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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

[biascut]

I found the comments such depressing reading. I mean, I think I've known since I was about fifteen that "Where are you from?" is a loaded question, and I've definitely known it since I was twenty and I saw the difference between the way people asked me where I was from and the way they asked my mixed-race boyfriend. And people who claim that it's just enjoyable small-talk are apparently completely able to ignore all the one-word answers, the turning away, the gritted teeth and whatever other non-verbal signals people use to express that this conversation is really, really not enjoyable small talk for at least one person, and then claim that it's all in the spirit of good manners

[ideealisme]

I was particularly struck by the guy who said "oh it's because I'm just this regular boring bloke who has 50 generations traced back to the same hill in Norfolk and I'm curious."

I'd be more curious about *him* to be honest. You know what they say - incestuous relationships tend to flourish in inverse proportion to public transport. The same hill? Since Willie the Conk?

Now *That's* weird.

[cangetmad]

Yep, the firm putting of her in her place as both a woman and an uppity something-or-other was just so huge. Universal acceptance that posession of an attractive female face and body means that absolutely anybody has the right to say absolutely anything to you; universal acceptance that asking questions of brown people that you don't ask of white people is a neutral thing to do.

I do get the "not taking 'English' for an answer" thing about my last name, but that is clearly about where my name is from, accepting that I myself was born in England. But I think, in fact, that people asking that question because of someone's skin colour often know fine well that they might have been born in this country; the astonishment is that they can actually think that overcomes the foreignness inherent in their skin colour.

[alacsony]

Ethnic nationalism can be bizzare. For example, the term "Caucasian" in Russia has totally different meaning to the one in West.

[beebarf]

My partner gets the "no, really" bit too, and finds it annoying. He's white, born and brought up in Canada, but has a British passport, and has been living in the UK for seven years. His parents were British, his grandparents were British and still people want to define him by his accent.

[ingaborg]

Thank you for this thread - it makes for extremely interesting reading. Having grown up largely in white middle class England, I am annoyed by how aware I am of skin colour and probably do say wrong/annoying things because of being self-conscious (how very British of me).

I do find myself asking "where are you from", usually to a white person who has an accent I can't place (and occasionally to a non-white person who has an accent I can't place).

Generally I intend it as a conversational opener, and also because (for example) I don't want to mistake a Canadian for a USA citizen and potentially cause offence.

On one recent occasion, I thought a guy might be South African. It turned out he was from Stoke on Trent. Oops!

On the other hand, if a colleague has (for example) a distinctly London accent, I do not ask them where they come from, whatever their skin colour - it's obvious already, innit.

[403]

A South African classmate of mine (ethnically Indian, raised in South Africa, emmigrated to America) once mentioned that people here keep mistaking his accent as British. So to a certain extent it goes both ways.

[trinity_gal]

My lovely colleague gets this a lot as well - she is from Mauritius (all her family been there for generations, her entire childhood, sea and beaches) and does not even know any Indian language, yet people impose 'deep down really Indian' on her.

I did get into a knot though when we were talking babies...she was talking about her cousins having really tiny 5lbs newborns and I was like 'is it normal for babies of er....err....err...Indian....origin to be on small side'.