Where #ImFrom: Real-life aliens
By Matthew Claiborne
I was 10 years old when someone first asked me, “Where are you from?” The incident took place in a tiny Louisiana river town. I was playing in a city league basketball league and my predominantly black team found ourselves competing against an all-white team from an all-white town. As soon as we walked in the gym, everything slowed. Stay-at-home moms dropped their nachos and little kids stopped slurping their sugary drinks.
I imagined that if aliens were real, they would be received like this. Following the game, after feeling accomplished for winning, a curious little boy was brave enough to ask me, “Where are you from?”
Never running from an opportunity to be sarcastic, I told the little boy, “Greetings, I am from planet Earth.” The little boy ran away.
All types of people ask where I’m from. Sometimes they want to know if I’m from the same place they are, like the American doctor who overheard me talking in a cafe in Mumbai — or the nice Indian lady on the train. A Sri Lankan family stopped me on the Brooklyn Bridge and asked that I take a photo … and then wanted to know where I was from. And the woman on the bus from the Dominican Republic who wanted to know why I didn’t speak Spanish and said my mother should have raised me better. My mother is a black woman from Louisiana.
I understand that people feel comfortable putting things into categories and silos, even other people. And my cherry brown skin and wavy hair confuse people because they assume I should look a particular way or talk and walk and think a particular way because of my physical appearance.
I noticed as I got older and moved around a bit, people stopped asking where I was from. I think most people heard me talk and assumed I’m from the United States. And once they determined that, they instead asked, “What are you?”
I find this question horribly offensive. Because I am not a “what.” I am not an inanimate object. I don’t even bother trying to decode what the question even means, but I typically respond, “I’m a human. What are you?” That normally makes people uncomfortable, and I’m OK with that. The follow-up is usually an apology and then, “Well, I mean where are you from?”
There have been moments abroad when I feel more at home than I do in the states. No one ever stared at me in India or asked where I was from until I started talking, and then prices suddenly surged because obviously, I’m a foreigner.
And in Canada, no one cared where I was from. They all assumed I was part of the diverse Canadian fabric. Soon I’ll go to Europe for the first time. I’m curious to see how I navigate the question there. I’ll likely just respond with the place I currently live — “I’m from New York.”
This is part of a series called #ImFrom, where members of the AJ+ community share personal stories about the question, “Where are you from?”
