My family. A typical, American family.
PS: Yes, that’s me in the green with my mom. I looked like a little boy until like kindergarten.
I’m unsure if there are questions that you, yourself, can get wrong if they’re questions about your identity.
“What’s your age? What’s your hometown? What’s your star sign?”
However, I always seem to get this one wrong:
Where are you from?
I just want to know this:
Did the people who normalized the question, “Where are you from?” intend for this question to be a race identifier?
Video by KenTanakaLA
Honestly, I get quite offended when people ask me that question and tell me I’m wrong when I say that I’m from Georgia. I’m wrong when I say that for 17 years, I grew up in the suburbs of Atlanta. I’m wrong when I say I’m from America.
Am I wrong?
I have only been to Korea two times and can barely speak the language. How do I even have the right to tell someone I’m from a place I barely know?
As you all know by now, I love telling stories about my life.
So, here’s this blog’s edition of story time:
When I was in fourth grade, I went to a summer camp in Alabama called Camp Cosby. I was a super shy kid, so I mainly stuck to myself or clung onto my brother whenever I would see him during activities.
One day, my cabin was about to go to bed, and a girl came over to my bunk.
“Alex, where are you from?”
“Georgia”
“No, where are you really from?”
“Norcross, GA?”
“No, like where is your family from?”
“Korea.”
“Oh! Isn’t that a city in China?”
That happened 12 years ago.
And after 12 years, I still get asked that question. And it still takes so many more clarifying questions from the inquirer for me to finally confess that, yes! The color of my skin and the way my eyes are shaped definitely mean I’m not from here.
More recently after I’ve been asked these questions and when I finally tell the person that my race is Korean, they tend to follow with:
“Oh! I knew it! I have a Korean daughter-in-law. You both look so alike!”
“Oh, I know some Korean myself! Anyong!”
“I love kimchi!”
I’m not sure if you’re reading this and deeply relate or if you’re reading this and don’t understand what I’m complaining about.
All I would like to say is this:
No. It is NOT cool to ask people, “Where are you from?” and be disappointed with the answer they give you. It is NOT cool to try to tell me all the Korean curse words that your one Korean friend taught you that one time. It is NOT cool to ask if I’m from North or South Korea.
Now I’m not saying that this happens to just Asian people. This happens to all minorities in all sorts of different ways. And the people who are doing this are not just straight, White people. It’s everybody.
And we have to work harder to make sure the future doesn’t have blogs like mine talking about all the random, racist things that have happened throughout life. We have to work harder to make sure the question, “Where are you from?” doesn’t continue to instill a sense of annoyance and fear of ignorance towards a person. We have to work harder to reduce the amount of subtle microaggressions that people may think are fine but are really not.
We have to work harder.