holiday advice

Listen up, people. Here are some tips for travel and socializing.

That second article reminds me of an enduring holiday party gaffe. I think I blogged about it a few years ago when it happened, but it's worth revisiting. Some friends and I were talking to a friend of the host's, who was telling us about her husband's immigration ordeal. She was frustrated that they assigned him an official translator instead of letting her translate for him. There were other frustrations--they were obstructionist, impolite; I don't remember the details. What I do remember is her overarching complaint: that her husband didn't get special treatment at immigration on account of being white.

She didn't use those words. Which actually made it an even more stupid thing to say. She'd admitted that her husband spoke no English, so she couldn't make a case for special treatment based on the ability to communicate. Why the bureaucracy, why the rudeness? She said, "...but he doesn't look like an immigrant! It's not like he's Mexican, or..."

She looked at one friend, who was Asian, and thought better of saying "Asian." So she hesitated, and threw out "Eastern European."

Which was doubly hilarious, because clearly she'd skipped over Asian so as not to directly offend the people she was talking to, and ended up picking the ethnicity of another-- bringing us to what else made it funny: she couldn't tell that person was Eastern European, because I, in her words, "don't look like an immigrant."

Which still doesn't explain why she thought that not looking like an immigrant meant that the immigration people should cut one more slack. But I remember to this day that she did.