To think this is a really awkward question

[TalkingToGhosts]

‘Where are you from?’

I’m dating. I get asked it an awful lot.

I’m a white, English born Brit but have dark features. I tan well and get mistaken for Western European quite often. I might be misconstruing the question and they mean ‘where are you based’ - but that’s right there on my profile so I don’t think it’s that.

I feel like I’m being fetishised a bit. Well not me specifically, but the thought that I look Spanish or Italian and that sounds exciting to them.

And I never know how to answer. I’m not ‘born and bred’ in one county as I’ve moved around a bit so it feels awkward to answer.

AIBU or is it a bit rude to ask that a few messages into a conversation?

YANBU.

I'm white British and very rarely get asked where I am from by people

I'm white and I get asked where I'm from all the time because of the remains of my American accent. I don't mind it at all - everyone is from somewhere and I like to know where people come from, even if the answer is Watford, or "right here." At this point in time people who stay in the place they were raised are as exotic as those who have been transplanted.

I answer the question differently depending on where I am - if travelling abroad with my British family I assume "where are you from" means "where do you live?" So I say London. If someone elsewhere in the UK asks I say "I'm American but I live in London" and if someone from my area asks I assume they mean "where did you grow up" and I say the US, or New York. I don't think it's rude to be curious and ask politely. It's just small talk.

I’ve always been asked this question. There is only one answer’i was born in Hackney’ . I’m often mistaken for Greek, Argentinian, etc. But when I went to Russia I was taken for Russian!

I get this to OP I’m white British but have dark features and tan really easily, god knows where I got it from both parents are blonde and burn to a crisp. I’m lucky😂
It doesn’t bother me people asking though, most people guess I’m Italian. I spent a lot of time in turkey in my late teens/early 20s and locals would think I’m Turkish until I opened my big northern gob. I quite like it actually.

It's a very common question. I'm blonde, blue eyed.. no accent lol and also get asked this.

@TalkingToGhosts - I completely understand feeling fetishised and uncomfortable about this question. Having read through the comments, a lot of people who don't really feel offended by this question are people who would identify as mainly white with 'dark features' - which is fine, some people don't find the same things annoying/awkward/offensive/unecessary .

As a mixed ethnicity (Black, Asian and Maltese) person, I get this question A LOT. It is very annoying as people rarely ask what they want to actually know. They don't want to know where I am from, as when I say West Yorkshire they say No, but where are you really from?'. This can carry on repeatedly until I get down to my village and they become exasperated and eventually ask but where are your parents/grandparents from. They actually want to know why I am brown.

It may well be entirely innocent and born from curiosity but it is very othering, and indicates that people don't really think you can be brown and British.

It is fetishising in the sense that people often comment, ooh you're so exotic, I love X Y Z about your face/hair - you feel that you are very much a commodity due to looking different. It is right up there with people wanting to touch my hair.

I can't say I take extreme offence, but it is strange and I feel that people don't often examine their own motives for this behaviour.

@Yeahnahmum Why should your ethnicity be a conversation starter. Let's be clear - a lot of the time when brown/Black people get asked this it is purely because people assume you aren't British and then often go on to say they don't believe you. Very strange. It might well not be offensive to some people, but to those who experience it near enough daily, it becomes very tiring and loaded with lots of innuendo/othering.

@AlbusBumblebee - agreed, segregation would be awful, but at the same time is there actually a genuine need for that to be the first question someone asks. I interact with people who don't look like me majority of the time and have never once made my first question 'Where are you from?' 'No, but where are you really from?'. I fully agree that for a lot of people this is just curiosity as they may not have interacted with someone who looks the way that person does but to me, it would be lovely if people interacted based on a curiosity about your personality/experiences rather than appearance.

Well as long as they don't do what a woman I met years ago did.

She asked me where I was from and as I thought she might not have heard of the small town I came from I said I was from Surrey, as I was originally.

She then went on to insist that I couldn't be from Surrey as I had a Sussex accent; she assured me that as a musician she had a very good 'ear' and I definitely had a Sussex accent, so why was I saying I came from Surrey when I was obviously from Sussex.

My then boyfriend and I were having dinner with her and her boyfriend so I couldn't get away from her and she went on about it the whole evening.

Clearly her 'ear' was on the blink that evening.

And if, as she so obviously thought, she knew better than me where I came from, why bloody ask in the first place.

I am white Irish but have a v v v strange name and get asked this A LOT. If people haven’t met me they assume I’m Indian. I’m over it.

I had no idea this was offensive! I always ask this to strike up a conversation.

Well I’m pale skinned with dark hair, I get asked -completely standard question esp if you live in city a lot of people move into.

With enough desperation you can get offended by anyone. I can remember being told as part of a linguistic course the reason British people talk about the weather so much is to listen to a persons accent and choice of vocab to try and ascertain social status - so I guess we should all get offended if people get into conversations about the weather

I am going to try and explain why asking 'where are you from' to a BAME person or a foreign sounding person is different than asking the same question to a Brit.

Imagine a woman is arriving at a confrence. She sits down at the back, just next to the door, and there is an empty chair on both sides of her. People arrive in the conference room, some of them late but no one sits down next to her. They all move around (disturbing many people in the process) and try to find a seat anywhere but next to her.

White woman will probaly thinks: Yes that's OK. They are loking for peole they know etc..
Back woman will think: Here we go again. No one wants to sit to me necause I am black
Is the black woman oversensitive, easily offended? Or can we garee that her reaction is the consequence of the many other small acts that are telling regularly that she is 'other'? Things like seeing the same thing happening again and again in the bus, at the canteen etc...

The same is true fo that question 'where are you coming from?'
You just can NOT react and give the same interpretation when you are part of the white majority and when you are part of the minoriy because what is, on paper, the same action, actually carries a different meaning.
Even when people are asking where you are coming from when you have an accent from a different region/area, it has a differemt meaning than when you ask the same question to someone who has a foreign accent.
Same with some facial features, darler skin colour etc... Your experience will still not same meaning than for someone who is from the BAME community or has a foreign origin.

So maybe, just maybe, it is time for white british people to LISTEN to other people's experiences and learn to be careful. If some peole aretelling you it's making them unconfortable, wouod yu relly carry on asking those questions just because YOU don't feel unconfortable?

And again, the environment where yu live will ave an impact. If teh rea you are living has a hgh percentage of foreign people or people coming from a different area, that can easily become a 'normal' question to ask. And I dubt anyone will be offended because tere will not be ANY undercurrent in that question.
When people ask me that question in the NE, what they are saying is 'you are foreigner, You are OTHER and btw, which country are you from so I can plot you on my chart of acceptable to non acceptable origins'. The meaning is different, even if it's quite unconsious some of the time.

Everyone gets asked this when meeting new people. I was born in X but I went to uni in z and have lived here since. That is a normal response.

Honestly I have very white skin and I would kill for olive skin and skin that tanned easily. I love the exotic look of Italian, Spanish etc. Have you ever thought it a compliment? Xx

So maybe, just maybe, it is time for white british people to LISTEN to other people's experiences and learn to be careful.

Or MAYBE some people should lose that chip stuck on their shoulder and stop taking everything personally and negatively.

What you are asking is to treat people very differently... based on their colour and race.

The same way you could ask businesses to treat women differently.. because of their "sensitivity".

Pretty sure in a work environment you can be sued for that!

I don’t think it’s an odd question to ask where someone is from. You sound confused as to where you are from so maybe that’s the problem?
You’re not being being mistakenly thought of as Western European because you are actually from Western Europe so .....they’re correct aren’t they?
You do know Italy and Spain are not Western European countries right????

Or MAYBE some people should lose that chip stuck on their shoulder and stop taking everything personally and negatively.

*What you are asking is to treat people very differently... based on their colour and race.

The same way you could ask businesses to treat women differently.. because of their "sensitivity".

Pretty sure in a work environment you can be sued for that!*

But @JaniceWebster, the person is being treated differently because instead of accepting say Kingston Upon Thames as the answer to where they are from, they get "I mean where did you grow up"?, "Where were you before you came here?", "Where were you born?" and finally "I mean where are your parents from originally?".

This isn't something that non BAME people experience on a regular basis because usually their first answer is accepted.

Anyway, I have not said anywhere in my posts that I find it offensive to ask, but just accept that I am a non white British person who have lived in the UK for 36 years and I don't want to talk about Chinese food!

Bold fail!

First 4 paragraphs should be in bold. Sorry.

@JaniceWebster actually you have misunderstood completely. I am saying that people should be treated the SAME regardless of their accent or their skin colour!!

My point is that people do NOT treat people the same, just like I tried to explain in my example of the black woman and the seats.
Because they often do not mean the same thing by the question an nor do they they ask the question nearly as often.
If this wasn’t the case, the OP wouldn’t have started that thread btw. Nor would people with darker skin would have made comments on how they are asked that question and get puzzled looks when they say london/Sussex/Penrith.

Id ssy as youre dating its a standard question, also dating as well..im blonde dark green eyes..get asked, as apparently i "dont look English" whatever that means?? Lol..Part Nordic but....its just chit chat and probably meant as complimentary.

@JaniceWebster The problem there is that you think it is having an chip stuck on your shoulder' to point out a very real experience that many BAME people face daily. It is NOT a compliment to be asked where you are from repeatedly, and it's sad to see that @StamfordHill you are unable to recognise that someone doesn't have to out and out say 'Go back to X country' to imply that you don't belong. I, as I am sure many other BAME people, have had experiences ranging from 'micro' (which your air quotes and use of the word snowflakes seems to imply you don't think it worthy of being upset over) to out and out extreme.

I find it funny that people often refer to others as 'snowflakes' when they recount experiences that make them feel uncomfortable and unfortunately it seems to be centred a lot on race/ethnicity. If a man slaps my bum, and someone says to me 'Oh well, it's just a compliment, it's not like he did anything worse' I would be shocked and I like to think in this day and age others would be too. But for some reason, when people say, 'A man asked me 6 times today where I was from, and didn't believe any of the answers I gave him' people would say 'Oh, it's just a compliment get on with it' despite it being an unecessary interaction because in reality - why do you need to know someone's ethnic origins in order to interact with them especially if they speak clear English?!

It is very tiring to have to repeatedly explain to people why you don't want to have to explain/shouldn't have to explain your ethnic origins to every Tom/Dick and Harry.

As I said earlier, I have never once had a person ask me that question and it be purely based on 'Oh you're from Yorkshire, lovely, how is it there?'. Like I said, it is always 'Oh but then, where are you actually from'/'Where were you born?'/'Where did your grandparents come from'.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, ASK YOURSELF, WHY DO YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS INFORMATION? This isn't meant to be nasty, but genuinely stop and think to yourself, why do I have this burning curiosity to know why this person is brown/black? Why do I feel a right, as a total stranger, to have information on their family background? Does it enrich my experience with this person to know that they are Jamaican/Maltese/Pakistani (myself) - am I now going to ask them something inane/ridiculous such as 'Do you like Jerk Chicken?' Am I unable to continue interacting with someone that I don't know the ethnic origin of? Or can I interact with them as a human, as I would with my white/non BAME counterparts?

I wish someone would explain this to me, honestly, it's a two way street. I would love to know why people feel the desire/right to know this? Especially when it is clear that I am from England hence the regional accent.