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OK, I read the other locked thread and I see why it was locked but I have another point of view which belongs in its own thread, so here goes!
I thoroughly understand that if you were born and grew up and lived all your life in, say, Chicago or Manchester or Stuttgart it would be highly irritating to be asked, in the country you call home, “Where are you from”, and worse yet, “Where are you really from”, just because of your skin colour.
But… and there is a but… it’s different for those of us who really are from somewhere else. We LOVE to be asked this question! We love to talk about our home country, and if it’s an insignificant little country nobody ever heard of at the end of the world and beyond God’s back, we love to hear the questions about it and explain that no,it's not in Africa, and it was a British colony, not French or Dutch.
We positively revel in being “other”, “different”, from the mainstream citizens of the USA, UK, Germany or wherever.
And there IS a difference. I know because I grew up in that “other” culture and that has formed my perspective, my attitude on certain subjects, the way I deal with stuff. I love it when that “otherness” is acknowledged by others. Mostly, I just suppress it and adapt at least superficially to the society I live in, but I also like, sometimes, to be able to share my own way of seeing, to say, hey, yours is not the only perspective. That may even be the reason why I write novels: to show that “otherness”. I suspect that we expats are the bridges between cultures, just as people who are bilingual are the bridges between nations foreign to each other.
I promise you this is so with at least 90% of expats, regardless of skin colour. We don’t think it’s rude at all. It’s the first thing we ask each other, when we realise we are expats. We like to say, Oh, I’ve been there! Or, oh, I work with somebody from there! When I hear someone with a Caribbean accent, I love to place them and will most certainly ask, or try to guess. It's also the way we connect, find common ground, make friends. It can get lonely, not knowing anyone from your own part of the world.
Yesterday I heard two women in our local supermarket address each other in English. I longed to go up them and ask where they were from, and the only reason I didn't is because I don't just walk up to strangers and start talking. But I wish they would ask me, one day.
Once, a woman did ask me when she heard me speaking English to my son and she was walking past. She stopped, we chatted, her husband turned out to be English, and we have been close friends ever since -- 26 years now!
Once, I was sitting in a train and I heard a woman behind me speaking to the conductor, and I recognised the Guyanese accent, so later I walked right up to her and she took one look at me and said, “You’re a (my famly name)” because she recognised a certain family “look”. We always ask each other where we are from.
Last Christmas I bought something from a stall in the Christmas market here in Germany and the guy who served me was black with dreadlocks. I could tell by his accent he wasn’t German and was just about to ask him where he was from (hopefully Caribbean!) when he asked me, and I told him, and asked him back, and he was from Kenya, and we chatted a while as my daughter had been to Kenya the year before.
I belong to an English-language expat online community in Germany and everyone is always asking each other where they are from. It’s the way we understand where they are coming from in their posts. Are they German? Born, or nationalised? How long have they been here? Are they still in culture shock, or have they gone beyond? Do they know what they are talking about?
When I was traveling around South America in 1971 I met surely over a hundred other travellers, and the first thing we always asked was, where are you from?
I would say it’s a natural question. But you need to know if it’s a stupid one. It’s stupid to ask someone with an American accent in America where they’re from, likewise in Britain, likewise a black person in Germany who speaks accent-free German. So I would, if you want to know, listen for the accent first. That will tell you if it’s a stupid question or not. If you just want to know what (American, British, German, French) town they are from and you are in that country already, I don’t see the problem.
So, it's a question of language, accent, speech, rather one of skin colour. Listen, don't look!
(Sorry this turned out so long --- I got carried away!)
I thoroughly understand that if you were born and grew up and lived all your life in, say, Chicago or Manchester or Stuttgart it would be highly irritating to be asked, in the country you call home, “Where are you from”, and worse yet, “Where are you really from”, just because of your skin colour.
But… and there is a but… it’s different for those of us who really are from somewhere else. We LOVE to be asked this question! We love to talk about our home country, and if it’s an insignificant little country nobody ever heard of at the end of the world and beyond God’s back, we love to hear the questions about it and explain that no,it's not in Africa, and it was a British colony, not French or Dutch.
We positively revel in being “other”, “different”, from the mainstream citizens of the USA, UK, Germany or wherever.
And there IS a difference. I know because I grew up in that “other” culture and that has formed my perspective, my attitude on certain subjects, the way I deal with stuff. I love it when that “otherness” is acknowledged by others. Mostly, I just suppress it and adapt at least superficially to the society I live in, but I also like, sometimes, to be able to share my own way of seeing, to say, hey, yours is not the only perspective. That may even be the reason why I write novels: to show that “otherness”. I suspect that we expats are the bridges between cultures, just as people who are bilingual are the bridges between nations foreign to each other.
I promise you this is so with at least 90% of expats, regardless of skin colour. We don’t think it’s rude at all. It’s the first thing we ask each other, when we realise we are expats. We like to say, Oh, I’ve been there! Or, oh, I work with somebody from there! When I hear someone with a Caribbean accent, I love to place them and will most certainly ask, or try to guess. It's also the way we connect, find common ground, make friends. It can get lonely, not knowing anyone from your own part of the world.
Yesterday I heard two women in our local supermarket address each other in English. I longed to go up them and ask where they were from, and the only reason I didn't is because I don't just walk up to strangers and start talking. But I wish they would ask me, one day.
Once, a woman did ask me when she heard me speaking English to my son and she was walking past. She stopped, we chatted, her husband turned out to be English, and we have been close friends ever since -- 26 years now!
Once, I was sitting in a train and I heard a woman behind me speaking to the conductor, and I recognised the Guyanese accent, so later I walked right up to her and she took one look at me and said, “You’re a (my famly name)” because she recognised a certain family “look”. We always ask each other where we are from.
Last Christmas I bought something from a stall in the Christmas market here in Germany and the guy who served me was black with dreadlocks. I could tell by his accent he wasn’t German and was just about to ask him where he was from (hopefully Caribbean!) when he asked me, and I told him, and asked him back, and he was from Kenya, and we chatted a while as my daughter had been to Kenya the year before.
I belong to an English-language expat online community in Germany and everyone is always asking each other where they are from. It’s the way we understand where they are coming from in their posts. Are they German? Born, or nationalised? How long have they been here? Are they still in culture shock, or have they gone beyond? Do they know what they are talking about?
When I was traveling around South America in 1971 I met surely over a hundred other travellers, and the first thing we always asked was, where are you from?
I would say it’s a natural question. But you need to know if it’s a stupid one. It’s stupid to ask someone with an American accent in America where they’re from, likewise in Britain, likewise a black person in Germany who speaks accent-free German. So I would, if you want to know, listen for the accent first. That will tell you if it’s a stupid question or not. If you just want to know what (American, British, German, French) town they are from and you are in that country already, I don’t see the problem.
So, it's a question of language, accent, speech, rather one of skin colour. Listen, don't look!
(Sorry this turned out so long --- I got carried away!)
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