@inthegarden wrote: “What if you no longer want to call your original home “home”? What if you have struggled mightily to become an American citizen and to be respected as such? What if home has been destroyed by war or famine and you just don’t want to talk about it in a trivial conversation? What if “home” is not a place favored by many Westerners and you just don’t want to deal with the response you almost invariably get? What if you come from a highly cultured background but people tend to assume otherwise by your nationality? What if you were adopted and just don’t feel like sharing private history with a stranger?”
So true!!! I can definitely relate or name real-life examples for every situation you’ve described. Not quite the same, but it really bothers me when people grumble about how much they want to relocate to another country (but of course they never do). I always want to tell them: “I chose to live here, and struggled for this privilege, and you live here by an accident of birth. If you want to move out, just do it already or stop complaining!”
"It is not offensive to ask “where are you from?” if that is what you actually mean, and you accept the answers given.
What does bother people is if, after an answer of a domestic location, you follow with “no, where are you really from?”, indicating that you do not believe that the person is from the same country, or you are really asking “what is your ethnic ancestry?”."
I can’t imagine anybody dismissing ones original answer, and continuing to question. That would be extremely rude, and I would be compelled to come up with something very sarcastic…like, well, originally Adam met Eve, or I evolved from apes.
We had a band stay with us this Spring. The band was from Germany, but the drummer was from San Antonio. On the first night, we were talking about where everyone was from, and drummer talked about how his mom was from Mexico, and relayed a bit of his family history.
The next morning, I forget what we were talking about, but I said “What are you, again?” And he stood ramrod straight, and shouted “I AM AN AMERICAN!” Salute and all.
Like @inthegarden, I have a daughter adopted from China. And she has heard the “Where are you from?” a lot. When she was very young, I was often approached by strangers who would ask me where she was from… and I usually would smile and say “Why do you ask?” I didn’t mind explaining to people who were interested in or considering adoption; I used it as an opportunity to share some facts about the process. But when random total strangers answered “Oh, I just wondered” or “I’m just curious”, I would smile, give them a quizzical look and move along. Really, it was quite intrusive – and tiresome – to be approached by ‘curious strangers’ on a regular basis. When she was old enough to speak for herself, she would say “I’m from [our town].” Once, someone repeated the question “No, I meant where are you FROM?” and she said “I’m FROM [OUR TOWN].” At which point the person turned to me and asked, " So, I guess her father must be Asian?" Sheesh.
It tends not to happen where I live, but non-white Americans are common enough around here that when people as “where are you from?”, they mean exactly that (without assuming that the other person is not American, or really wanting to ask about ethnic ancestry). However, I have encountered situations where naming a place within the US was not the expected answer when visiting a place that was about 90% white (not Latino), although (oddly) the questioner himself was non-white.
Indeed, there is a fairly well known case of a non-white guy with a not-typically-Anglo-American name who is from Hawaii, but, no matter how often he or anyone else says that he is from Hawaii, many people do not believe him.
It is staggering to me that there are so many people that have such hatred (or racism), that they want to believe that. I don’t understand why one wouldn’t get laughed out of town for promoting that theory. Then again, we still have 9/11 truthers out there.
My oldest son had a friend in elementary school who was clearly African-American. His mom had blonde hair and blue eyes. Another mom told me that he must be adopted. I didn’t really care if he was from the moon, the boy was nice to my Aspie-lite son and that was all that concerned me. One day, we made plans to meet at a fast food restaurant for lunch and a play date. The boy’s father showed up. He is African-American and the boy was NOT adopted. We had a nice chat about the best temple in town because they were planning to enroll their son in Hebrew school.
As for affirmative action, I know for a fact that I didn’t get into a top law school because of the quota system. I attended a CUNY undergraduate and my pre-law advisor promised he could get me into the school based on my GPA and LSAT. After the app went in, my advisor told me that a URM girl was applying as well and that she was getting the slot, even though my stats were better. Perhaps if I had been a full pay, but I was at a CUNY school because I was putting myself through school. I was devastated, horribly upset. I wound up at a brand new school, where I was offered a free ride due to my stats. I met my H there and no longer regret the lost opportunity because I have my children.
“As for affirmative action, I know for a fact that I didn’t get into a top law school because of the quota system. I attended a CUNY undergraduate and my pre-law advisor promised he could get me into the school based on my GPA and LSAT. After the app went in, my advisor told me that a URM girl was applying as well and that she was getting the slot, even though my stats were better. Perhaps if I had been a full pay, but I was at a CUNY school because I was putting myself through school. I was devastated, horribly upset.”
You know, you never know how a quota system is going to work. Sometimes it works against the targeted minority. For example, when I received my AF pilot slot in college, their quota for women was 1.5%. Women had to compete nationwide for 30 slots, and it was brutal. My best friend, an overachiever, never got a slot. They were begging every male ROTC cadet to take more than 2,000 slots for men, and if they had a 2.0 GPA and were physically qualified, they were in. Many of those men washed out of flight school, probably because they weren’t that interested in the first place.
After I got hired by my most recent employer, a friend’s wife called me and was complaining that her husband wasn’t getting an interview with my company because of all those females and minorities they had to interview. I told her how much I sympathized, because it’s tough out there competing for those 95% white guy slots. Silence.
My point being, you don’t always know. Perhaps in your situation you did, because you were only competing against one person, though it seems a breach of privacy for the advisor to tell you whose stats were better.