Member

Today, at my local rail station, the young staff member who assisted me on to the train told me, “Everyone gets my ethnicity wrong—they think I am Hispanic, but I am not, I am Asian”. She also spoke of the problem of people “passing”, a term that originated in the USA, where someone classified as one race could be accepted as another and therefore travel in the front of the bus or use a certain drinking fountain. She said that these days passing can cause real difficulties in families and communities, where race is judged by others because it is not the individual self-identifying.