I pass as white, which is relatively easy to do since my ancestry is all English and German with the tiniest smidgeon of Scot ... yet some of my Congolese relatives tell me that I have an African heart.

I hope they don't out me ... I think the Chinese stereotype of an American professor is a white American, and if I get outed as having an African heart, I don't know what that will do with my longevity as a laowei professor.

It may not be surprising, given the population diversity in Africa, but I remember most of the African students in both the US and in Australia as being more relaxed about African "ethnicity". I remember the Algerian student who would yell to my Congolese wife (then girl-friend) "Hello, African!" across the married and graduate student housing complex, in French, and she would yell back, in French, "Hello, African!".


I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.