regional differences

[elvedril]

I was talking with somebody who grew up in Arizona, and he pointed out that there is a greater tendency in New England than in the Western US for people to make a big deal of their ethnic background. People just routinely claim to be Irish or Italian or something else in background, a tendency that I don't recall from San Diego. In fact I don't

Comments

[thebestwithinus]

except strangely enough some Filipino friends of mine.

why "strangely enough"? because they look Filipino and it should be obvious and therefore there's no reason to mention it? wouldn't it be more expected of non-whiteys to bring it up, since white people don't spend much time dwelling on their own whiteness?

while I definitely noticed attention being paid to race in my east coast college (though no more so than San Diego), I don't recall much attention to ethnicity. Irish, German, whatever, didn't matter, you were white, but there was a definite divide between white and non-white - which seems similar to San Diego. people in New York are a bit more conscious of their roots, though, so maybe it's a city thing.

actually, come to think of it, the main times I recall ethnicity coming up in college were during discussions with girlfriends about tanning and weight gain. so it was purely a physical consciousness, nothing to do with the culture.

[elvedril]

why "strangely enough"? because they look Filipino and it should be obvious and therefore there's no reason to mention it? wouldn't it be more expected of non-whiteys to bring it up, since white people don't spend much time dwelling on their own whiteness?Strangely enough because they seemed to be unique at it, again in my very limited experience. My friends from other national backgrounds, white and non-white alike, didn't mention those backgrounds quite as often as the Filipinos did. Or at least they didn't stick out in my mind as being mentioned as often, for whatever reason. I won't speculate on that, and probably shouldn't have mentioned it in the first place

[chilango]

You must not have known many hispanics, is all I'll say. :P

[elvedril]

Strangely enough, the hispanics I knew in San Diego were mostly either first generation immigrants (who I wasn't counting for this statement) or people of multiple heritages who didn't put their hispanic heritage first.

[elvedril]

Yeah, apparently nobody noticed this regional tendency so it probably doesn't exist. Which answers the question. Thanks