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[shreena]

I made a post a while ago about the annoyance of the conversation, "Where are you from?"  "Cambridge" "No, where are you really from?" [...] "Oh, so you're Indian!"

Someone madea very similar post on Commentisfree about the same thing.

I am slightly horrified by many of the comments.

Some suggest that people are just chatting her up.  This has never

Comments

[ailbhe]

I've just remembered several occasions where people asked me Where are you from? and wanted the answer to where I lived, not where I'm actually *from*, when someone who was nearby in the same group, born in the UK, but brown, was asked again meaning where are your ancestors. Bizarre.

[cathedral_life]

Thanks for your posts on this topic. I'd never have asked anybody the question "where are you really from?" etc. or "where are your parents from?", but your comments have made me much more sensitive to issues around Britishness, skin colour and accent and taught me to be more careful about making assumptions or drawing conclusions.

A while ago, I felt rather frustrated with the question, "what do you do?" because lots of women I spoke to who raised children seemed to answer, "oh, I'm just a mother", as though that didn't count as doing something. I'm coming rapidly to the conclusion that unless somebody is very obviously a tourist, the question "where are you from?" is just as difficult and fraught.

[shreena]

As fjm says, "Where are you from?" is fine, it's really just the refusal to accept the answer that's awful.

[cathedral_life]

Mmm, but sometimes I'm guessing that there are implications to that question that might not be there for a white person (looking at ailbhe's comment). I think I prefer, "where are you based?" (although it's clumsy) because it is much more definitely about where somebody lives now than about their origins.

But I take your point! Refusing to accept an answer in that way is bad manners.

[shreena]

I think there are indeed implications. I tend to assume that most people don't actually mean that question as asked, because most don't, I answer it as asked basically because it annoys me that it's not being asked honestly and also because a minority of people are actually perfectly content with "Cambridge" as a response.

But I would guess that lots of non-white people do just take the easy way out and say "my parents are from Pakistan" or whatever. Thinking about it, I think I also don't want to just say "my family is from India" because no-one in my family has lived in India within living memory and so that feels like a lie.

[fjm]

I'm assuming you saw my own comments on this one?

The "where are you from?" is fine. It's the "no, really, where are you really from?" that sends my hackles up every time.

[shreena]

I even replied!

Yes, I totally agree. I actually rather like being asked "where are you from?" the 5% of the time that it's meant genuinely.

[fjm]

Ooops. Sorry, very behind even on my own lj.

[clarisinda]

I think a lot of people don't know the right way to phrase the question they want to ask. "What's your ethnicity?" sounds a bit pompous or rude, ditto questions about (cultural) heritage or the like. To be honest, I don't know how to phrase the question so it definitely won't either offend or make me look ignorant, so I don't really ask. (I'm talking about people I know, work collegues and the like when it's relevant, I wouldn't go asking random strangers.)

[shreena]

I think the reason it sounds a bit pompous/rude is a clue that it's not really that appropriate a question, to be honest.

I've talked about this sort of stuff with most of my close friends by now but I don't think any of them ever explicitly asked me about it, it just came up naturally in conversation. E.g. I might have said "I could not make myself understood in Gujarati the other day, mine is just full of Swahili slang" and they might have asked why and then I'd have said that my Gujarati is learned from my parents who grew up in Kenya as did my grandparents.

[clarisinda]

You clearly don't like people asking, but I don't think that makes it rude to be interested to know. I wouldn't find people asking about my background rude at all (assuming it was within context of whatever we were discussing), it's just that they are less likely to ask me because they'd expect the answer is less likely to be interesting (and they'd be right). Or is it the fact that you get asked, and I rarely do that grates in the first place?

[shreena]

I don't think it's rude to be curious about it. I'm curious about lots of things. But I think it is an intrusive thing to ask, yes. It's not as bad, though, if it's asked honestly. What's really rude is the cross examining of your response - I know where I'm from, I am not "really" from somewhere else because I'm not white.

[kittenista]

It always strikes me as a bit bizarre because, having grown up outside of Britain, I never hesitated answering the 'Where are you from?' questio, when asked abroad, with "I'm British". And no one ever called me on it.

Yet, when I'm actually in Britain, I always feel the need to clarify it with "Well, British and etc" because people don't necessarily take the "British" answer as complete. It isn't complete; I am a lot more things than just British but that's for me to feel and know not, as you say, for other people to feel they have the right to know. To be fair, I don't mind if people ask but it annoys me to think that some people think they have the right to ask (and, to be fair, it's a different kettle of fish being asked this by a stranger who REALLY doesn't have the right to pry into someone else's personal life).

[friend_of_tofu]

I grew up outside Britain and I always find this question nightmareish!