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Why do people keep asking where I'm from?
(lemmy.ca)
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this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2024
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As a mixed third generation immigrant, I get this a lot. In my experience, most people want to know my ethnicity, but for some reason they never ask me that directly.
Yeah but that’s a somewhat sensitive topic. Asking for the region of origin might mean the same thing in practice, but asking someone what "breed" they are is very inappropriate.
Because it's none of their business and it's a tad racist, and they know racism is bad but they don't want to look as bad people.
It's not racist to be interested in where somebody is from.
It is if you assume that someone is from somewhere else because they don't look like you.
No, but it can be outright rude.
Can be, absolutely. But there is nothing inherently wrong with it. One just needs to know some tact.
"Just"? Tact is very infrequent in certain locations. I'd even say that common decency is.
It's not racist to ask about ethnicity.
It would be racist to ask about ethnicity and then discriminate based on the response.
We can easily assume the reason.
Specially if the person asking is from a certain countries where such a question is almost invariably racist.
You really can’t. If I ask one of my Indian co-workers what part of India they are from, I’m not trying to figure out where they land in the caste system. Indian-Americans know this, and because of them now I know why someone would avoid volunteering that information. There’s no one size fits all reaction here. Maybe they are super well informed racists that know specific regional race/classism, but I think more often than not, westerners are asking it just like they’d ask favorite sports, foods, leisure activities and so on.