After Donald Trump told journalists on Wednesday that his presidential opponent Kamala Harris “turned Black” for political gain, Trump’s comments have impacted the way many multirace voters are thinking about the two candidates.
“She was only promoting Indian heritage,” the former president said during an interview at the National Association of Black Journalists convention last week. “I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black.”
“Is she Indian or is she Black?” he asked.
She’s both.
Harris, whose mother was Indian and her father is Jamaican, would make history if she is elected president. She would be both the first female president and the first Asian American president.
Multiracial American voters say they have heard similar derogatory remarks about their identities their whole lives. Some identify with Harris’ politics more than others but, overall, they told NBC News that Trump’s comments will not go unnoticed.
half asian here. from childhood onward, i get asked “where are you from,” and by the look on their face they’re not satisfied with “tennessee” because obviously you can’t be from anywhere in the states if you’re less than 100% white. so anytime someone says “where are you from” what i hear is “what chingchong chinaman land are you”
Honest question here. It’s something I avoid asking most of the time because I’m not sure whether or not it’s appropriate, but would it be okay to ask, “where did your ancestors come from,” or would that still be offensive to a multiracial person? It’s not something that comes up regularly or anything, but occasionally I’ll end up in conversation with someone who is multiracial and clearly another American and I’ll think, “I wonder what their family story is? How did their predecessors get here? Where did they come from?” But I usually don’t ask because I don’t want to offend them.
Obviously I wouldn’t just walk up to a stranger and ask them, I mean if I’m getting to know someone.
Edit: I should add that I’m white, but my family history is pretty weird, so I do like to hear about others’ history regardless of their race, I just don’t want to broach the subject where it might be a sensitive one.
i can’t speak for all multiracial people (or anyone else for that matter). but personally any question that doesn’t pretend to be something other than it is is fine. if the thing you want to know is someone’s ancestry or ethnic background, then don’t ask “where are you from.” that’s all.
also, still not speaking for anyone else, but i’ve gotten pretty numb to people being racist towards me, because i decided that if someone’s going to judge people by their race (or anything else they didn’t choose for themself), then there’s no reason to care what they think anyway. though i will mock and ridicule racists for the sake of others who experience suffering from racism. especially kids.
Thanks for the answer, and I’m sorry you’ve become numb to the racism. It sucks that there’s even a reason to feel a need to be.
Really, the only two times I could imagine asking someone where they were from no matter what they looked like is if they had an especially weird accent, and I would probably precede it with, “you have an interesting accent,” or if I found out we were both from the same state, so I’d be asking them where in the state. Otherwise, it’s kind of a stupid question to ask of anyone most of the time, at least in the U.S., even if you aren’t trying to be a bigot.
things are getting better though–unlike the kids around me when i was a kid, i see the younger generations today being much more accepting and welcoming of different races, gender identities, sexual orientations, etc., because the racist white supremacist greatest fear is actually coming true: the country is becoming more and more diverse, more inclusive, and more equitable. and they want to stop it at all costs. that’s why we’re having to waste time arguing about DEI and CRT and gay books in the library and yes, kamala IS black, and yes, kamala IS indian–gasp at the same. time.
i dont’ see the numbness i feel for myself as a bad thing; it keeps me sane. and i still feel pain for other people who are victims of racism. not everyone is at a point where they can acknowledge these emotions and then let them pass away as they arise. so i will still speak out and condemn racism at every opportunity
I can only speak for my own kid, but she has never seemed to care about anyone’s physical appearance in terms of race in her life. I’ve never given her a reason to, admittedly, but she also has grown up in a new sort of American culture where hiphop and Anime and a lot of Latino cultural influences are mainstream or becoming so. I was 7 years old before MTV allowed music videos from non-white artists. How fucked up is that? I am really glad my daughter is growing up in an environment where non-white people at the very least have a significant presence in the media and culture she consumes.
yea, change (read progress, another GOP pejorative) might move along slower than we would like, but it is inevitable, as long as there are people to carry it on. in some ways i’m glad i got to witness people whine and stomp their feet over black little mermaid. guess i’m not too “mature” for the occasional delicious schadenfreude-- i say make ALL the disney princesses POC
I loved that one. People insisting that mermaids must be white. You know, like the real actual living half-fish ladies.
So, from your answer the question “Are you from around here?” would be fine or would it sound to close to “where are you from?” ? I’ve had similar thoughts about ancestry as to @FlyingSquid, but don’t ask. Usually best not to ask if there is a high chance of offending someone.
Honestly don’t like terms like “black-Americans”, "asian-Americans or “mexican-Americans”. I rarely here “white-Americans”, they are just Americans. Feels like a way to segregate verbally.
I think “Are you from around here?” has a totally different vibe. It presupposes they might be and that you’ll take that as an answer rather than going “no, but where are you really from?”
again speaking only for myself, both “where are you from” and “are you from around here” are similar in that they’re not “bad” in and of themselves, unless you’re looking for an answer that those questions aren’t asking for. the thing that’s irksome is not people wanting to know “what kind of asian” i am, but saying “where are you from” with the assumption that the answer will be some asian country (“obviously you’re not american” is the implication). just say “what’s your family’s background” or something similar.
also pro tip, it’s not the case for me, but some people get mad when someone assumes “what kind of asian” they are. my dad, who’s full japanese, hates it when people just assume he’s chinese or korean or anything else. i’m glad i didn’t inherit whatever that’s all about
I think I know how your dad feels. Growing up in West Coast US I didn’t understand why central Americans had such animosity towards being compared or mistaken as Mexican. Then I moved to the south. To my co workers every brown person was Mexican. “hey go ask your little amigo xy or z” was common. “what little amigo?” " The Mexican who’s got the keys to the gate" “I don’t know that guy. Also, he’s Guatemalan. See that flag hanging from his car? It’s a Guatemalan flag” I didn’t piss me off, but it made me feel a way I haven’t felt before and it’s not positive. I now get triggered when people just assume I’m Mexican. It says a lot about them and it’s not good.
for myself, if someone’s going to lump an entire ethnic background into one nationality, then i can already assume they’re racist and that’s all i need to know. but i never really felt like it’s an “insult” to be mistaken for chinese or korean or whatever–those people are people too, and we’re all seeing the same racism
Yep, I completely agree. It’s not so much an insult because you think less of the people you’re being mistaken for. It’s an insult that someone would be so ignorant? Racist? That to them color was the only distinguishing characteristic. I found it offensive when they would call the Guatemalans Mexican or literally any brown person. I’m Mexican btw. When I pointed it out it was always dismissed too.
As a full Asian, asking “What’s your ethnic background?” is far better than “where are you from?”
It’s so fucking annoying when people ask me “where are you from?” Because I’ll answer “Oh, I live just a few miles away.” And then they go, “no, I mean where are you really from?” And then I’ll answer, “I’m from a few miles away you fucking racist.”
Btw, at a funeral I got this line of questioning one too many times and actually said that.
It’s also contextual. Asking this after a few beers and some light conversation, asking about my background is cool. But it being the first or second question makes it weird.
Thanks for asking FlyingSquid.
Amen to that! As your South Asian brother I feel exactly the same, and do the same, just without the cursing.
So, @[email protected], if you ask me where I’m from, accept the first answer. If you want to know my ethnicity, you can ask that. Or you can just take your time getting to know me and I might share how I identify ethnically on my own when it makes sense in our relationship.
Just to clarify, I would not ask a mixed race person with an American accent where they were from unless it was pretty obvious I literally wanted to know where in the U.S. they were from (as in Alabama vs. North Dakota). It was more about whether or not asking about family history was a sensitive subject.
I’m not mixed race. However I am a born and raised New Yorker, and I sound it. Mixed background or not, first generation folks like me sometimes struggle with identity. It took me a while to come to grips with how Indian I am vs. how American I am. What those two terms even mean. And how I want to present myself to the world.
I almost think of it like sexual orientation. There are times when it’s important or okay to ask, and there are times to let it come up naturally in time. And no matter what, however someone identifies you really just need to accept it.
I hope it was obvious that I would accept it, but I don’t feel like it’s the same question. One is about family history (I apparently didn’t explain very well that this is not just asking where someone is from, but where their ancestors are from) and the other is about personal sexuality.
I’m rereading up the thread now and I see what you meant ♥️
“Ancestors” seems like a clumsy term. Has some icky feelings for me - I think because of the white power types.
“What’s your ethnic background?” still sounds better to me. Awkward, but less so.
I guess to me, “ancestors” could be a lot more informative. If you look like you have a South Asian parent, that could mean that parent was born in Vermont, but their parent was born in Scotland, and their parent was born in England and their parent was born in Chennai. And those are the stories I love to hear about because they’re kind of like my own ancestry. For example, my great-grandfather was the son of a Polish emigre to England, moved to Germany, had a child with a German woman, he married a woman from England with parents who were from Russian and Poland and he emigrated to London, and they had my father, who emigrated to America and married a woman from New York.
And if I just ask their ethnicity, I don’t get the story, which could be far more interesting than the ethnicity.
Just with Kamala Harris- knowing her father is black is a lot less informative and interesting than knowing that her father is from Jamaica, which itself is less interesting than knowing her father himself is multiracial because his father had a European parent (and, of course, knowing that he’s a world-renowned economist is very informative too). And that’s why I would like to know about family history much more than just ethnicity. But those can get mixed together.
I’ve gotten “dude, what the fuck are you?!” you before, which I thought was a hilarious way to breach the subject.
I’m tall, had very long (black) hair at the time and had a dark tan. I could pass as part native, black, Hispanic, Asian, pretty much anything.
It was a fair question.
Assuming the context is appropriate I think an acceptable way to ask is “what’s your heritage” - imo the important thing is not to sound like you’re assuming they’re a foreigner just because their ethnicity / appearance. I think asking about someone’s family story or where their family is from is also a good way to ask because it’s clear you’re asking about their family and not assuming that it has bearing on the person’s upbringing.
It also can be really confusing when you’re a mixed and natural born citizen and you have no idea if “where are you from” is just smalltalk and they want to know where you grew up or if they’re assuming based on your appearance that you immigrated and assuming that the answers to “where did you grow up” and “where are your ancestors from” are 1 and the same. So personally I like when people are more specific because when asked where I’m from I’m just going to ask if they mean where I grew up or where my parents are from.
I would definitely make it clear I was asking about their family history, not them personally. I told the other person who replied that the only two times I could envision asking someone where they were from were if they had an unusual accent or if I found out we were both from the same state. I just didn’t know if it would be touching upon a sensitive topic that they get asked about way too much and it’s just not something that should be broached until you know someone pretty well.
Gotcha in that case it sounds like you probably don’t have anything to worry about. People who are weird about asking where people are from without any nuance don’t seem to put that much thought into it and whether it sounds like they’re assuming immigrant status based on appearance (which is where wording can be important).
My personal fall back to get others to open up in any type of conversation is to start talking about food. Comfort food, junk food, family recipes/traditions; it’s all good because people can’t help but share when it comes to food. I’ve learned so much about different cultures and some damn good recipes just talking about food with everyone.
I like that idea. It’s really interesting.
Yeah, that’s how I wound up mistakenly assuming my girlfriend was Latina for our first year together. Nah turns out she was just a white lady of Mediterranean descent who was raised alongside a bunch of migrant farm workers in Tennessee and so she finds Mexican culture comfortable and grew up with a ton of Spanish.
And I’m not saying that as a bad thing. I didn’t call her Latina because she didn’t and I just asked when she started getting into genealogy and talking about her ancestors. As far as I’m concerned the fact that she likes to decorate her home like a tacky taqueria and that she speaks Spanish when she’s too drunk are far more important than her ethnicity
Hi! Coming from another half asian, I personally find it more tasteful to ask “what is your ethnicity”.
It’s different for everyone. For me, I don’t like it when strangers ask so I don’t ask when I’m the one who is curious. If it’s friends or someone getting to know me, it doesn’t matter how it’s asked. I do not mind. If I’m handing you a beer and say " that’ll be x dollars." And you respond by asking where I’m from, it bothers me. It’s the difference between getting to know someone and trying to fit them in a box. I get that sometimes people are curious but not every curiosity has to be satisfied. When I tell them that I’m from US it’s common to be followed by “fine! Where are your parents from?” That’s just weird. I’d never approach a stranger and ask about their parents.
Yeah, sorry, I meant when getting to know someone not just asking a random stranger. I didn’t know if it was something I should hold off on until I knew them really well.
asking about ancestry is a good way. I’ve been asked during the first conversation and it hasn’t bothered me. It helped that it was a deep conversation and the topic was somewhat relevant. It makes all the difference if someone is trying to get to know you. I understand I look ethnically ambiguous and if I were trying to get to know me I’d be curious too.
I’d suggest it would be best if someone’s racial background wasn’t made to be an important part of the conversation at all.
At least not unless it happens to have some relevance like in relation to places they have personally experienced or languages they speak or something like that.
Where a person’s grandparents came from isn’t (or shouldn’t be) a big deal compared to most other things about that person.
It isn’t a big deal, but family histories really interest me and I guess I’m trying to find a way to ask a multiracial person about their family history without trying to make it sound like it’s about race.
Like I said to someone else, it’s much more informative to know that Kamala Harris’ father was not just black, but Jamaican. But if you do want to introduce race as well, it’s also more informative to know that he was also multiracial, having a parent who had a European parent. I think that can show you where a person comes from in the sense of what they consider their heritage to be. Which is not so much about race as it is about where people’s ancestors have lived in the past and what sort of cultures have been passed down through the generations.
Does that make sense?
The unfortunate problem is that it is such a big deal for far too many Americans. Makes the whole topic a much more complex minefield.
I disagree with this. A person’s heritage can be important. Racists attitudes can grow out of not understand a person’s culture. of course, a person’s heritage can also NOT be important. People do lose connections to the homeland and this seems to be more common in America.
Heritage isn’t necessarily the same as the colour of your skin, though.
Or “what ethnicity are you”?
That seems to me to be almost as bad as “where are you from?” It’s not something white people are usually asked after all.
Neither would a black person who doesn’t have an accent. And white person is most likely not going to be asked “where are your ancestors from either”. But is it really so bad to be curious about a person’s ancestral background? Definitely tacky to have it be one of the first questions you ask though.
I wasn’t suggesting it being an introductory question.
Of course. In that case, I don’t see anything wrong with being curious about their cultural/ethnic background.
Half Asian here. At least in my experience, those questions don’t tend to come from a place of malice, just a genuine curiosity of ethnic background since they can’t figure it out by look.
Sure, there are some racists too. But I’ve had plenty of ambivalent conversations that start off that way. Beats starting a conversation on weather or other generic topics.
i prefer to assume positive intent whenever i can. then i read things like the title of this post.
It may not come from malice but it sure makes them stupid when interactions like this is normal.
https://youtu.be/d_CaZ4EAexQ?si=ty9I1zv8isihm8nY
Also, not everybody is comfortable talking about that as a starter conversation.
Half Asian here and yeah I never assume someone’s coming from a bad place when they ask.
I hope people don’t become too afraid to ask where someone’s from in fear of looking racist or some dumb shit. It’s natural to be curious and I’ve had people take guesses from Indian to India.
Meanwhile my wife is from overseas. But because she’s white, they’ll quite happily let her know about all their xenophobia and racism, because they think she’s one of them.
“Not you, you’re one of the good ones” is trotted out constantly among those who suddenly remember who they’re talking to.
try it with native american ancestory that is no longer native due to the pogroms in the 19th & 20th centuries; it doesn’t matter that we were here first, we truly can’t be from here anymore because nearly all of the ones who lived on this side of the border were genocided out of existence so now we have to get permission to live on the land we’ve been inhabiting for thousands of years.
the icing on this cake is pointing this out brands you a malcontent for doing so.
And then you also get a bunch of white people (like me until a few years ago) who think it’s a point of pride they are 1/16th Cherokee without realizing it likely means their great great grandmother was raped by a white guy. My great great grandparents were married, but I have no idea whether it was a forced marriage by him stealing her or if it was a love marriage.
i always felt that the cherokee great great grandma thing was a nicer/kinder american version of the mexican thing.
dna tests have confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt that the european contribution to modern mexicans is extremely minimal and very concentrated in the few places where it becomes statistically significant enough to measure, but the popular cultural consensus minimizes native contribution; meaning that the great great grandma raping was at such a hugely pervasive scale that it literally created countries all throughout latin america full of people that have actively chosen to forget about all the great great grandma rape.
i used to think that it was a crazy one-off occurrence from a century ago and that any sane person today would never cooperate with that kind of groupthink in the modern day; but hearing people on lemmyverse and reddit minimizing an active genocide is merely a “privileged single issue voter perspective” and i think i’m starting to understand how that great great cherokee grandma story came into existence.
Most people who claim they are 1/16th or 1/32nd native are not at all. It is a very popular family myth. My mom told me that her mother said her great grandmother was native. I viewed that as possible since my grandmother was an orphan. I did 23andme and there is no native American. I also went through ancestry.com to build out my family tree and indeed there was no native American in there. The 60s and 70s were a period of growing acknowledgement of Native communities and I feel like that was kind of a way that people made it seem like they were at least nominally supportive.
Or it was just one of the batty things about my grandmother. Orphanages back then were simply work houses. You did school for a little bit and then went to work manufacturing. The discipline must have been pretty strict considering one of the teachers beat her so bad that she lost an eye.
I’ve seen pictures of my great great grandma and have spent time hanging out with my (half or full, can’t remember anymore) Cherokee cousins, so I know my case isn’t a family myth. But I have basically no connection to Native Americans outside of a couple weekends spent at my great grandma’s house when I was a young kid, so I no longer claim any connection on the chance the family didn’t have the happiest start.
That reminds me of the scene in Parks and Rec where someone asks where Tom Haverford (Aziz Ansari) is from. He responds Illinois. Then the person asks “but where are your parents from?” He responds “Georgia.”
fine I’ll rewatch parks and rec
I lived in Tennessee for a few years. I’ve never been greeted so many times with “do you speak English?” Sometimes I’d just be like “nah!” And walk away.
no hablo ingles, pendejo
I really hate that racists have ruined a perfectly good question. I often want to actually ask people where in the US they’re from, but I can’t ask the straightforward “where are you from?” if the person isn’t white because I know it can easily be interpreted as the racist version.
Instead I now ask “are you from [city we’re in]?” to try to make it clear I’m assuming they’re from the US.
“You’ve got a bit of an accent where in the country are you from?”
“Are you originally from around here?”
And various other phrasings can take the racist edge off of it. It also helps avoid people answering that their family is Vietnamese when you really want to know that they’re from Dayton.
Good suggestions, and yeah if someone has an accent I’m trying to identify I’ll usually ask about the accent and region I think it’s from.
I still feel a slight ick from “originally.” And usually I’m talking with people from my general region and I’m really just asking what local town they grew up in, so it’s sometimes more “did you grow up in [current location, or area they’re talking about]?”
My grandmother on my mother’s side was Chinese-American. She and my grandfather met in Hawaii during WW2, and that’s where my mom was raised, so we observed a lot of Hawaiian and Chinese traditions when I was growing up.
My grandfather on my father’s side was raised Jewish by Romanian immigrants, but converted to Christianity, and my father eventually became an atheist. But we still occasionally celebrated certain Jewish holidays to honor his ancestors. My dad’s mother was the child of German immigrants. She taught me to make some delicious German treats.
For my part, I pass completely as white (I’m a super pale ginger). But I’m proud of all my heritage, and my whole life I’ve hated questions on forms that ask me to pick one. If there’s an “other” option or a “prefer not to answer” option, that’s what I pick.
Ancestry isn’t a box you check, it’s a story you tell.
I always take the opportunity to mess with people who ask me that question.
Where are you from? - (a city in the US).
Where did you move from. - (an other city in the US).
Where where you born. - (a city in Europe).
Uhhh… So uh… I mean… What’s the… <starts sweating about a politely way to say, “the not-white part”>
Me: Tennessee? Really? I’d have guessed Arkansas.
“where are you from?”
“Tennessee”
“No, I meant what country you originaly come from”
A conversation like that was front page news not so long ago.
yep. i’ve had that conversation almost verbatim
This is perfectly captured in the recent Civil War movie, the Jesse Plemons’ scene, “What kind of American are you?”.
I’m not American and don’t live there, but “where are you from” shouldn’t be offensive, unless you’re native American. Just normalize asking white people where they are from, too.
It’s because the question is weaponized. It makes the assumption that just because you don’t look like me that you can’t possibly be a “real” American. And asking the same in reverse doesn’t work, because white people in the US love saying where their ancestors are from.
My response is mostly a joke anyway. But how’s their originally being from somewhere else different from an Asian person’s originally being from somewhere else?
Because in their heads, being from Europe is normal and being from Asia is weird at best and bad at worst. It’s an assumption that if you don’t look like them then you aren’t from here. The next step is if you aren’t from here then you don’t belong here.
If they were to ask a white person in the US where they were from and the person answered, “Pittsburgh,” then the conversation would move to something about sports. What always happens and is very annoying is that when the same question asked to an Asian person with the same answer of Pittsburgh, the next topic NEVER moves to sports or weather or how many bridges the city has (a lot). The next question is always a probe to find out where you REALLY are from, because you sure as shit aren’t from America. If you were a real American you wouldn’t have eyes that looked like that. It’s a way to prove in their head that, even though you were born in the US and love football and drive a truck, there’s an anchor that makes you anything other than American.
If racists were capable of logical, sound thoughts they wouldn’t be racist.
I wouldn’t say that being racist is necessarily about the inability to think logically or rationally. It’s sometimes that, of course, but sometimes it’s because they just never tried to think about it. Their life experiences just never put them in that situation.
But most often, I think, it’s because they can think logically, have tried to think logically, but the conclusions would make them feel less superior and thus they encounter a mental block. In other words, it’s about insecurity, first and foremost.
I asked the question to a mixed race Asian guy. Not because I care about what country half his family originally came from, but because he was the first Asian guy I met that had a deep southern accent.
my sister has a southern accent. it’s adorable to me too
Jesus people don’t even see how racist they are, pretty sad.
Hint - it was quite racist of you to ask that of somebody because they didn’t match your stereotypes.
Racist: characterized by or showing prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism against a person or people on the basis of their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized.
I was none of those things. I was genuinely interested in him simply because it’s not something I had run across before. It’s quite ignorant of you to assume my intentions or actions outside of that.
For example, the first time I heard an accent that sounded like my grandfather’s outside of visiting his family (my extended family) I asked where she was from because I was curious if it was near there. If someone says they’re from a state I have lived in I ask where from because we may have some common experiences.
But I guess since I’m a racist now I’ll never ask anyone again. I’ll just be who you have decided I am.
I don’t think being interested in other people makes you racist.
Appreciate it. I don’t either. Maybe the way I said it came across as weird to that other person. Maybe they’re having a bad day. Hell, there are so many racist dog whistles out there that it’s possible I’ve stumbled upon one without realizing it, even though my intention was to find out more, not to “other” him.
Wouldn’t be the first time that, without context, I’ve accidentally said something that came across as fucked up to someone.
I’m glad you’ve got the freedom to say whatever you want and be like “oh dang sorry didn’t mean to offend you” (and act like a victim when you get called out on your language being offensive). For those of us who aren’t white we don’t get such luxuries. Aka your actions (whether you mean it or not doesn’t fucking matter) are RACIST
Edit cause I’ll actually engage instead of being pissed. You are saying very explicitly with that question that Asian folks don’t belong in the south, are alien to it, and are a curiosity. As a south Asian who lived in the south for a number of years the number of yokel ass motherfuckers who had the same attitude is too many to count (dwarfed only by the number of people who were just straight up explicitly racist). We aren’t here to satiate your curiosity and if you can’t grasp that I dunno what to tell you. Grand on you for being an enlightened centrist, asking a “foreign” person where they are really from (esp in a place with a strong history of systemic racism like the south) ain’t cool, full stop.
Ok, I learned that you’re just a jackass. Cool. Now there’s no need to interact with you ever again. Go fuck yourself.
Edit: cool, I’m a racist. I promise never to interact or show any interest with anyone of another race again. I’ll let them know that you told me that showing interest in another person’s unique story and finding commonalities between others and myself makes me a racist.
I dunno what to tell you man. Read the other comments from non white posters in this thread. 90% of them are agreeing with my lived experience, questions like that come across as thinly veiled racism. You don’t get to tell people of color what we should take as offensive or not. If you can’t understand that, it’s on you. Try thinking about it rather than getting defensive.