There’s only one correct answer to the question “So, where are you from?” or the subsequent “No, where are you REALLY from?”

Seeing how it comes across, we don’t usually use it, but really that response should be:

“That’s none of your business!”

But of course that’s not what you say. Instead, it gets a bit cringe, because it’s such a loaded question, and it’s not really about you and your curiosity, it’s about me and my very personal story that I may not want to tell you, a stranger, about.

People argue that it’s a good conversation starter, coming from genuine interest, and I see how that’s true for a few of the people who ask me that question. But it’s the minority.

Most people who ask me that question do it not for me, I could be anyone, but for themselves. It’s fun guessing accents for them at best, and it’s racism at worst. A spectrum of things I don’t want to get involved with from the get-go.

No one asks me how I feel about being asked the very same questions, sometimes three times a day. Because I work around people a lot, I do get asked this all the time, and over the literal years, it does grate away on you.

“Dripping water hollows out stone, not through force but through persistence.” – Publius Ovidius Naso

Othering

The question heavily implies, by nature, that I’m “not from here”. I’m different. You are from here, I am not. Othering is a great word used for it. Us. Them.

I could give you a ton of links to interesting articles on the subject, because I’ve done a lot of reading about it, especially after this led to physical assaults on me at times, and racism so harsh I reported it to the police.

It starts with what you think is just you asking one harmless question and think nothing of it, but it’s all part of little rocks that start an avalanche.

And here’s one of the main points: You think you’re being nice to me, but you’re not taking into account at all how it makes me feel. Obviously, I’ve been quite clear on it here, above, but let me spell it out one more time:

It makes me feel awful.

• It makes me feel awful when you ask me where I’m from, and ignore or don’t accept when I say I’m from Eden Terrace. I am. I’m from Eden Terrace. Please leave it at that.
• It makes me feel awful when you start arguing with me about why I’d like to discontinue participating in this conversation with you after I request it politely. Why argue. Please respect my decision. Why get angry with me? That makes me anxious and feels really threatening to me – based on experience.
• It makes me feel overall awful when a stranger basically demands, sometimes even pressures me to tell them my personal background story, there and then. Have you considered that there might be trauma associated to not just mine, but many people’s desire and emotional ability to migrate?
• Questions that make me feel awful:
  • “So what about your family, are they here, too?”
  • “Don’t you miss your friends and family?”
• Things you might say that will make me feel awful (lived experience edition):
  • “Something something nazi lol something.”
  • “Heil Hitler!”
  • “Oh no, not you – other migrants! Indians, Chinese, Muslims – but not you!!!”
  • “Let me guess, then!”

I’m just some normal person who wants to belong. Life is hard enough, and I want to fit in, and be one of the kids, not the token representative of other people who sound like me. I’m actually someone who has never been able to super identify with her birth country, and always wanted to get away it and its constant prejudices towards others, including much harsher racism than what we experience here in Aotearoa. Can’t compare the two, to be fair, very different kinds of racism between here and there.

Like most migrants, I wish I could sound like everyone, behave like everyone, and blend in. I’m a simple sort.

Going forward on a positive note

I also humbly think that there are more fascinating things you could talk to me about to know me and anyone else you perceive as different rather than intrusive and demanding questioning about our ancestry.

I know and do a lot of quite cool things – cool to me anyway – and so do most other people if you give them a chance to be themselves and talk about their passions. If you really want to know me, why not ask me what I get up to when I’m not working instead? 

Just imagine if instead of alienating people, you could make a new friend.