Ivan 🇵🇭🇻🇦

rant: America has the most insufferable race and ethnic relations of any country I've lived or been to. In Japan you'll be barred from certain establishments as a foreigner and angry drunk teens will call your "fakinu Gaijin." In Russia they will call you chololadka/Ethiopian/negr if black, pindos if American. In Brazil, you'll be referred as a gringo-colonialist. In Israel, girls will ask if "you Jew?" and run a background check if you're not — but in each of these places, people's initial cold feelings or racially sensitive jokes will be replaced by a genuine warmth once they like you as a person (the race jokes never fully go away though). Only in America do people who've been friends for years walk on eggshells when mentioning each other's race, and is there a naughty word you can't say because it has evil mystical power. Now you have identities centered on nervous quirk social media trends: "I'm a Kimchi-Pizza Wasian, tehehe." No lady, you aren't a set of condiments and snacks, you're part Korean and part Italian. Worst of all, this hypersensitivity rests strongest in people furthest removed from the race/ethnicity they call their own. You can tell a FOB Ghanaian (who'll call you Obroni) he looks like one of those Doctors turned Generals who runs a small unrecognized republic in the Congo and he'll laugh but some guy born in Oakland will call you insensitive. It applies to every race and ethnicity. I do wonder if the chief cause of this (aside from low confidence in your own roots) is the fact so much of this race discourse is heavily monetized — a few people make cash by tearing apart any unity the country has left, making every conversation incredibly annoying. — end rant —