I am more than used to the internet reactions of the white supremacists who always reduce a complex argument to something simplistic enough to allow them to produce their now ritualistic 'you've got be kidding' and 'how can you be so dumb' and all that. They never strike me as interested in discussing anything so I am not addressing myself to them that's for sure. But it seems that a number of decent genuinely concerned people actually took my recent article in the guardian to be of the order of 'if you're white you should never ask people where they come from'.
Fortunately for the world, I don't believe I am powerful enough to tell people what to do and what not to do in life.
It goes without saying that I accept as I pointed out in the piece that lots of people ask 'where are you form' for very simple and social reasons. and I am sure no one is about to stop because of this piece.
I also accept the even more obvious fact, I feel ridiculous to have to say it, that lots of people, all over the world and in variety of circumstances, and not only people of non-White European ancestry ask others 'where are you from'? Indeed, let me say that I have asked lots of people where they are from. I mean... really... that's hardly what is interesting here.
What I am pointing to is what happens when you say something as mundane in the midst of existing racial relations of power and those relations of power inscribe themselves in what you are saying whether you like it or not. In such situations, as an academic I spend a lot of time thinking and researching how this process of inscription happens.
But as someone also engaging in public discourse, I believe I can make people benefit from my research and thinking and make them reflect on some of the complexities that are inherent in what they are doing. So I guess from a behavioural point of view my article did have an invitation for white people to see the complexity inherent in the question that they ask. and so perhaps those who are convinced by what I am conveying will be more subtle and more sensitive when they ask their question, especially when they have the desire to follow it up with the even more inquisitive power-pregnant 'yes, but where are you really from?'.
so you can guess from the fact that I am asking people to be more subtle and more sensitive that I am not addressing myself to the white right internet mob who are anything but.
Also it is unfortunate that in order to shorten the piece we had to remove the middle part of this section which adds complexity and make those who are recipient of and oversensitive to the question 'where are you from' also reflect on why they are over-sensitive to it:
"My students from non-White European ancestry invariably hate being asked this question. This is so even though they recognise that more often than not the person asking it means them no harm, and is simply and genuinely, or thinks it’s polite to be, interested in where they are from. We’ve often reflected together about this and about what bothers us about the question ‘where are you from?’ I try to add some complexity by noting that I have met in my research some working class people from non-White European ancestry who have complained to me about the opposite. Their complaint takes the form of: ‘I have worked for x years in this place and no one has bothered asking me where I am from.’ And so I suggest that maybe the question bothers people like us, people with high educational capital, because we have high cosmopolitan aspirations. In a bar enjoying ourselves with similarly cosmopolitan others we want to be one of the cosmopolitan crowd and, in such environment, the question ‘where are you from?’, even when well-meant, often abruptly makes us feel singled out, alienated and provincialized. But we all agree that it would be different if the relation between the questioner and the questioned was not as structured by racial relations of power to the extent that it was: it is more often than not that the questioner is of White European ancestry and the questioned is of non- White European ancestry. And because of this the question necessarily, and regardless of the intent of the questioner, ends up carrying in it the power and entitlement of the questioner."
