crossposted from Mixed Race America
Recently I was asked to give a talk about race and diversity, specifically to talk about my own experiences as a woman of color in higher education. So I drew upon some of the themes that I’ve discussed previously in this blog–about the definition of race as we know it (in terms of the “racial pentagram“), the difference between “institutional racism” versus “individual discrimination,” about my own identification as an Asian American woman, and about the question that every Asian American person I know has been asked at least once (and usually many times), namely: “Where are you from?” with the implication, oftentimes, that a person isn’t looking for your current home address; rather, what the questioner wants to know is what your ethnic ancestry is.
The talk was really fun–and the question and answer period, which I used more as a general discussion, was the best part, because it was an opportunity for people to talk to one another, albeit through me. In other words, I didn’t want to just stand up as the “race expert” because I think everyone has their own experiences, and hence expertise, when it comes to race. And really, after one person has been talking for 40 minutes, the last thing anyone wants is to keep hearing the same voice answer questions.
However, one very good question was posed to me directly. In response to an anecdote I had told about the Staples guy (click here) who insisted I had to be from Hawaii because I looked Hawaiian and who kept wanting to know where I was from, a person in the audience asked this question:
“Is there any kind of question that you would prefer to be asked with respect to your background/ethnicity? Was there a way that the man who insisted you were Hawaiian could have asked his question without offending you?”
I thought about it for a moment and then did the teacherly thing that I sometimes do, which is to flip it around and look at it from a different perspective. Because the thing is, there’s nothing wrong in asking someone where they are from or, if it is the ethnic ancestry you are interested in, there’s nothing wrong in directly asking someone, “What is your ethnic ancestry?” I’ve done it recently with a student in my class who appears to be South Asian but had indicated through different references that he might have Indian heritage, and so during office hours I asked him directly what his ethnic heritage was because it was in relationship to a conversation we were having about people taking off their shoes before entering one’s home–and it was a point of common cultural practice between Indian households and Chinese households (and I dare say a number of other cultures do this as well, like Korean and Kenyan).
So what I said to the questioner was that it wasn’t so much how it was asked or what was asked but it is the motivation behind the question that I’m interested in. For example, a nurse who was inserting a needle in my arm during a blood drive once asked what my nationality was. I am not sure if it was the tone of her voice or the fact that she was about to stick a needle into my arm, but I didn’t get defensive or reactionary (for example, I didn’t scream I AM AN AMERICAN CITIZEN IF YOU WANT TO KNOW MY ETHNIC HERITAGE THEN JUST ASK) instead I simply said “I identify as a Chinese American.” She got very excited and started to tell me about her Chinese American granddaughter–and at first I wasn’t sure if her son had married a Chinese/Chinese American woman or had adopted a girl from China, but it soon came out that it was the latter and that her Chinese American grandchild was always asking her grandmother (who worked for the Red Cross) if she met any Chinese people in the largely homogenous (read white) area of Western MA where we were having this conversation.
In other words, for the white American Red Cross nurse, her motivation in asking me my nationality was very personal and rooted in finding resources for her granddaughter in discovering her ethnic heritage. For the Staples guy? It seems as if his motivation was simply to tell me I should get to know my culture better and to show off HIS expert knowledge about China and Chinese society. And quite frankly, I have all the patience in the world for the nurse and none whatsoever for the “China expert.” Because the nurse seems to desire a true interaction and a conversation whereas the China expert seems to want to talk at me rather than with me.
I agree that intent is everything, the problem is you often can’t tell the person’s intent when you start the conversation, and before you know it you are talking to someone who wants to ask you about (in my case) the “ancient wisdom” of the native american tribe they have guessed you are from.
I got this question a lot more as a child, trying to be in the world with my white mom. Being in public was a geography lesson sometimes, having been asked if I was cherokee, sioux, apache, hawaian, filipino, thai, lebanese, iranian, vietnamese or from India. My favorite was the woman at walmart who asked if I was from Sri Lanka. I was 10 and I had no idea where Sri Lanka was.
They always seemed a little disapointed to find out I was “just Mexican.” At an early age I gathered from these experiences that the world was not as “color blind” as other people seemed to want me to believe.
I always feel a little weird when someone asks me the “Where are you from?” question. At the moment I feel like an alien from out of space. I know it is probably not the person’s intentions, but that is just my gut reaction. I usually just respond by telling them of from state “blank”. Then they give me this look as if I’m hiding something. I also get asked out of the blue what my last name is as well or what my mother’s maiden name is. As the author eluded to it’s all in the context. It just seems a little weird when I’ll be having a casual conversation with a person about nothing pertaining to my ethinicity or race and out of nowhere they will just ask me the question. I’m like boy you must have been dying to ask, lol.
This is almost the same as the old “what are you?” Or “what nationality are you?”
I alternate between loving and hating to answer the nationality question. Loving it, because I almost always stymie the questioner by answering American. (And when they ask where my parents are from [which they almost always do], I tell them. [PA and GA]) Hating it, because it’s obvious that seeing me, they can’t fit me into their stereotype of what American is, so I must be “foreign”.
No, there’s nothing wrong with being direct about it. But it totally is about the motivation. Secondarily, I always wonder what they’re gonna do with the information…
So – I work with a group of people, in a hospital setting, and we see patients daily. The group has a mixed race person (who identifies as black) and the rest of us either identify as white, or can pass as white. An older white patient came in and while we were seeing him, he singled out the black person in the group and began asking him where he was from. When he answered, “San Francisco,” he was then asked, “Well, where did you come from before that?” My co-worker answered that he was born in San Francisco, at which point the patient pushed the issue further to ask where his parents came from. My co-worker answers that one of them comes from California and the other from Illinois. Finally the patients asks about his “nationality.”
When the group of us gathered in another room, where the patient was no longer present, the leader of our group didn’t say anything about the situation. I was disturbed because I felt like this patient had made my co-worker feel like he was not a member of the community (our group) by singling him out, and then the person who plays the role of leader in the group did not acknowledge what just happened.
I went to speak with the leader of our group and let him know that I think this issue needs to be addressed. My co-worker spoke to me about the incident after it happened and told me that he was hurt that it was not acknowledged by the group. I understand that it wasn’t about the questioning from the patient, but about the fact that it was ignored by his community.
When I spoke with the leader of our group, I had a very hard time because he holds a position of power over me, and it felt awkward. I also got the feeling that he was confused as to why I would approach him, instead of my co-worker (the one who was made to feel excluded) – but I felt that it was important that I, as another white person in the group, told him that what happened really bothered me.
I feel really confused about this situation and don’t exactly know what I should or could have done better. Does anybody have any advice?
My best friend is half white, half Filipina-Chinese and she once said to a persistent “but where are you FROM?” questioner, “Do you really want to know where I’m from, or are you asking me to explain my non-whiteness?” It’s an all-time favorite comeback of mine and someday, when they’re old enough, I’m going to teach it to my girls, who, boring old U.S. born African American children as they are, we are constantly being asked where they are from with an expectation of some exciting, “exotic” answer. One they insist must be African and the other MUST be half-Asian, not half-white.
Nothing pisses me off more than strangers speculating or even second-guessing my children’s race!
I had an interesting experience once when I was waiting in a pharmacy with my biracial children. One woman sitting next to me looked at my kids and asked, “Are they yours?” insinuating they had to be adopted because their darker complexions didn’t match my lighter one. I responded with a curt, “Yes.” and did not encourage further conversation.
A few minutes later, another man entered the pharmacy and sat down next to us. We had polite conversation for a few minutes (discussing sick kids and such) before he asked my children’s names. When I told him my son’s name (of south asian descent), he commented, “That’s an interesting name – what’s the background of it.” It opened an easy segway for me to explain that my husband was South Asian, etc.
What struck me was the stark contrast in how these two people asked about my children. The first woman assumed she knew my story, and her question reflected that. The second man’s interest in me first – general conversation, then more specific questions – showed a respect for my unique personhood, not an assumption of who I and my children are. The second man, as it turned out, had lived in another country for over twenty years – that explained his cultural sensitivity!
Go figure – all of this from a pharmacy waiting room!
Sometimes, people can be a bit too sensitive on this topic. I’m always more than happy to share my cultural background with people. If people ask me where I’m from, I’m usually flattered that they are interested in learning about my ancestors. I have to admit, if someone with European decent asked me to identify where their grandparents came from, I’d probably have no clue.
Colette,
For what it’s worth, I think you did the right thing in both talking with your co-worker and trying to talk with your supervisor about this incident. People in leadership positions have a responsibility for the well-being of their staff–and have a responsibility for setting a tone that others will take their lead from.
It’s also very difficult to confront others–be they your peers or your supervisors, so I really do applaud you for even having the conversation because the fact that you TRIED is important–because it’s important for all of us to be able to “speak truth to power” and to stand by our convictions.
Could you have done anything differently or made the situation better? So hard to say. Confronting the patient himself doesn’t seem to be an option, unless of course one of your group could have been able to make an appropriate joke or use humor to deflect the situation. Something along the lines of, perhaps, of us all sharing the same nationality as human beings (it’s lame, I know, but it also makes the point that the patient was being pointed).
I really think that at the moment when the patient is out of the room, someone even making the off-hand comment of “Wow, that was really uncomfortable” or “Wow, that was really inappropriate! I can’t believe he said that!” would have, perhaps, helped make your co-worker feel less self-conscious. Again, hard to say and I’m not saying that this was on you to do or say anything because it’s so hard to know WHAT to say in the moment.
BUT…I also think it’s not too late. Even if this incident happened a month or several months ago, I would hope that you are in a situation that if your group gathered together, there would be a point where anyone in the group would be welcome to raise any questions or concerns. At which point, you might consider whether you’d want to say something along the lines of:
“You remember that patient who asked coworker “A” that line of questioning about where he was from? That made me really uncomfortable and I just want to talk about how we can deal with situations when our patients put one of us in a personally awkward or uncomfortable situation.”
In other words, this could be a great opening for discussion–a real teaching moment for EVERYONE, including (and maybe most especially) your supervisor.
Anyway, that’s my 2 cents for what it’s worth. Good luck!
For the Staples guy? It seems as if his motivation was simply to tell me I should get to know my culture better and to show off HIS expert knowledge about China and Chinese society. And quite frankly, I have all the patience in the world for the nurse and none whatsoever for the “China expert.” Because the nurse seems to desire a true interaction and a conversation whereas the China expert seems to want to talk at me rather than with me.
Sounds like the Staples guy fits the description in this article below.
“White people like writing as ‘experts’ on non-white cultures”
http://restructure.wordpress.com/2008/10/27/white-people-like-writing-as-experts-on-non-white-cultures/
Contrast the Asian/Asian American experience with claims that this is a “post-racist” society. I am constantly asked this question, though my parents grew up in this country and I am east coast born and raised. Many of my friends, who are Russian and Polish IMMIGRANTS, have never once been asked this question by anyone. I can only conclude that not only are people bigoted, but they are so stupid, that they can’t wait to prove how “American” they are, while trying their darndest to make anyone not white to feel out of place. Now, as a fact, I will state that 95% of the time, it is a white person who asks me this question, even white people who barely speak English and I live in NYC. Coincidence? Also, it’s not a generational thing as one time, sitting at a medical conference (so much for the education trumps stupidity theory), one of my contemporaries, in his late twenties looked me up and down and asked “Where are you from.” When I told him my home state, he said huffily, “Where are you really from”? When I decided to play along and asked innocently, “I have no idea what you mean,” he snapped back, “Cause you look kinda Asian,” leering at me. Next time, I will have some good come-backs including, “Are you asking me to explain my non-whiteness,” or “Would you have asked if I were white”? “You want to know what I’m doing in this country since I’m not white”? how about a direct punch, “Oh, and you must be from bigotsville.”
Sandy,
Sorry had to address this. Do you really think that people don’t intend to make you feel out of place when they ask you this question, “Where are you from”? Why, out of all the people around (I’m assuming these interactions don’t take place in a vacuum) would these bigots choose to single you out? We need to stop making excuses for people. If they want to act like idiots, I have no qualm calling these people racists to their faces.
I was never aware that “where are you from?” had different connotations when I asked a non-white person that question than it did when I asked a white person; I often ask it to people when I first meet them. (It is, for example, how I originally found out that my (white) husband is from Massachusetts: I asked him “where are you from?”)
I only found out in the past few months that many people experienced being asked this question in a racist fashion. In retrospect, finding this out made the response of a nonwhite friend to me of “Montana”, fourteen years ago, make a lot more sense: he obviously braced for *something* after answering me, and was clearly surprised that my response (which was something along the lines of what was winter like in Montana).
I think the way the question is asked, and the context of it, matters a lot. It is not *necessarily* a racist question.
It sure *can* be, though, so I try to be more careful about who I ask it of, these days.
If you never ask a white person where they’re from, then I think it’s important to ask yourself why are you asking me that question. It’s a question that really bugs me because most of the time they don’t want to know, they just want to say something stupid about the Caribbean. Only once did the question have any merit and that’s when the person who asked had adopted a child from the Caribbean and it turned out to be the island where I was from. Mind you the conversation started out with the story of the adoption and not “where are you from”.