In Reply to: I agree with Dennis in that it is easy posted by edwards mob on Wednesday, 6. December 2006 at 05:16 Bali Time:
One time when we were out shopping with one of our regular Balinese drivers, Gusti, for reasons of his own, wanted to know for sure if one of the shopkeepers we were buying from was Balinese or Javanese. Gusti did not rely on appearance, personality, attitude, or the way this guy spoke Indonesian, he satisfied himself by speaking with this guy in Balinese. Afterwards, he told us what he had done and said that's the way he always did it, if he was in doubt.
With my very limited Indonesian and even more limited Balinese, there's no way that I could do that, so how would I invariably know where someone was originally from, or indeed care. And I don't judge anyone by their real or apparent ethnicity or nationality anyway.
If I was Balinese and struggling to survive financially, then I may resent "people coming from elsewhere and taking my job/business". I suppose that's human nature. But I hope that, on at least an individual basis, I could still treat individual people as individuals, rather than stereotypes of some [to me] undesirable culture.