Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP is beyond dumb.

It is not dumb, it is actually very smart. You take Hispanic last name, claim yourself as Hispanic next whatever application you submit.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it bad form for a lily-white American woman who marries a man with an obviously Latino/Asian/Middle Eastern-sounding name to change to her husband's name or should she keep her own (anglo-American) surname? Of course some women today prefer keeping their maiden names anyway.

I don't know why, but something just rubs me as cultural appropriation or faking diversity when someone like Larla Jones gets married and becomes Larla Rodriguez, Larla Zhang, or Larla Al-Habib. It's like pretending not to be white.

If Larla Jones is Black does that mean her maiden name she inherited from white slave masters who owned her great grandfather is a form of cultural appropriation since there were no Jones’ in Africa?

I see this was conveniently ignored.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it bad form for a lily-white American woman who marries a man with an obviously Latino/Asian/Middle Eastern-sounding name to change to her husband's name or should she keep her own (anglo-American) surname? Of course some women today prefer keeping their maiden names anyway.

I don't know why, but something just rubs me as cultural appropriation or faking diversity when someone like Larla Jones gets married and becomes Larla Rodriguez, Larla Zhang, or Larla Al-Habib. It's like pretending not to be white.

If Larla Jones is Black does that mean her maiden name she inherited from white slave masters who owned her great grandfather is a form of cultural appropriation since there were no Jones’ in Africa?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP is beyond dumb.

It is not dumb, it is actually very smart. You take Hispanic last name, claim yourself as Hispanic next whatever application you submit.

Funny story - my white as a ghost friend married a Hispanic man and took his name. She had a job interview and the interviewer was disappointed upon her arrival bc he thought she’d speak Spanish! She never claimed to be anything other than what she is on her application but they assumed.

I married into an Asian American family and took my husband's name because we wanted to have one family name.

My SIL, whose first name is very Irish (like Maura or Bridget) married an Irish American man and changed her name too. When go out together, people get so confused. We've been given each other's credit cards at restaurants on more than one occasion.

I also disappointed a woman from my husband's culture when I started at my current job. She worked there amd was hoping for someone she could speak her native language with. Her face fell when she saw me - she liked to tease me about that later.

These days, though, intercultural marriages are not exactly rare, and I feel like people are much less surprised to see that someone with my last name is white - certainly less so than when we got married 25 years ago.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP is beyond dumb.

It is not dumb, it is actually very smart. You take Hispanic last name, claim yourself as Hispanic next whatever application you submit.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ugh, OP, this is offensive. First off, don't call people ethnic. Everyone is ethnic in that everyone has an ethnicity. Also putting "ethnic" in scare quotes makes it worse.

Second, there are a million reasons women take their husbands name and a million reasons they don't. In a mixed-race marriage, those decisions can sometimes be easier, sometimes harder. Don't assume anything based on how a couple chooses to handle last name. Taking someone's name is not appropriation if you are marrying them.

Finally, I do think there are white women who capitalize on their mixed-race marriage in order to both claim white privilege while also claiming an elevated status within liberal communities. It's an extension of the "I have black friends" phenomenon. I don't think it's the biggest issue on the race relations agenda, but I do sometimes get an icky vibe from white women who lecture other white people (and sometimes even people who are not white) on race based on their marriage. Informing and raising issues is great, but sometimes white ladies like to get up on their soapboxes and be experts in things, and being married to a person of color does NOT make you an expert on race. Neither does having kids who are minorities. It gives you a different and potentially very interesting perspective. But there can be a lot of entitlement in the decision to assert that perspective.

Say it louder for the Karens in the back!

Anonymous wrote:Ugh, OP, this is offensive. First off, don't call people ethnic. Everyone is ethnic in that everyone has an ethnicity. Also putting "ethnic" in scare quotes makes it worse.

Second, there are a million reasons women take their husbands name and a million reasons they don't. In a mixed-race marriage, those decisions can sometimes be easier, sometimes harder. Don't assume anything based on how a couple chooses to handle last name. Taking someone's name is not appropriation if you are marrying them.

Finally, I do think there are white women who capitalize on their mixed-race marriage in order to both claim white privilege while also claiming an elevated status within liberal communities. It's an extension of the "I have black friends" phenomenon. I don't think it's the biggest issue on the race relations agenda, but I do sometimes get an icky vibe from white women who lecture other white people (and sometimes even people who are not white) on race based on their marriage. Informing and raising issues is great, but sometimes white ladies like to get up on their soapboxes and be experts in things, and being married to a person of color does NOT make you an expert on race. Neither does having kids who are minorities. It gives you a different and potentially very interesting perspective. But there can be a lot of entitlement in the decision to assert that perspective.

Anonymous wrote:Is it bad form for a lily-white American woman who marries a man with an obviously Latino/Asian/Middle Eastern-sounding name to change to her husband's name or should she keep her own (anglo-American) surname? Of course some women today prefer keeping their maiden names anyway.

I don't know why, but something just rubs me as cultural appropriation or faking diversity when someone like Larla Jones gets married and becomes Larla Rodriguez, Larla Zhang, or Larla Al-Habib. It's like pretending not to be white.

Anonymous wrote:My family is very racially mixed but skews AA and Latinx. The Asian-born women in my family who married AA military men and the AA women who married Latino men could write a book about the impact of a name change on how people treat you when they can’t see you.

Anonymous wrote:Is it bad form for a lily-white American woman who marries a man with an obviously Latino/Asian/Middle Eastern-sounding name to change to her husband's name or should she keep her own (anglo-American) surname? Of course some women today prefer keeping their maiden names anyway.

I don't know why, but something just rubs me as cultural appropriation or faking diversity when someone like Larla Jones gets married and becomes Larla Rodriguez, Larla Zhang, or Larla Al-Habib. It's like pretending not to be white.

Anonymous wrote:Ugh, OP, this is offensive. First off, don't call people ethnic. Everyone is ethnic in that everyone has an ethnicity. Also putting "ethnic" in scare quotes makes it worse.

Second, there are a million reasons women take their husbands name and a million reasons they don't. In a mixed-race marriage, those decisions can sometimes be easier, sometimes harder. Don't assume anything based on how a couple chooses to handle last name. Taking someone's name is not appropriation if you are marrying them.

Finally, I do think there are white women who capitalize on their mixed-race marriage in order to both claim white privilege while also claiming an elevated status within liberal communities. It's an extension of the "I have black friends" phenomenon. I don't think it's the biggest issue on the race relations agenda, but I do sometimes get an icky vibe from white women who lecture other white people (and sometimes even people who are not white) on race based on their marriage. Informing and raising issues is great, but sometimes white ladies like to get up on their soapboxes and be experts in things, and being married to a person of color does NOT make you an expert on race. Neither does having kids who are minorities. It gives you a different and potentially very interesting perspective. But there can be a lot of entitlement in the decision to assert that perspective.

Anonymous wrote:India is amazing, I’d strongly encourage you to go but ONLY if you can take three weeks there (four would be perfect but probably impossible). Three gives you long enough to adjust to the jet lag, which is no joke, and also to build in a couple “lets hang out in a fancy hotel and never step outside” days which you may (or may not) need. Because others are speaking truth: urban India can be overstimulating until you’re there long enough to tune it out, which usually takes a few months - too long for a holiday!

With three weeks, for your first trip, focus on seeing some famous stuff and some not so famous stuff. So,

Fly into Delhi. See the old city, Agra/Taj Mahal/Fatehpur Sikri/Agra Fort, Jaipur.

Explore other cities in Rajasthan: Jodhpur, Jaisalmer, Udaipur are the other big three fort towns, but you can’t go wrong with Kota and Chittor and Mt Abu, either. They’re just harder to reach.

End by taking an express train to Mumbai for shopping, night life, and a tour of Victorian architecture. Fly out!

And start planning your return trip to the Himalayas.... or Kerala and Hampi!