Dear Fellow White People, Stop Asking People of Color Where They Are From
Here’s What You Can Say Instead, if you must…
I opened the door to the hair salon and inside was a lone man around 30 years old. My red/blonde hair needed a trim badly and his place was just down the street. The TV in the corner showed a local basketball game, the walls were painted green. He greeted me kindly and had me sit down and examined my hair. I felt at ease.
As he cut my hair he made small talk. I guess it showed I wasn’t a local, I may have even explained I was a student at the university.
“Where are you from?” he asked me. I told him all about my hometown, where I was from, my journey to the Bay Area, and what it was like for me. It felt good to talk to someone.
Now by nature I am quite socially awkward and struggle having conversations, but I’ve learned one conversation skill, don’t talk the whole time, and if someone asks you a question, maybe later ask them the same one to get the ball rolling again. After the conversation came to a natural end, I repeated the same question to him.
“So where are you from?”
I was totally caught off guard by the cold, detached tone and shift in his demeanor.
“I’m from here. I’ve lived here my whole life. So did my parents. I belong here and so does my family.” He then told me the haircut was over and proceeded with the terse and tense tone as I paid, thanked him, and left the salon.
My stylist, unlike me, was not white, and I realized that I had offended him by asking him this simple question.
What I didn’t realize….
While it was normal for me as a college student, to ask my fellow classmates where we were from (most of us had moved there for college). I didn’t realize asking someone ‘where they are from’ is a hostile micro-aggression many people of color have experienced their entire lives. I had innocently trampled on a landmine of racial trauma in this man’s life, which is not unique to him. Generally, any person who isn’t white, including Native Americans, have been asked this exact question, (and similar ones) whilst masking a racist layer that is questioning their right to be there, wanting an explanation of their ethnicity that is way to intimate to tell someone you just met, and overall othering.
As a white person, I haven’t experienced this. The one time I caught a glimpse into this, was when I was apartment hunting.
I showed up to the apartment at the same time as another prospective tenant. We were both talking to the landlord, when he looked over at my fellow possible tenant, raised an eyebrow, and said,
“You, Jose, where are you from?” Jose answered he was moving here from Maryland.
“No, I mean, before that, what’s your nationality?” To which then Jose had to explain he was born in Mexico, his entire immigration story, which was none of this man’s business. Landlord dude never asked me where I was from, instead he talked to me about my teaching job.
I was shocked. The whole transaction with Jose came off as judgy, condescending, and racist. I could not have imagined what it would have felt like to be Jose and have to justify why I was in this town, let alone the country. Why would Lanlord Dude have thought to ask Jose’s nationality but not mine? I think the answer is apparent.
The next day a good friend of mine and I went to see a different apartment we might rent together as roommates. The (white) landlord made some comment about how it was hard to pronounce my friend’s name, he was very confused…
“It’s a dutch name” I explained to him while telling him how to pronounce the very simple, albeit rare name.
“You don’t look dutch” he said to her.
My friend awkwardly, had to explain why she is ethnically asian, has a dutch family, but is actually American. It was a long story, one this man probably didn’t understand. One story her white brother never has to tell anyone.
He followed up with “You’re very tall for an asian woman.”
I didn’t have to explain my own family’s migration story to this man. He never said “You’re very blonde for an American, where are you from? Why do you have white skin? Was your great-grandmother German? How long has your family been here? Why do you feel entitled to live in this country?”
When white people ask a person of color “Where are you from?” Here are some of the subtle racist things that might actually be lurking under the surface, whether we intend it or not.
- Why are you not white? (unsaid assumption: Everyone here should be white. If you’re not white, you must not be American. Strangely people ask Native Americans this as well.)
- Justify to me why you are here in this country (unsaid assumption: this is a white country, so you must have some strange and outrageous story of how you ended up here, I need to know this for some reason.)
- Tell me your family history and what country your ancestors may be from (Because that’s what we do here, ask everyone we just met their long detailed, personal, family sagas often going back centuries to people we just met. Nope! Not to personal at all!)
- You look exotic to me, what a lovely token you are! Tell more about the strange and foreign token I can now add to my collection of acquaintances!
While we might have a natural curiosity about someone we just met including their detailed family immigration story (my grandfather is actually from Canada for example), it’s actually not something we usually share with someone unless they are a close friend, and usually only after they bring it up for some in-context reason. Maybe it’s 2 am and we’ve all had a lot to drink and are all just telling our life stories. It’s too personal to expect someone you just met to talk about it.
More importantly, a person of color has probably had to endure so much trauma being asked the above question “Where are you from?” you don’t want to poke a wound that’s been scrapped on their entire life, even if your intentions are innocent. Just don’t, it’s rude, disrespectful and othering.
So what are we supposed to do? Never ask anyone where they are from? I wouldn’t say never. If you are a white person, before asking a person of color this loaded question, consider asking yourself the following questions before proceeding.
Am I asking this person to learn more about their ethnicity/family background/skin color, etc?
Would I ask them this same question if they were white?
If yes, just don’t ask it. It’s honestly none of your business and hopefully you are capable of having an acquaintanceship with someone without knowing exactly how they came to exist in the same country as you.
If you are indeed making small talk, and it’s situationally a good question to ask, for example if you are at a destination wedding in Antartica, or in my case if they asked me where I am from first, here’s how to respond appropriately.
First of all, assume this person is local and frame your question in a manner that conveys this.
For example “How about you? You from the San Francisco Bay Area (insert place you are currently at)?” or “What part of New York are you from?” (assuming you’re in New York). “Did you grow up here in Arizona?” “Are you from here as well?” or “Did you grow up here in the city or in the country?”
If they are local, they’ll be happy you assumed as much, and probably start talking about their upbringing. The only exception is if you happen to be in a region that no one likes and wants to be associated with. Sorry can’t help you there. But even then, they might still be proud.
If they aren’t local, they will probably smile and say,
“Actually no, I grew up in Miami.” or “My family and I moved here last year from Singapore.” or “Well I was born in Sweden, but I moved here to Charlotte when I was one.” Or they will tell you as much as they feel like. Don’t dig deeper, accept their answer, it is indeed where they from. That’s their answer, just leave it at that, you’re not entitled to anything more. Absolutely DO NOT say any of the following annoying lines: “No, where are you from, FROM?” or “Where are you really from?” or “Where are your parents from?” “Where are your people from?” “ Where are you from before that?” etc.
One time I was eating dinner with some friends and talking with a guy who had a thick accent. He ate with chopsticks, and spoke mandarin to another friend as we were eating. English was clearly was not his first language, and he even referenced his childhood in another country. He asked me where I was from and I told him Seattle. I then asked him where he was from (I was expecting he would name a country in Asia) and he said “Los Angeles.”
Yep, that is where he is from, accept it. Don’t dig deeper, truth is they actually know where they’re from better than you. It’s not their problem if you don’t understand their answer or if it doesn’t make sense to you. Also, they don’t owe you a story of why they are in the same country as you, as intriguing as it may be.
The main thing is, ask with the assumption they are probably local. This often makes it clear you aren’t questioning their right to be in the city/town/region you are in with them in the tone you use to ask them. When interacting with someone in a specific geographic region, it really is the most logical assumption that person is from there. Seriously who are we to assume someone you just met is from somewhere other than the region you just met them in? Unless you’re on a cruise ship, a destination conference, or other circumstances, people will probably be from the place you are at. Making it clear that you have this assumption going in, and then not pushing them to explain further, is just basic common sense and going against it is probably racially motivated, even if you mean no malice.
Micro-aggressions often are hard to spot because the person creating one often has good intentions and doesn’t consider themselves racist, as I did at the hair salon. But that doesn’t mean they don’t hurt, and aren’t carrying a racists bias that I as a white person may have inherited from my surrounding culture. It is my responsibility as white to own my micro-aggressions and reflect about what I’m actually carrying around with me and giving others.
