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”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.