Great talk. I love Nat, she's genuinely funny.

I have to say that it surprises me to hear her refer to "Asians" as a single group. There are massive cultural differences between Indians, Chinese, Japanese, Thais, etc. No-one refers to Germans, French, Italians and English as "Europeans".

I also don't really think there's anything wrong with making fun of your culture. Many of my favourite comedians do that all the time (Dylan Moran and Billy Connolly for example). There's a world of difference between recognising and laughing at your own cultural quirks and making racist stereotype jokes.

I think she does it here because that is her experience -- to random people that she meets, they immediately identify her as "Asian", but nothing more specific than that. Plus, the talk seems to be delivered to a group of mostly, well, Asians. There are massive cultural differences between subgroups for sure, but on the other hand I'm sure they do share some common experiences due to being someone readily identifiable as "Asian" in a Western country.


...And I think you're wrong about no-one referring to Germans, French, Italians, English, etc. as "Europeans". I think LOTS of Americans do that if they see someone who is white and doesn't have an American accent, but they can't identify their particular home country.

And as an example on the other side of the coin, as a white American living in Thailand, I get Thais asking me these same sorts of questions ALL THE TIME. "Where are you from", etc., just like Nat described as happening to Asians in the west. Heck, in Thai the word for any western foreigner (non-Thai) is "farang", which most likely has roots in the way Thais heard and tried to repeat the word "France" as said by early French visitors, who were some of the first westerners to visit the country. In Thai, "France" is said like "fah-rang-sey" or "fah-rang-set", and most people think that the word "farang" for any westerner comes from that. So, if I go out with my British friends, the Thais will refer to all of us as "farang", which is basically like calling us "Frenchie". My Brit friends tend to take a bit more offense to that than I do...

But in all seriousness, I don't find being called a "farang" offensive. It is basically never meant as an insult, and in my opinion westerners calling Chinese / Japanese / Thai "Asian" isn't either. It can get annoying, but annoying isn't exactly the same thing as offensive.

Moving this video to lucky760's personal queue. It failed to receive enough votes to get sifted up to the front page within 2 days.