by the way... It think this is a sad sad fact. Most people judge others by the color of their skin therefore thinking they know where this individual or where their families come from....It is true that when we see someone that has darker skin tones or certain features in general that we think we know everything about them where they come from and sometimes we even think we known them as a person or how they live their lifestyles...its a sad fact and as Americans it makes it worse that we make these assumptions considering we are supposed to be the land of the free blah blah blah..People really need to stop judging other and get in the program of things....jeez.
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