A recent video interviewing women of colour in New York showed that there's an extra creepiness to the pervy comments they get from strangers. Because some guys think it's the ultimate compliment to tell a woman just how obsessed they are with her ethnicity, as if that makes them (the guy) a better person or something.
Along the same lines of those interviews (but actually made before) comes a video where role reversal of the two main stars shows the racist elements to some guys' sleazy pick up lines. In it, an Asian woman sidles up to a white guy at bar and asks him all the questions she might normally expect to hear from a white guy at a bar. First off, she guesses his ethnicity: 'shh, let me guess. You're white'. Before declaring: 'I really like white guys. My last boyfriend was white.'
As well as belittling his hobbies by saying 'your ancient traditions are so majestic', she then asks what 'crazy food' his mum used to cook for him before expressing shock: 'did you have casserole!?' You can watch the video here:
We figure that this sort of barrage of questioning isn't only undertaken by sleazy blokes who get off on some pseuco-nice-guy act while exoticising non-white bodies. Some of it is definitely perpetrated by whoever doesn't understand that just because someone's different to them, doesn't mean that they've got a responsibility to be a spokesperson for that difference at any given time. Black people don't have to talk about blackness all the time, gay people don't have to tell you what gay people are like, and disabled people shouldn't have to explain how they overcome their disability. They deal with enough on a day-to-day basis.
As well as showing how ridiculous it is to be so obsessed in someone's heritage over who they are that you ask them all about their background before a simple 'how are you?', this video serves as a reminder that yeah, people are proud of who they are, but no, it doesn't mean they need to talk about it with you.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.