Arrh, mateys!
4:06 p.m.
I am Jewish in the ethnic sense, since I no longer really identify myself with the religious faction. I have fair skin, dark, wavy hair which I wear long (and refuse to allow to go gray), dark brown eyes, and regular enough features that I am not immediately identifiable by my ethnic origin, although some may beg to differ. In other words, I look like almost any other Mediterranean native, except that my skin is quite light, it burns before it tans, and I used to have a lot of freckles in my childhood. Here�s a picture so you get the idea. (This is me without makeup, taken a year ago overlooking Maracas Beach in Trinidad by j-leem when Hubby and I were there on our spring break.)
So, the point I am making here is that people are constantly asking me what my �nationality� is. This has gone on for years. I grew up in a neighbourhood with a lot of Italians, and I was often mistaken for one of them. A Ph.D. philosophy student I had a brief fling with when I was at Western took me to a Greek restaurant once, and the owner asked me if I was Greek. When we lived in Greece for three months during 1999 as a family, my husband was constantly accosted as a tourist; I was largely ignored, and when I was approached, almost always addressed in Greek. I have been mistaken for French, Irish, and Arab. There is a Lebanese restaurant in town near where I used to take the Volvo for its annual rustproofing, and every time I went in there, the proprietor would ask me if I was Middle Eastern. Every single time.
Well, it happened again today. I was at my favourite cosmetics store buying some eye cream (I don�t know if it works, but I sure as hell ain�t going to stop using it just in case it does) and the vendeuse asked me what nationality I was. I was a little suprised as I think it had been the Lebanese guy who had asked me last. I told her that I am Canadian. After all, what is Canada but a collection of immigrants and their offspring? She thought I looked quite exotic, and I think the adjective �Greek� was mentioned. I assured her I was not Greek, that I had been born in Canada, and what I really wanted to say was, �Mind your goddamned business,� but I forebore because she really was very pleasant and I am a nice person. What she really wanted was for me to say, �I�m Jewish,� or some such thing, and then it would have confirmed her own opinion that I was �different�. She herself is probably the descendant of French immigrants, mixed with Irish or Scottish (remember �ye auld alliance�), which is very common in these parts, and she looked like it too. But I would never presume to ask her what her ethnic origin or �nationality� is.
I really get tired of it. I will hardly ever reveal that I am Jewish, simply because I do not know how it will be taken. It is bad enough that I am already in a minority, being an anglophone in Quebec; I don�t need to let people know that I�m not �white� either. I resent people asking me. If I had very dark skin, you can bet your booties that people would be too polite to �notice�. If I had been disfigured in an accident, no one would mention that either. But I think what bothers me most is that people are always asking the wrong question. �What is your nationality?� refers to what passport I carry, and to come right out and say, �What is your ethnic background?� is just downright rude.
Maybe I�ll start wearing a patch over one eye. That�ll shut them up.
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