In Hawaii (a VERY Asian place) we are all alike. WE choose to rattle off our ancestries because we are proud of them – “Filipino-chinese-Hawaiian, what are you?” is a common conversation as a point of connection. Because we don’t see what mainlanders see. If you think one week in Japan changed you, consider what a decade or two does to a mainland Caucasian who moves there. We look at all the handwringing about PC with some confusion. Few people in Hawaii feel they need to be “protected” by not mentioning what their race is. In fact, when we get that lecture, we are slightly annoyed. The message to someone in Hawaii when we hear about using those hyphenated -american phrases is that somehow the person speaking is criticizing the ancestry as if there is something wrong with it. “Don’t let her know she’s Japanese, she might get offended!”

And YES – this has to do with adaptation. Once you live in Hawaii for even a month you begin to understand the saying, “we are all related.” The baseline shifts and you are always surrounded by a multitude of multi-culturally mixed people. More than 50% if all new marriages in Hawaii are multi-racial. So no one gets to claim victimhood. (Although some do try, and often those are agitators from the outside. Or those who have a hidden agenda.)

I was in shock when I moved to the mainland after 4 decades in Hawaii. I’m caucasian, but it was shocking to see so many white faces. My kids are part-Hawaiian and one of them is very dark because she surfs all the time. She also carries my red hair gene, so that makes for an interesting and exotic picture. But in Hawaii that’s normal. They call it “ehu hair.” My theory is that there are many Hawaiians with the red hair gene because as some UH studies show the Vikings may have had an outpost there circa 900 AD, and the Viking Ship project is studying that now as well… http://www.kilts.co.nz/longship.htm

Adaptation? We are all one. We all descended from the explorers and wanderers from around the planet. Perhaps we recognize each other after a time in proximity because we recognize our own relatives through the mask of different eyes and skin/hair colors.

to both of us after a few wks the dominicanos were no longer dark. they looked like me/us so to speak. i didn’t see dominicanos as “caucasian” but rather i thought i looked like them. she had a hard time adjusting to the culture (i.e., poverty) but slowly she was becoming dominicana.

same thing happened to me in argentina as a young man; i didn’t know any spanish when i moved there. i learned castellano porteno in bs as, then moved to the North. after a while i began to speak castellano like “a native” which confused a lot of argentines because i was obviously a native, i looked like them (and they looked like me) but i wasn’t “quite an argentino” from their neighborhood/city/province because of my accent. all in 3 months.

todavia, soy argentino. chevere

I appreciate Mr. Changizi’s post for bringing to my attention the neuropsychological basis for this phenomenon. As a recovering liberal arts major, I read Discover magazine partly to learn the science behind things I already think I know – and to disillusion myself about the rest. Thank you to everyone for sharing all their personal experiences of travel. It’s interesting to hear about places I’ve never been.

I’ll never ride the DC Metro or BART the same way again.

As I suspected, it’s the rom-com of science writing. Yawn…

And by the way, Mr. Changizi, my skin does not look “uncolorey-to-me.”