[M-Maurer19474]

I have wondered about this but in a different context. When I see white people, I can tell their mood — usually from quite a distance — by the expression on their face. However, for black people — because the skin tone is so dark and, therefore, the facial contrasts are less evident (to me, anyway), it’s hard for me to see mood. I usually can’t tell until the person is fairly close. I suspect that I ‘stare’ as well. (i.e. I am looking for a facial cue which takes a while so I spend more than a ‘usual’ amount of time looking at a black person’s face. I could understand that the black person could interpret this as ‘staring’.) So, if a black person is walking towards me, I don’t know how to read their mood at a distance. I wonder if this is the same for black people. Or, perhaps, because contrast just is what it is, I wonder if black people use other cues to communicate mood. Perhaps the ‘black walk’ is a substitute. (e.g. If a black person is swaggering down the street they are in a good mood.) It would seem that it would be very important to be able to assess — from a reasonable distance — if someone is potentially dangerous — which is why mood assessment is so important. So my question is: How do black people know each others mood from a distance. With respect to the Korean posting, I think it is the eye configuration. White people ‘narrow their eyes’ when indicating a threat. Because oriental eyes are always narrowed, there could be some misinterpretation of facial cues (in the context of the caucasian norm) in the same way. In that way, however, it’s a bit easier because, after a while, you can understand that this is just the way it is. As far as ‘mean looks’ go, though, I have two white friends who have the meanest faces I have ever seen. Just standing there, they look dangerous but they are a couple of the nicest guys I know. I was told one time that when you are speaking to foreigners you have to give them wide latitude. Because so much of what we say is idiom (i.e. cultural), you just HAVE to give these folks a break. (Like the time when the nice looking young Italian lady asked me if I ‘would sleep over’ when what she wanted to know was if I ‘would over-sleep’.) I think this area is the same. Instead of judging in the context of your own norms, you need to try and judge in the context of the norms for the person you are seeing. The question is: How do you figure out what those norms are?

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Name : M-Maurer19474, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Age : 52, City : Poughkeepsie, State : NY, Country : United States, Occupation : Programmer, Education level : Over 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class, 

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