AIBU to be annoyed when people ask where I'm REALLY from?

[maggiethemagpie]

I'm of mixed heritage, my dad is iranian and my mum is english but my dad moved here as a student in the 1960s and kind of turned his back on his home country, so I've never really felt Iranian myself.

However I got all his genes as I look quite dark and nothing like my english mum.

People will sometimes ask 'where are you from' and I usually reply 'stockport' but no, that's not what they mean what they really mean is 'from what country do you get your appearance' so they will say 'no where are you really from'

And it annoys the feck out of me.

Why can't I just be from Stockport, as I just told them? I AM from stockport, I was born there, my mum was born there. OK my dad wasn't but they didn't ask where my dad was from, they asked where I was from.

And if I say no, really from Stockport then I come across as arsey. But I don't see why I should have to start explaining my genetic heritage to a stranger. Then I have to explain that, no, i'm not iranian even though my dad is and no I have never been there and no I don't speak the language.

AIBU to think it is rude for people to ask me this? And then insist on a different response to the one initially given?

There's a girl just started working in her team, she speaks in an english accent but has a foreign name, she's dark - brown skin, black hair... I'm pretty sure she's got ancestry from the indian subcontinent but I've never thought to ask her because
a) it really doesn't matter to me
b)it would feel a bit intrusive to ask her 'where are you from' or even 'where are your family from'.

If I got to know her better it may come out in conversation, it may not. I certainly wouldn't push for it.

It just seems a bit irrelevant when there are so many other things we could speak about, work for one but outside of work - what she did at the weekend, does she have a family, where is she going on holiday?

Am I alone in thinking - it doesn't really matter where her family are from?

this thread resonates a lot!

It's not too much the asking where I'm from that winds me up, it's the 'no really' bit
So true! I'm from a small mill town not far from Stockport and i used to get this ALL the time! From asian taxi drivers 9 times out of 10

Wouldn't that be easier seeing as you know what they'll ask next?
No. In my experience, if i pre-empt their questions then i'm freely giving away personal info that is really non of their business. I'd also come across as very arrogant if that was my standard response
you see, when we get to the 'no really' bit, i'd have to say 'Kashmir', then they want to kno which language you speak-cos the one your communicating in is not enough of an answer then they want to know which dialect you speak, then which village you're from 'back home'. Now coming from the town i do, it seems like the whole valley moved there cos you only have to mention a family name and village and every fucker 'knows' you.
How comfortable would you feel if random strangers knew exactly how to trace/track you and enough personal info to use against you? Perhaps you think that's paranoid thinking, but when you're an 'ethnic' woman in that environment it's far too intrusive and dangerous.

our team not her team!

OITNB fans unite! am only up to ep 6 ('only') so yes pls no real spoilers! (this is like my swan song since the 17th)

OP YA so NBU. I'm not white, obviously so. I don't have an English surname but I've got a fairly "cut glass" English accent. I've been told I "can't be (x ethnicity) because I speak so well (where's my dodgy foreign accent)?"

With friends, everything is up for grabs to discuss.

With strangers at the bus stop, less so. It's none of your damn business: where I'm REALLY from, how much I earn, whether my kids were conceived naturally or via IVF (or how they were delivered even). We don't know each other and if these are your starter questions, we never will get to know each other.

Someone said "lighten up", upthread - FFS, I would like to lighten up: when I'm not judged purely on my ethnicity. It's not my responsibility to fulfil your curiosity.

maggiethemagpie - I'm with you on not caring where someone's from. It'll probably come out in casual conversation, but it's not a question that people should be poking around asking when they've just met someone. It's none of their damn business.

Good post, BananaL0af. I'm definitely not going to lighten up over people poking around asking stuff that doesn't concern them or aid them in forming an opinion of me.

Banana that is even more racist, being told you can't be a forriner cos you talk proper!!!

Maggie if you don't mind me butting in :)
I think if it seems naturally to come up in conversation, it's part of 'small talk' - like, I fairly often happen to ask new people I meet where they come from, cos it's interesting - countryside, capital city, anywhere near my hometown perhaps? - but it's the insisting that's rude, not the first casual Q! To be totally blunt, you'd have no problem asking a white skinned person where they were from, so really, as long as you accept everyone's first answers (that's their decision), is there a reason why you should be more cautious around e.g. your colleague?
I'm curious, btw, if anyone wants to correct me I'm def listening!

I don't recall asking any of my mates where they are from - certainly not in any of the early conversations. I presume we all live in London and have done so for quite a while which is enough for me. I often ask them where they live, but then London's got tonnes of neighbourhoods so it's nothing to do with their origins but just finding out where they're based.

maggie I can't win, innit?

Banana oh god! reminds me of a friend I have from Mauritius who was told by someone working in admin that she had to be from metropolitan France because she spoke 'un français correct'!!

Velour, I know where my colleague lives - wolverhampton, so I assume she is from wolverhampton.

So why would I ask her where she's from? I would be asking her where her parents were from/ancestral heritage and that would be a bit nosey.

I wouldn't ask a white colleague where, again I knew they were from wolverhampton, where they were from.

Actually I did ask a white colleague (I work in a national role so all over the uk) where they lived the other day. But that's different to asking someone where they are from, isn't it.

Think about it

Where do you live?
Where are you from?

One is to do with the present, one is to do with where you grew up, where you originated from.

Would I ask a white colleague who I knew lived in Wolverhampton where they were from? Probably not! So why the brown colleague?

Maybe I've just been lucky enough to not hear the racist overtones or seen it as a judgement based on my ethnicity when asked by a curious stranger where I'm from. Where I'm REALLY from.

What if the person asking thinks you might have a similar heritage and wants to have a chat about that? Or wants to practice their Spanish on you? (True story!)

What if someone asks you how old your baby is because they're LO is the same age?

Maybe I just like chatting to strangers! Hence being on an Internet message board at nearly 1am haha ;-)

No OITNB spoilers here either please... I am doing my best to space the episodes out somewhat (failing so far!!!)

I ask people how old their child is, but when they tell me, I don't go 'no how old is she really!'. But she can't be three because she's got fair hair!

Can I ask what the polite way to ask this question is?

i guess what is 'polite' is context dependent.

When i chat to people, even those of the same ethnic origin, i don't use the phrase 'no really'. A guy at my work has an american accent (we're in scotland). when i asked, he replied 'hometown'. i accepted that. then i asked about his accent, he told me 'California'. Then we moved onto general chit chat about our respective experiences/countries - none of this needing to know which town/street etc. If he'd spoken a different language i would have been asking him to teach me some wear words

in general tho, non asian people don't ask for detail and their 'no really' doesn't have any offensive/insulting intention or tone behind it. It's just plain curiosity, usually if you don't experience it first hand then you won't understand or notice those little nuances (for want of a better word) which some of us do.

Maggie but if I already knew where they were from I wouldn't ask them, obvs if I knew someone was from Wolverhampton then it wouldn't feature in the small talk except if appropriate 'so I heard you're from Wolverhampton, I went there once, loved it' etc type talk.
didn't realise you already knew where they'd grown up and stuff, sorry. Ignore me!

Agree there is no offensive intention in the 'no really', I think curiosity is at the heart of it but can you imagine this applied to other situations?

A: What party do you vote for?
B: Labour.
A: No, really what party do you vote for?
B: Labour
A: But you don't look like a labour voter.
A:What about your parents are they labour voters?
B: Well my mum is but my dad votes Tory
A: Ah, your dad's a Tory voter. That's what I meant!

I just started interning somewhere and most others there are of my ethnic origin...didn't stop us from having an interesting conversation about where we came from it really wasn't dependent at all on our outward appearances, it's just because we know that travel is more common these days and appearance is often no clue to a person's origins!

Yes but some people would still ask the brown colleague the 'where are you from' question in that situation, meaning where does your family come from.

I meant that (somewhat flippantly) in response to generally just asking strangers what I deem non-intrusive questions about themselves. Or myself. I deem it non-intrusive, clearly others don't so I stand corrected.

I have possibly not picked up on nuances but I'm kinda glad of that now cos I think maybe I'd be as frustrated as you are by this question if I had.

Hope you find a way of getting round it.

The only people that ever ask me this are people from either British ethnic minorities or foreign nationals.

My standard response is "it's complicated" because it kinda is. If it wasn't, I'd tell them.

sorry am drunk so totally rambling
but I would be much less likely to ask someone who was not white skinned any questions about their origin than someone who was white skinned for fear of being insensitive/rude - which I recognise that with my privilege is all too common to sleepwalk into - although in2016 I really don't think anyone with internet access can really claim to be 100% sleepwalking...
Because I might have resignedly expected the question in the title to be a problem in the 2000s perhaps but not still now. We're dragging our heels and it's shameful!

*in my personal experience, i meant

And as an aside... I kept my 'exotic' sounding hard-to-spell double barrelled surname rather than taking my hubby's very common British 4-letter surname because I love how different it is and that has made me think... I think I genuinely like being asked 'where I'm from'! So I'm probably not the best person to speak on this subject.