An art gallery employee in Naples, Florida, spoiled my experience by asking where I’m from and, when I said that I’m from Ukraine, responding that he is from Russia. I can’t remotely understand people who think that this is important and laudable information to share at this historical juncture. I wasn’t asking him. He could have kept it to himself.
I never know if they are really this clueless or are putting it on.
Stupid fucks.
Being asked where I’m from immediately ruins my mood and makes me dislike the person who asked. I don’t care that they’re curious; they can keep it in their pants. Nobody is entitled to my life story just because we shared a fleeting interaction and they noticed I have an accent. I will die mad about this issue.
I have started answering using one of these, depending on my mood: “Just assume I am from wherever you think I am” or “I’ve lived in City for over 20 years” or “I don’t want to talk about that” or “Aww, we were having such a nice chat and you had to go and ruin it.” There is no recovery after the question. I end up irritated no matter what, and I’ve decided not to be the only one irritated going forward. I know people must think I’m a jerk, but I’m out of fucks to give.
I’ve had one person ask me if I were from one specific country and I said no. That was the end. I didn’t say where I was from, just said no. Then they started explaining how they were from another country (they were not; they were absolutely American-born, 2+ generation). I just listened and nodded. I am sure I made them uncomfortable, but the point is I just didn’t follow the script where someone asks something intrusive and I’m supposed to suck it up and answer in the name of politeness.
But I know your post wasn’t about that. That Russian person asking you really should have known better and should have kept his mouth shut. Maybe he’s an asshole and was trying to provoke you.
You probably don’t follow soccer, but Argentina beat England in the semifinal, and they brought out a flag that said “Las Malvinas son Argentinas” (“The Falklands are Argentine”). Now the team is facing consequences from FIFA, but some conflicts are forever etched into the national psyche.
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I always say I’m from St Louis. To which person invariably respond that they detect an accent and where am I originally from. I’ve been from America for far longer than Ukraine at this point but I’m never getting rid of the accent. Sp I’m forever stuck answering this question.
Yes, after so many years of answering the exact same question and having my accent pointed out to me, I’m also very over it. How many times in a day can one have their accent brought up without getting impatient?
I always say I’m from St Louis. To which person invariably respond that they detect an accent and where am I originally from. I’ve been from America for far longer than Ukraine at this point but I’m never getting rid of the accent. Sp I’m forever stuck answering this question.
Yes, after so many years of answering the exact same question and having my accent pointed out to me, I’m also very over it. How many times in a day can one have their accent brought up without getting impatient?
I have the same annoying problem and I am just resigned to answering this question forever. But it gets worse. Recently, I met some people from my home country. After chatting with them a little they proceeded to inform me that I surely did not grow up in the city I told them I am from originally since my accent is all wrong… Funny enough I speak a very standard, accent free version of my mother tongue.
“How many times in a day can one have their accent brought up without getting impatient?”
Seventeen.
It’s that eighteenth time that grates…..
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I’ve been asked a lot, and it doesn’t offend me. Wherever I go, even my hometown, I sound like I’m “not from around here” and so I get where the question is coming from. And I like my hometown so I’m happy to divulge it. Also always SUPER curious about where other people are from, even if I don’t ask, so bonus points if people volunteer that 😉 Everybody’s got different priors I guess.
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I’ve written about this a bunch so I’m sure I’m repeating myself, but two Americans asking each other where they’re from is very different from an American asking someone with a foreign accent where they’re from. In my experience, more often than not it carries the undercurrent of “I’m citizen border police, and I’ve caught you here where you don’t belong.” Even when it’s supposedly curiosity, it’s accompanied by something patronizing like, “Oh, your English is very good.” 🙄 Thanks, I should hope so; I’ve lived and worked here, teaching and writing, my entire adult life. Having a foreign accent doesn’t mean a person is stupid, but apparently many think so; you would be surprised how many people start talking veeeery sloooowly to me because of the accent. As I said, I will die mad on this particular hill. People need to ask themselves whether they always need to act on their curiosity or whether they’re likely to bore or annoy the object of said curiosity. Having an accent is somewhat akin to being perpetually pregnant; imagine being asked forever, until you die, when you’re due and if you’re having a boy or a girl. It’s both boring and intrusive, right? And now imagine it comes with a negative undercurrent of “Pregnant women shouldn’t be here/do this” or “Pregnant women are stupid.”
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Huh.
Does it depend on what continent you’re from? How long you’ve been there? Degree of relationship? Gender?
I have never been outside the US without constantly having that one conversation about “Are you American? What brings you here, of all places? What do you think of the food here? Are you too hot/do you need a drink? Your (local language) is great! (It’s not, but you’re very kind)” etc. and the repetition was very helpful for language-learning. As soon as I had a baby, that of course got supplanted by the “Is it a boy or a girl? How old? So handsome! Does he have blue eyes?” conversation as, simply, the obvious opening for talking with a total stranger you wish to chitchat with.
Despite the fact that people in both Latin America and SE Asia have very different ideas about personal space and personal topics… I figured I was in *their* neighborhood so it was their rules and it was my job to adapt. Is that not reciprocal? The rules are different for Europeans? The rules are different in America?
(perplexed)
I don’t habitually ask people where they’re from, just FYI. But it seems deeply weird that this is OK everywhere else (asking where foreigners are from), but not OK in the US. What’s different?
ethyl
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Wow. Just wow. You are really are going to pretend that your experience being a tourist is the same as my experience living here for almost 30 years, and of course in the same breath tell me to shut up and adapt because this is somehow still not my neighborhood (and presumably never will be).
I think I’m done here.
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Sigh.
“OMG ethyl how do you NOT know that?” is a deeply familiar refrain. It’s OK, you don’t have to like me, and it’s the internet: there’s no way to tell if people are asking in good faith or not. Plus, you’re under no obligation to explain social rules to the socially retarded 😉 Implicit rules that are impolite to talk about are the bane of my life, whether it’s about sex, money, religion, or appropriate foundation garments…
But it’s worth asking (and risking offense), because every now and then I get somebody on the other end of the line who’s willing and able to lay out *what the actual rule is* and that’s extremely helpful. I don’t like to give offense, so when it becomes obvious that the rule I thought I’d deduced is wrong, not universally applicable, or lacks nuance, then trying to understand where I’ve gone wrong so I can avoid giving offense in the future seems worth a try. If you don’t wish to explain the rule, that’s totally OK. Your emotional response to my cluelessness is… not exactly novel and I am not offended by it. Please accept my apologies: I did not intend offense.
ethyl
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“You are really are going to pretend”
There are a _lot_ of assumptions there, none based on an assumption of any kind of good will.
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Pretty sure it just means it’s not xykademiqz’s first time on this blog.
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The problem is that at this point I have lived in the US longer than in my birth country. I am a citizen and have my home here. Yet, almost every single day, a clerk at the store asks me where I am from and will not take my current city for an answer. At some point, this conversation gets really tiring and there is no pleasant way for it to end.
methylethyl
Yeah, it doesn’t do one much good to worry about it. Most of us have some accent and colloquial language developed where we were raised ;-D
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1052419569655773
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Taking offense at being asked where one is from is one of the manifold features of Wokism, in that it implies that the person asking is a “native” who is implying that the person being asked is an “outsider”. According to Woke philosophy all binaries are form of oppression and discrimination: citizenship status (citizen/non-citizen), ethnicity (white/non-white), accent (native/non-native) – everything that concurs in making you an individual, unique and different from everyone else, can be construed as an oppressive marker that others use against you. Unless they’re White people, of course, in which case other rules apply, but still within the same framework.
As such, binaries should all be done away with – everything is a social construct – though not the Oppressor/Oppressed dichotomy, which is the central dogma of the new doctrine and you are supposed to ask no questions and to take everything that everyone tells you at face value: if a man tells you he is a woman then he is a woman; if someone is perpetrating a fraudulent scheme ripping off the US Treasury but they tell you that they are in the learing business then you are supposed to believe them; if they say that the US was founded in 1619 when the first ship with a cargo of slaves arrived and so on and so forth… What is truth? It’s a social construct perpetuated by the Oppressors to keep the Oppressed enslaved.
There was a time – before society, or rather people, or better, the whole world, became liquid – when nobody would have batted an eyelid around such an anodyne question and nobody would have taken offense for being asked. That time was before globalisation, which is another word for exteding to the rest of the world what applies to America. It is done through technology, even though most people do not seem to realise it and keep screaming against US imperialism and the cisheteronormative patriarchy.
Having said that, which is much by the by, America was traditionally – and for centuries – a country of immigrants who knew very well that their Americanness was tenuous at best and not in any real sense real, except on paper (when and if they had any): it was their children that they thought of as “real” Americans, and it was for their sake and for the sake of their descendants that they had made all sorts of sacrifices to get to America, and when asked where they came from, even after they had been naturalised citizens for decades, they took no offense and answered a question that may have arisen out of genuine curiosity, or bad faith, or even despondency, honestly and matter-of-factly: from Italy, Austria, Ireland, Greece, Russia, Sweden… and all the countries ALL Americans come from, unless they are natural-born citizens born and bred in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.
My mother is 84, and after living in Italy for over 80 years, still speaks Italian in an improbable accent mixing Polish, Russian, Yiddish and English, the languages she grew up around without mastering any, because those were the languages spoken by her parents and grandparents. The only reason she acts surprised when people – who don’t know her – ask where she comes from is because she’s oblivious to any accent. She always answers graciously, though: “from Italy, where else should I come from?”.
“America was traditionally – and for centuries – a country of immigrants “
I think the importance of that is _way_ exaggerated and doesn’t explain much.
An idea that has a lot more explanatory power in explaining American ways is The Frontier (the process of settling the continent in the 19th century from sea to shining sea). Frontier communities, without ready access to nice things like state-sanctioned ready law enforcement or ready made infrastructure, had to be able to establish some kind of working level of trust (or suspicion) quickly. I’m fairly sure (without doing any research!) that the American habit of asking where you’re from is part of the frontier experience. The way a person answered could be more informative than the answer itself.
The context ended but the custom remained (and as is typical in land expansive situations, norms set at the frontier get sent back to the rest of the country).
Move to the UK and you’ll have to deal with rain and mould, move to Poland and you’ll have to deal with lots of dumb rules and people breaking them as fast as they can, move to the US and you’ll have to deal with people asking where you’re from. Getting upset at any of it (past initial adjustment periods) is a choice.
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The concept of immigration does not make sense before the 19th century. Projecting it into earlier historical times is an anachronism. Hence, it is not possible for America to have been a nation of immigrants for centuries. Settlers were most certainly not immigrants.
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“concept of immigration does not make sense before the 19th century”
I wouldn’t go quite that far, German migration to the US really got going in the 19th century, IINM the first non-English speaking group to settle in numbers. But modern myths about immigration centered around Ellis Island was a relatively brief chapter, shut down not least because of growing unpopularity among the citizenry.
“Settlers were most certainly not immigrants”
IINM some (esp Scandinavians) went straight to the frontier or where it had recently passed through… moving to well-settled areas probably seemed too optimistic for them and it was much more in character to find somewhere remote and godforsaken…
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You can intellectualize all you want, but it doesn’t change the fact that constantly being asked where you’re from is unbelievably fucking annoying. It’s boring, irritating, alienating, and intrusive. It pisses me off every single time and has for years. I, for one, have decided that I will no longer be the only one upset after such interactions, and will share the aggravation with the person who asked and will no longer engage in the expect polite way. This might be my small contribution to society, to have a whole bunch of people think twice (and perchance break into cold sweat, but one can only dream) before they ask another person with an accent where they’re from.
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“I… have decided that I will no longe… engage in the expect polite way”
Like I said… it’s your choice to nurture hostility towards people mostly motivated by custom, curiosity and/or politeness.
“might be my small contribution …to have a whole bunch of people …perchance break into cold sweat, but one can only dream”
I fail to see how that is anything positive.
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“Like I said… it’s your choice to nurture hostility towards people mostly motivated by custom, curiosity and/or politeness.”
I think you overestimate people’s good intentions and underestimate xenophobia in the US. I had to switch dental hygienist because of her jabs implying I’m some sort of peasant (before you ask, no, it’s not because I don’t floss because I floss like it’s my damn job) and her repeated questions about when I’m planning to move back home.
“I fail to see how that is anything positive.”
The positive thing is that some people will think twice about asking someone where they’re from (or worse, not taking the offered answer at face value and following with, “No, where are you REALLY from?” which honestly deserves a punch in the nose). It might make these people reflect on why someone would act negatively to such an “innocuous” question . It might make them stop themselves from annoying yet another immigrant and ruining everyone’s day, which I’d say is a positive. They might go on to realize realize they probably shouldn’t ask a tall person how tall they are or if they play basketball or if the weather’s nice up there. Increased self-awareness, empathy, and even a little restraint are all positive things.
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I was giving a talk at the local library about the current political system in El Salvador. Once I finished, a member of the audience got up to inform me that she met two Ukrainians in Chicago who were both prostitutes. The number of times I had prostitutes brought up in connection with my country of origin is off the charts. You can be standing in front of people as a professor and department chair talking about your research as a scholar, and they will still bring up prostitutes because that’s what they associate your country with.
So yes, I get it.
Microagressions suck.
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Kid, kid, kid, I did try to gentle the arguments with reason , Kumbaya and everything. That sure as hell is not going to work, how about some humour ;-D
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Your post was not about the war, but whatever.
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Yes, it was, you factory-defective lawn flamingo. Why else do you think I wanted the guy not to mention Russia?
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Unless the employee indicated that he supported Russia’s war against Ukraine, your reaction to this utterly innocuous interaction is bizarre and typical of the liberal snowflakes you like to deride on your blog. Congratulations! You’re now a leftist. Just like Tucker Carlson. Don’t worry. I won’t respond to any additional retorts you may have to my comments; I don’t want to offend you any further.
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Go pout some more, you gob of AIDS infected monkey spit.
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” not about the war, but whatever”
Exactly…. everything I know about russians would suggest his attitude was
at best: Cool we’re both from the same culture, paisana!
at worst: We’re brotherly nations! hello comrade! Isn’t a shame that that nasty Ukrainian government is fighting us?
Almost no russians can articulate anything wrong that russia is doing…. ever.
They sincerely love their brutal and retarded socio-political system and can’t understand why Ukrainians don’t want it.
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That’s the worst part: they don’t get it. They keep inflicting themselves on a person because they just don’t get it. It would have been so much better if that dude at the gallery said, “You know what? I support Putin, and I’m pro-war.” At least then he would have some position. He would be taking responsibility. There would be some agency in his stance. It’s a bad position and bad agency, but it’s better than being such a rag doll with no attempt to conceptualize his place in the world at all.
You must have read a different post than I did, because it clearly was.
A long time ago, I had a friend from Macedonia. We went grocery shopping and a random lady asked her, “where are you from?” She answered, “Macedonia!” The lady said, “great, I am from Greece as well”. My friend follows up, “I am from Macedonia, not from Greece.” A brief, very uncomfortable discussion follows, after which each leaves upset fast in the opposite direction.
It is one thing to ask a seemingly innocuous question, it is another to persist in the conversation once one realizes it is not going anywhere good.
I sit in my office at work under a gigantic Ukrainian flag that is almost wall-sized. The number of times that people come in, ask me where I’m from, hear “Ukraine”, and respond, “Ah, so you’re from Russia” is unnervingly large. We are at an institution of higher learning, and one would expect people to be a little bit more comfortable with geography, but no such luck.
I sometimes get mistaken for an Anglo tourist. It’s much worse for people from the north who get mistaken for Zimbabweans.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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