Good afternoon, this is just a curious question from a foreigner. I visited a city in the west coast that seems to be majority Asian.
I was on a ferry behind two Asian American woman. They were talking and referred to white people as “foreigners and white people”.
I thought this was unusual as most places in America I went to previously were white and I thought America was a majority white country.
Would this attitude be typical in majority minority places and would you be treated differently for being white in these places?
30 comments
I mean there’s some cultural nuances there. It’s not that crazy, our society is multiethnic and we realize it. We might make jokes about these differences, there might be some differences that are more about perception than reality. It’s pretty complex, because it’s a complex society.
I live in New York City and, if we’re not majority minority, we will be soon. It’s honestly not that big a deal. We’ve always been liberal, always had good food, always had conflicts across various divisions some of them racial. As minority populations grow, so do those things.
One thing we may have picked up with a large, diverse minority relationship is that, when someone talks about another person – maybe someone they work with, maybe a doctor they visit, maybe somebody they can’t stand, we’re not so quick to visualize that person as a white man.
Which city?
I’m white in a city that’s 60% black (28% white).
Are you sure those people were Americans?
The attitude of White people being foreigners? I’ve never heard anyone say that about White people even in the few cities I’ve been to where they seem to be or are the minority.
They referred to two groups of people. Foreigners and White people. I wasn’t ease dropping on their conversation so I don’t know what they were referring to.
There’s lots of places within the United States that are mostly immigrants — or mostly Latino – or mostly something other than American born European descended White person.
We are a nation of immigrants.
I’ve been in a lot of places where I am the only Anglo-White person.
Treated different? Sometimes. Treated poorly. No.
There was one place I went where I felt VERY unwelcome – and realized I was the only person of my race there. Huh, I thought, that was weird. I’ve never felt unwelcome anywhere before. Weird!
But there ya go. My white privilege was/is so super strong that I have spent my entire life just going wherever I wanted to go and doing whatever I wanted to do and never noticing until that one time that golly gee whiz, maybe I do NOT belong in this space.
Humbling experience.
Maybe they just went to a place where not many white people go to and they don’t usually see. Maybe that’s what they meant.
I grew up in Honolulu which is majority-minority and I never felt that I was treated differently or as a foreigner.
I’m not sure that would be the typical attitude. I’m pretty positive I’m the only white person in my section of the city & I don’t feel I’ve been treated differently.
For white folks who grow up in such a place, it’s normal.
Those who transplant in from somewhere more homogenous are sometimes thrown for a loop. “OMG this is what it feels like to be a minority!” Yeah, fun ain’t it? Now go along and do your normal thing.
People are hit or miss. The best neighbors I ever had were in a rough city that were mixed Hispanic and black. I was only white guy on our street. I’ve moved away and they still check in and treat me like family. I legitimately am a better neighbor now because of how they treated me. I don’t know if I’ll ever find the community I had there but hope I will.
I live nearby and visit Detroit not infrequently, 80% black. Never feel like I was othered or viewed differently for being white when I’m there.
[deleted]
I don’t think it’s *that* strange.
Whenever I would visit people I knew in the black or Hispanic neighborhoods around Boston, I’d get some looks from locals and – *very* rarely – get asked why I was there, which others around me found objectionable and rude. Some people might think it’s weird to see a white person hanging around in a community that is majority non-white and an historically non-white neighborhood. However, no one *ever* told me to leave, or that I don’t belong, or anything like that.
Locals might treat you differently, but businesses won’t turn you away, and no one will really make a stink of it unless you make trouble or poke your nose where it doesn’t belong – which is pretty standard anywhere you go, methinks.
I’m white-Hispanic and live in a predominantly east and south Asian part of suburban Dallas.
I don’t think about it at all.
I never once heard myself or anybody else who was white being referred to as foreigners while growing up in my majority minority neighborhood. There are ppl around here that will scoff at white ppl just b/c they are which is ironic when they expect to be treated fairly like white ppl (disclaimer: not insinuating they shouldn’t be fairly treated but they’re usually the same ppl who will scoff at anybody that isn’t their same race/ethnicity)
*Generally* not an issue. Most people are treated well regardless of their race or what group appears to dominate the community they’re in. If you’re respectful you’ll be respected back.
While the US is generally very diverse on the national level, people often still self-segregate. Every ethnic group has its enclaves. They can be especially tight in or near cities, and some fraction of people in every ethnic group experience ethnic or racial anxiety about “others”.
If a white person wanders through one of these areas and encounters some of these people, it would be similar to a person of color wandering through an exclusively white community encountering a white person with similar attitudes about minorities. Overt violence or mistreatment is very rare in the US but bias and tensions may still be felt on occasion, or overheard, as you experienced.
Basically people with racial resentment are more likely to express or act that resentment when they feel like they outnumber the interlopers.
I spent a lot of time growing up in areas that had more black people than white people. I’m white. Maybe if you’re like a kid in school you might deal with some light bullying like any kid who sticks out does, but even then it’s a maybe, and it was never really that deep. As an adult you really don’t have anything to worry about at all.
Honestly my experience growing up was that the black kids were way easier to get along with, and aside from our actual skin color, it felt like we had way more in common as far as hobbies and interests went. Which meant all the white kids would call me wigger and talk shit all the time just because I had black friends. And at that point it was like why would I want to force myself to hang out with a bunch of kids who talk shit about me constantly when I already have my own friends who actually like me.
White person here. My city is 57% Hispanic/Latino. Other than store clerks switching to English when I arrive at their register, I don’t get treated any differently.
To an extent, yes. West coast Asians are a little different from other Asian enclaves in that a) there’s a huge population of us and b) Asians are pretty good at sticking to their own community. It’s caused us to create a pretty big culture and forget that most people outside of it won’t immediately be versed in the nuances. I’ve had friends drop slang/references in front of out-of-staters that get mildly dumbfounded when the other party doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Experiencing the culture clashes within America firsthand is honestly really fun. Just reminds you how fucking huge this place is
I don’t think white people are treated any differently than a POC is in a white-majority city. Might be a culture shock but they’ll get over it
Never felt like a foreigner. More just like the vast majority of us got along because we mostly all lived, worked, shopped, hung out in the same spaces…went to the same schools…played sports together…went to church together, etc.
There was always the rare neighborhood that if you weren’t white, black, or hispanic you might feel out of place, get some looks, or (decreasingly over time) not be as safe.
It actually freaks me out when I go to a place that has a vast majority of white people, even with being white myself. I get this uneasy ‘stepford wives’ sort of feeling. Where’s the diversity? Why do people look so similar?
All kinds of people are racist. My ex wife (Latina) hates white people
I am a White guy from California. I have never had this issue. If you do run into an issue with an ethnic enclave being somewhat hostile to you, its likely that enclave is hostile to everyone that isn’t a member.
Most people will be fine, assholes are rare but you have a greater than 0% chance to run into them.
If they said “foreigners AND white people,” that kind of implies that foreigners and white people are different. They could have (and seem to have) been talking about expressly different types of people.
It’s quite common for foreigners to be surprised by just how diverse the U.S. is. They think all Americans are anglo Saxons with blonde hair and blue eyes and that there’s just a small minority of African Americans.
If you’re not blonde with blue eyes you get the whole “where are you really from” question, especially from Europeans.
We in America constantly call out why it’s problematic to ask a non blonde/blue eyed person where they’re really from after they tell you they’re American – but this question far more often comes from foreigners than Americans because at this point most Americans of all political stripes simply know better.
“foreigners and white people”.
Do you think they were talking about two different groups of people, the people who are foreigners and other people who are white?
I’m non Hispanic white and lived in a 99% Mexican neighborhood in Chicago for many years. Overall excellent experience but yeah I was definitely seen as the “other” by a lot of people. Fortunately I speak Spanish and worked in the community so integrating into the neighborhood wasnt hard. The guys at the meat counter at Cermak would pretend not to see me because they don’t speak English, until I would say “sigo yo!” when my turn came up. One time at a laundromat a lady complained about me running a dryer too long to someone else saying white girls don’t know how to do laundry. And a few times I got hit on by dudes saying they wanted to see what white girl 😺 was like lmao
Honest answer, no. I live in a town in Texas that’s roughly 54% Asian, and so far I’ve been treated the same as everyone else.
I grew up in a majority Hispanic area, and I never really noticed any different treatment. I guess the only thing that’s kind of jarring to people in other parts of the country is that where I’m from, we call all non-Hispanic white people “Anglo” regardless of whether they actually have Anglo-Saxon heritage or not. The etymology of that is more about language, though. Anglos are anglophones, meaning they speak English as a primary or only language. Hispanic people historically spoke Spanish as a primary or only language (though that’s changed a little now, there are a lot more Hispanic people who speak English only).
Sometimes people have teased me a little or whatever, but it’s always been in a nice way. Usually it’s mock horror that I don’t speak Spanish, followed by an earnest attempt to start teaching me, lol. It’s actually pretty nice because I am far from fluent, but I do understand Spanish pretty well and can usually speak it well enough to communicate in a basic way for simple conversations.
So yeah, my personal experience is that it’s fine.