permaculture

["Toshio Kuratomi" <a.badger@gmail.com>]

On 5/28/07, Kathy Evans <evansdk@earthlink.net> wrote:
> Toshio, Wow, I truly didn't know that asking where someone was from was offensive...if that's the 
> case, I'll cease and desist. I'm always interested in culture and language and story, I have 
> asked people that. When I say "pop" instead of soda, people immediately ask if I'm from 
> the Upper Midwest, which I am. I figure our ethnic/cultural/language differences are obvious, 
> that we aren't all Anglo-Euro, and that it was okay to ask about it. I never imagined it to be 
> something that separates us, more something that appreciates our differences. It doesn't make me 
> think someone is less American. I write people's biographies for a living, and nothing is more 
> interesting to me than a person's "story." But I can see your point, and I'm sure it's 
> tiresome and now I know that it is offensive. I will take your word for it. Always something new 
> to learn.   thanks. Kathy

Thanks for seeing this point of view :-)  If you are interested in
hearing other people's stories, you can ask different questions to
find out.  The most offensive part of "being asked where you're from"
is that it's not a question that relates to who you are or where you
actually are from.  It's a question that, for many minorities, relates
to something that is totally separate from our identity.

Ask questions to get to know a person instead.  As you ask questions
about their identity, they'll volunteer that their grandparents are
from Japan if they think that's an important part of who they are.
And if, after a bit of conversation in that direction they don't offer
that information, you can ask them if they haven't said anything about
their ancestry because people ask about it too much :-).

By asking things this way you'll let the person know that you find
them interesting in and of themselves rather than as a specimen of an
ethnic minority and they can let you know how they feel about their
ancestry.  Are they proud, disinterested, or ambivalent?  Do they find
themselves rebelling against it, denying it, taking strength from it,
or living it?  The important thing is that they know you're asking
them to tell you how they relate to the inescapable fact that they can
be identified as a non-Anglo rather than asking them to explain their
"non-American culture".

-Toshio