Aw, the race card.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

Huh? Ok, that just don't make no sense.

It does to me. The same thing pretty much happens to me, if all they see is my first name. Especially when it was in conjunction to my old address where I grew up.

If you had my name and my old address, you were black.

I wish I had a nickle for every piece of junk mail I have received that was clearly targeted to black women.

[Magpie]

I wish I had a nickle for every piece of junk mail I have received that was clearly targeted to black women.

Now, I'm guessing that my name gives my ethnicity away, because I am at a loss as to how junk mail can have ethnic targeting. Clearly, everything I get is addressed to my ethnicity and so I just can't notice it. (Whee for new last name, let's see what I get now!)

[RecoveringKinkoid]

Well, when you get hair and skin product adverts for "Women of Color" as they so charmingly like to call relaxers and skin bleaches and whatnot, and samples of fake hair for weaves that is clearly what you'd call of a specific ethnic group, that is ethnically targeted junk mail.

Put it to you this way...Gherri Curl products are marketed in their own special section of the hair care aisle. I'm just sayin'.

[Magpie]

Well, when you get hair and skin product adverts for "Women of Color" as they so charmingly like to call relaxers and skin bleaches and whatnot, and samples of fake hair for weaves that is clearly what you'd call of a specific ethnic group, that is ethnically targeted junk mail.

*wishes she had a more ethnically ambiguous name so she could get interesting junk mail*

[RecoveringKinkoid]

*wishes she had a more ethnically ambiguous name so she could get interesting junk mail*

Well, you could always just buy a magazine subscription or whatever with an exotic name. Or heck, order something out of a catalog under an exotic name. You'll soon enough get some weird junk mail.

[Fire_on_High]

I am at a loss as to how junk mail can have ethnic targeting.

It's the name. My legal first name is close to one fairly common among Hispanic ladies, and my married name sounds Hispanic as well. I get junk mail in Spanish, telepesters in Spanish, even had the health dept mail me the results of some routine medical tests in Spanish before. That AFTER checking a box to indicate I'm white, of Caucasian heritage on the records, and another to indicate I'm fluent in English only.

My heritage is German-Scots. Pale skinned, blue eyed, brown hair.

ALL they pay attention to is the name...if it sounds like, "it must be".

Oh, and the "Hispanic" last name? Hungarian or Romanian :-)

[Andara Bledin]

Ah, phone-based racism.

A co-worker got hit with that a while back.

We had a caller from South America (I can't remember which country) who called late in the day, and ended up speaking with our A/P clerk, who is very white, but spent a large chunk of her childhood in Venezuela.

The guy wasn't getting the answer he wanted, so he made some snotty comment about how he could tell by her accent that she was from Mexico.

Loser.

^-.-^