My Double Standard Response to the Question “Where Are You From?”
I am what many would describe as “ethnically ambiguous”.
I have a medium brown complexion. My features are not easily distinctive . My natural hair is dark and curly, but not afro.
My normal accent is very classically English, but I also speak both French and German.
I am, in fact, mixed race — of both Ugandan and English heritage.
All this means that I get asked the same question on a regular basis:
Where are you from?
And, in some circumstances, depending on the answer I give, this is then followed by a further question:
No, but, where are you really from?
What I find intriguing is that, over the years as I’ve grown, I’ve travelled and I’ve increasingly understood my identity, I’ve noticed that the way I answer this question depends on who asks it and where I am in the world.
Not only did I grow up with two parents of different ethnicities, I was also raised in a very diverse suburb of London with friends of many different ethnicities. At eighteen, I moved to a slightly less ethnically diverse…
