“Where are you from?”

“What this question did was force me to assess the situation. Who is asking me? What are his motives? What connection is he trying to make with me? And here’s what I realized yesterday: my answer dictates how I then code-switch. Do I put on my “I’m a Chinese immigrant”-hat or my “I’m culturally mostly American”-hat? If I pick wrong, I risk making this man feel uncomfortable for making assumptions about my identity. And then I have to have the “No, I’m also from [insert place]” talk.”

https://medium.com/equal-voices/where-are-you-from-7ab9619bc6c5

! I love this because I think it’s good for people who ask these question to hear how it interrupts someone’s day, but also because doing this kind of writing seems like a really good exercise for those of us who get the question.

If you get “where are you from” questions a lot, respond to this post with your reflections, and definitely recommend the original post above!

For me, it’s surprisingly clear when they just want to know what part of the country I grew up in versus when they want me to say the countries that my parents and grandparents are from. The invasive genealogical question tends to pop up in three situations: (1) I have unwittingly been pulled into small talk with a total stranger #TheyAlwaysWantToKnow, (2) we were introduced about an hour ago and we’ve been talking or working together for a bit, and finally something I say or do just throws them over the edge and they have to ask, or (3) a long time into knowing someone, sometimes just after person #2 has broached the question, person #3 will reveal that they have ‘always wondered’.

There is a non-invasive way to ask, where you are not looking to fulfill some unquestioned curiosity or soothe a confusion but instead seeking to know me better and listen to my stories about myself. And, honestly, in the pantheon of microagressions, I am bothered by this very little. I used to actually enjoy answering, before it started happening so much that I realized it wasn’t because I was connecting with the question-asker, it’s because the world is confused by my hair.

So, my internal narrative tries to answer two questions: What is making them ask, and how can my answer avoid confirming a false assumption? Because “Where are you from?” can really mean “help me classify you as black or not”.

A few years ago, I was told by a childhood friend that she never considered me black because black people have a “certain kind of hair, and a certain accent, and a certain level of education”. And once, instead of “Where are you from?”, someone asked “So, which of your parents is white?”. I am still a little tortured by that.

I was talking about this with my Mom (after a doctor who was giving me a physical, and who’d I’d just met, asked me the question for no medical reason) My Mom told me about her rule: she always says “New York” first and then if they press, and she’s in a bad mood, she’ll say “Oh, you must have heard the accent! Yes, I grew up in the Bronx”.

When I am asked “where are you from”, I want to deliver a lecture — maybe this lecture — but I don’t want to pull that person’s mood down to where mine is, I don’t want to ruin the party, and mostly I don’t want the interaction to have to be any longer than it needs to be. But maybe in the future, just so I can get some answers of my own, I will smile and say “I don’t mind telling you, but why do you ask?”