Exactly. Although for the last few days I've been thinking of responses if someone tells me it's racist or whatever bullshit. I asked someone yesterday where he's from, and then asked if he thought it was offensive and he said no, absolutely not, in fact from India where he's from it's how they start conversations with others since everyone is so frackin' different there.
This is great! I'm so happy to hear Toronto (my hometown) isn't accusing you of racial microaggressions. This seems to be a very US problem that thankfully hasn't seeped out and infected Australia, where so many of us are from foreign countries.
Oh Goddess, Canada has actually gotten way worse than the US in some ways. No one has accused me of racial microaggressions *yet* but if they do I'll just laugh at them (us ol' white Karens are too old to, in the immortal words of Wanda Sykes, "give a fuuuuuuck." :)
What the heck are you doing in Australia??? Not enough giant killer spiders for ya in Toronto? Believe me, the snakes and spiders there are more terrifying than the *worst* social justice warrior in Canada (which at the moment I'm pretty sure is Justin Trudeau...)
Which is where, on a rock cliff? :) Kidding! I have a friend in Sydney who loves to tease me about the spiders and I'm forever teasing her about all the Killer Wildife in Oz ;)
But yes, I imagine the spiders and snakes are probably not plotting to put you in jail for thoughtcrime. Yet, anyway :( I know this Online Harms bill will likely never see the light of day, or be watered down to something resembling sanity, but the fact that this guy has become such a dangerous authoritarian is what scares me.
My parents came to the US (St.Louis MO) in 1970’s from Mexico with their heavy accents, and it was not unusual for people to ask where they were from. They, nor I ever considered it racist or wrong. People are curious about others. People who feel micro aggressions at such an innocent question seem to have ideas about the world that don’t reflect reality. It gets in the way of forming friendships.
In Florida, Where are you from is one of the first questions asked, and the answer is usually New York. We don’t mean it as a race thing, only 36% of Floridians were born there and they are disproportionately children. We want to know which state you’re from as much as which country
I do the same thing with my fellow Americans and Canadians. Because I want to know what state or province they're from, it's interesting to know! I haven't done a lot of traveling around Canada (it's on my bucket list) and I want to get to know my adopted peeps better.
The first video was hilarious and cringeworthingly familiar. I would point out that it's not just white people in my experience that act this way particularly in the US. There was one very memorable occasion in an Orlando Dunkin Donuts where a bunch of black male servers were amazed by a chinese face with an english accent. They weren't trying to cause offence they were just ignorant. I think that's the difference, learning to recognise where it's coming from a place of innocence/ignorance as opposed to genuine malice.
I think that's hilarious! Anything we can do to challenge the dominant mental paradigm in brains that don't challenge their own biases enough is awesome. I am occasionally surprised by the way people sound vs the way they look but having lived here long enough now...precious little surprises me anymore!
I come from coal miners in NEPA (north-east Pa) and they came from Ukraine and Lithuania.
I check "other" on forms and write in Uki-Litvak. In SF I am increasingly asked for my pronouns and put in "youze" which I grew up with along with other coal speak https://www.coalregion.com/speak/speaka.php It is the all-inclusive pronoun....singular, plural , male , female and all variations thereof. And I am so tired of the microaggression industry.
Youze, youse, was common throughout the coal region and industrial areas in the NE , at least in the ‘50s when I was growing up. Not a NYC thing. If you were from The Burg it was yinz, an Irish Scottish thing. Pitttsburgers still proudly call themselves Yinzers but I didn’t live there long enough to earn that distinction. Calling yourself a Youzer doesn’t have the same cache.
The Irish created this when the bloody Brits forbade speaking Galic and there is no second person plural in English so they just added an s to you…..yous.
While originally plural, by the time I came around through common usage it could be either singular or plural. You could say it to your gang or just your buddy.
It’s the all-inclusive pronoun and we all know how important being inclusive is—doing my small part to further the cause and reclaim my heritage.
Now I've got to think that an 'all-inclusive' pronoun is the very worst idea imaginable!!! The whole point of pronouns is to divide and separate, like Playtex bras of yore (or youze :) )
It's not so easy unfortunately because we simply don't ask most people that question. Maybe it works in a new immigrant country like Canada but not in the UK . I'm British, born in London, and have never in my life been asked "where I'm from" let alone "where I'm really from". I'm pretty sure if my immigrant grandparents - who I never even met - had been black I would've been asked it thousands of times by now. And I would have been pretty upset every time.
I'm Irish, back to the mists of time Irish, and its the first thing we ask each other when we meet someone new. We ask it to find some common ground, maybe our grandads were second cousins, or my sister once went out with your cousin or my dad used to work with your dad. Or as the author says, Ah the city of Petra I'd love to go there sometime!
Here, the notion that asking someone where they're from is a racist thing, leads to division between the immigrants and the natives. It's literally treating people different because of their ethnicity. Putting everyone on eggshells, and making the native Irish feel like a harmless friendly custom is somehow racist, breeding resentment and defiance.
Oh but it shouldn't, say the woke. We will simply ^educate^ those feelings out of people. ^Then^ we'll have utopia!
But the results are predictable.
I don't think it's much to ask people to put up with some social- enhancing small talk , ained at finding common ground, even if it is a bit annoying sometimes. Much less imagining a scenario that might happen to someone else and getting angry at that.
I found the Irish to be the friendliest Europeans I've ever encountered so far. My brother and I were there in '95 (no, we're not Irish in the slightest, we're just hideously French) and the Irish were *so* helpful...we didn't even have to ask for it..we'd just stand there cluelessly staring at a map and they'd volunteer to help us out. And I have no gripe about Europeans overall (well, maybe the horny Turkish guys, LOL). But yeah, this is an ice-breaker and a way to find common ground. We need to challenge wokeness which has become downright racist. One thing I love about Toronto is that even with the wokeness here, we can still be easier with people of other races...it's just not as big a thing here as it is in the US.
If everyone has to walk on eggshells, you're doing something hideously wrong. As many voices are beginning to speak up, "learn some resilience, children!"
Fair enough. You must 'blend in,' like I do, or at least I do until I say something hideously American :) I wonder, though, whether folks treated this way can just run with it and be the opposite of what the other person expects. I did this many years ago with a cable Internet installer who assumed I was a dumb little chicky-boo who didn't know anything about my own computer and talked to me like I was two. So I answered like a dumb little chicky-boo until he said, "Do you know what kind of a computer you have?" and I said, "Oh, yes, it's a Frankenclone!" And he was like, "What's that? I never heard of it," and I replied, "I made it myself from parts I sourced from different places!"
I'll bet he never pulled THAT shit again :)
I've sometimes wondered, if I was black, what would I look like? I think I would pick some extreme look that scares the shit out of white people, and then be the total opposite of what they expect...
About 30 years ago, a friend informed me that she refused to answer the question “Where are you from,” because it was “racist” (the term microaggression hadn’t been invented yet).
She was from a brown country and was convinced that people had a nefarious intention if they asked her that question. I found it extreme, but reasoned that I must be wrong because I’m white. The more I got to know her, however,the more I saw that she lived in an imaginary world where people were talking about her constantly and she was basically the center of the universe. I saw her blow up her life several times because of her paranoia and self-absorption.
I think a lot of these SJWs are very damaged people. I feel for them, but I can’t be around them much.
It's a shame, because they have no idea what kind of a grand life they could be living if they weren't enslaved (gasp!) by racism and racist beliefs.
Jonathan Haidt's book is about young liberal progressive women, but I'm pretty sure it applies to older ones too, because I know some messed up puppies closer to my age who I'm pretty sure are infected with an overabundance of wokeness :(
I'm from Detroit, MI just across the river from Ontario. (Contrary to popular belief it's pretty nice here. We get the American dollar and Hockey Night In Canada) My family is from Ireland via West Virginia.
Well I meant it in a totally racist way, because I'm so hyper-woke I've got people drilled down to their communities and their neighbourhoods. My bro' and his family are around the Detroit area, and my family got to the US from...uh....all over the place :) We're Western European mutts. Does that qualify me as marginalized? :)
"What's your nationality?" (Where are your people from? or What's your background? in today's lingo) has been the first question newly met Canadians ask each other for over 50 years in my direct experience, especially in the large, incredibly cosmopolitan cities of the northeast, south, and west coast of the country.
Really! Is it considered rude or prying or something to ask The Question these days? Has it become taboo to even notice ethnic and racial differences in massively multicultural societies like Canada's? It would seem to me the mélange of difference now would be even more intriguing and wondrous than the limited variety I experienced so many years ago. To leave it avoided and unexplored would appear close rather than open doors to understanding and gaining wider knowledge and experience of others. "Only in Canada, eh? Shame."
When I first moved here I was a bit awed by the multiculturalism (the same mc that I got tired of hearing about in CT, lol) and when I wrote my second novel, I set it in Toronto and highlighted the multiculturalism...but humourously, not reverently...because I really do think human beings are funny. If I did anything edgy, it was to make a Muslim woman, Indian Hindu woman, and a Jewish woman friends. But the rest of it was "Let's have fun with Toronto culture through my immigrant eyes!" Today I'd get murdered on social media for this. But we are funny, and my Jewish friends were like, "How did you know Jewish mothers were like that without one yourself?" No, my mother wasn't Jewish but she knew a lot of Jews in NY, and she told me about them, and apparently I nailed it :)
We are so wonderfully different here, and I want to see us return to where it was in the mid-oughts when we could talk to each other like normal people without having to worry about saying something 'stupid' (i.e., only offensive to the professionally offended).
Or, people simply need to not give a shit if it’s socially acceptable.
Exactly. Although for the last few days I've been thinking of responses if someone tells me it's racist or whatever bullshit. I asked someone yesterday where he's from, and then asked if he thought it was offensive and he said no, absolutely not, in fact from India where he's from it's how they start conversations with others since everyone is so frackin' different there.
This is great! I'm so happy to hear Toronto (my hometown) isn't accusing you of racial microaggressions. This seems to be a very US problem that thankfully hasn't seeped out and infected Australia, where so many of us are from foreign countries.
Oh Goddess, Canada has actually gotten way worse than the US in some ways. No one has accused me of racial microaggressions *yet* but if they do I'll just laugh at them (us ol' white Karens are too old to, in the immortal words of Wanda Sykes, "give a fuuuuuuck." :)
What the heck are you doing in Australia??? Not enough giant killer spiders for ya in Toronto? Believe me, the snakes and spiders there are more terrifying than the *worst* social justice warrior in Canada (which at the moment I'm pretty sure is Justin Trudeau...)
It easier to deal with the annoying spiders here than living under the reign of tyrannical Trudeau, the greatest Social INjustice Warrior of all.
https://open.substack.com/pub/nathaliemartinekphd/p/socialinjusticewarrior?r=9rk1e&utm_medium=ios
Thankfully I don’t have to deal with deadly snakes where I live :)
Which is where, on a rock cliff? :) Kidding! I have a friend in Sydney who loves to tease me about the spiders and I'm forever teasing her about all the Killer Wildife in Oz ;)
But yes, I imagine the spiders and snakes are probably not plotting to put you in jail for thoughtcrime. Yet, anyway :( I know this Online Harms bill will likely never see the light of day, or be watered down to something resembling sanity, but the fact that this guy has become such a dangerous authoritarian is what scares me.
I wrote about my feelings about just this: https://naturalized.substack.com/p/where-are-you-from
Excellent article, which synchronizes with mine--I read it and commented on it.
My parents came to the US (St.Louis MO) in 1970’s from Mexico with their heavy accents, and it was not unusual for people to ask where they were from. They, nor I ever considered it racist or wrong. People are curious about others. People who feel micro aggressions at such an innocent question seem to have ideas about the world that don’t reflect reality. It gets in the way of forming friendships.
In Florida, Where are you from is one of the first questions asked, and the answer is usually New York. We don’t mean it as a race thing, only 36% of Floridians were born there and they are disproportionately children. We want to know which state you’re from as much as which country
I do the same thing with my fellow Americans and Canadians. Because I want to know what state or province they're from, it's interesting to know! I haven't done a lot of traveling around Canada (it's on my bucket list) and I want to get to know my adopted peeps better.
The first video was hilarious and cringeworthingly familiar. I would point out that it's not just white people in my experience that act this way particularly in the US. There was one very memorable occasion in an Orlando Dunkin Donuts where a bunch of black male servers were amazed by a chinese face with an english accent. They weren't trying to cause offence they were just ignorant. I think that's the difference, learning to recognise where it's coming from a place of innocence/ignorance as opposed to genuine malice.
I think that's hilarious! Anything we can do to challenge the dominant mental paradigm in brains that don't challenge their own biases enough is awesome. I am occasionally surprised by the way people sound vs the way they look but having lived here long enough now...precious little surprises me anymore!
Love this!
I come from coal miners in NEPA (north-east Pa) and they came from Ukraine and Lithuania.
I check "other" on forms and write in Uki-Litvak. In SF I am increasingly asked for my pronouns and put in "youze" which I grew up with along with other coal speak https://www.coalregion.com/speak/speaka.php It is the all-inclusive pronoun....singular, plural , male , female and all variations thereof. And I am so tired of the microaggression industry.
I love that....'youze' as a pronoun! Of course everyone will think you're from Brooklyn ;) I think I have one pronoun for everyone else...y'all!
Youze, youse, was common throughout the coal region and industrial areas in the NE , at least in the ‘50s when I was growing up. Not a NYC thing. If you were from The Burg it was yinz, an Irish Scottish thing. Pitttsburgers still proudly call themselves Yinzers but I didn’t live there long enough to earn that distinction. Calling yourself a Youzer doesn’t have the same cache.
The Irish created this when the bloody Brits forbade speaking Galic and there is no second person plural in English so they just added an s to you…..yous.
While originally plural, by the time I came around through common usage it could be either singular or plural. You could say it to your gang or just your buddy.
It’s the all-inclusive pronoun and we all know how important being inclusive is—doing my small part to further the cause and reclaim my heritage.
Now I've got to think that an 'all-inclusive' pronoun is the very worst idea imaginable!!! The whole point of pronouns is to divide and separate, like Playtex bras of yore (or youze :) )
I go way back in America on my dad’s side a couple of generations on my mom’s (Swedish) but my wife was Ukrainian so our kids slipped a notch or two.
It's not so easy unfortunately because we simply don't ask most people that question. Maybe it works in a new immigrant country like Canada but not in the UK . I'm British, born in London, and have never in my life been asked "where I'm from" let alone "where I'm really from". I'm pretty sure if my immigrant grandparents - who I never even met - had been black I would've been asked it thousands of times by now. And I would have been pretty upset every time.
I'm Irish, back to the mists of time Irish, and its the first thing we ask each other when we meet someone new. We ask it to find some common ground, maybe our grandads were second cousins, or my sister once went out with your cousin or my dad used to work with your dad. Or as the author says, Ah the city of Petra I'd love to go there sometime!
Here, the notion that asking someone where they're from is a racist thing, leads to division between the immigrants and the natives. It's literally treating people different because of their ethnicity. Putting everyone on eggshells, and making the native Irish feel like a harmless friendly custom is somehow racist, breeding resentment and defiance.
Oh but it shouldn't, say the woke. We will simply ^educate^ those feelings out of people. ^Then^ we'll have utopia!
But the results are predictable.
I don't think it's much to ask people to put up with some social- enhancing small talk , ained at finding common ground, even if it is a bit annoying sometimes. Much less imagining a scenario that might happen to someone else and getting angry at that.
I found the Irish to be the friendliest Europeans I've ever encountered so far. My brother and I were there in '95 (no, we're not Irish in the slightest, we're just hideously French) and the Irish were *so* helpful...we didn't even have to ask for it..we'd just stand there cluelessly staring at a map and they'd volunteer to help us out. And I have no gripe about Europeans overall (well, maybe the horny Turkish guys, LOL). But yeah, this is an ice-breaker and a way to find common ground. We need to challenge wokeness which has become downright racist. One thing I love about Toronto is that even with the wokeness here, we can still be easier with people of other races...it's just not as big a thing here as it is in the US.
If everyone has to walk on eggshells, you're doing something hideously wrong. As many voices are beginning to speak up, "learn some resilience, children!"
Now see, if I met you I'd ask what *part* of England you're from...!
Fair enough. You must 'blend in,' like I do, or at least I do until I say something hideously American :) I wonder, though, whether folks treated this way can just run with it and be the opposite of what the other person expects. I did this many years ago with a cable Internet installer who assumed I was a dumb little chicky-boo who didn't know anything about my own computer and talked to me like I was two. So I answered like a dumb little chicky-boo until he said, "Do you know what kind of a computer you have?" and I said, "Oh, yes, it's a Frankenclone!" And he was like, "What's that? I never heard of it," and I replied, "I made it myself from parts I sourced from different places!"
I'll bet he never pulled THAT shit again :)
I've sometimes wondered, if I was black, what would I look like? I think I would pick some extreme look that scares the shit out of white people, and then be the total opposite of what they expect...
About 30 years ago, a friend informed me that she refused to answer the question “Where are you from,” because it was “racist” (the term microaggression hadn’t been invented yet).
She was from a brown country and was convinced that people had a nefarious intention if they asked her that question. I found it extreme, but reasoned that I must be wrong because I’m white. The more I got to know her, however,the more I saw that she lived in an imaginary world where people were talking about her constantly and she was basically the center of the universe. I saw her blow up her life several times because of her paranoia and self-absorption.
I think a lot of these SJWs are very damaged people. I feel for them, but I can’t be around them much.
It's a shame, because they have no idea what kind of a grand life they could be living if they weren't enslaved (gasp!) by racism and racist beliefs.
Jonathan Haidt's book is about young liberal progressive women, but I'm pretty sure it applies to older ones too, because I know some messed up puppies closer to my age who I'm pretty sure are infected with an overabundance of wokeness :(
I'm from Detroit, MI just across the river from Ontario. (Contrary to popular belief it's pretty nice here. We get the American dollar and Hockey Night In Canada) My family is from Ireland via West Virginia.
So I guess it depends on how you meant that.
Well I meant it in a totally racist way, because I'm so hyper-woke I've got people drilled down to their communities and their neighbourhoods. My bro' and his family are around the Detroit area, and my family got to the US from...uh....all over the place :) We're Western European mutts. Does that qualify me as marginalized? :)
"What's your nationality?" (Where are your people from? or What's your background? in today's lingo) has been the first question newly met Canadians ask each other for over 50 years in my direct experience, especially in the large, incredibly cosmopolitan cities of the northeast, south, and west coast of the country.
Well I've only been here since 2005 so I can't comment on the decades before that ;)
But I can tell you in Toronto it's become less acceptable of late. Which needs to change. Now.
Really! Is it considered rude or prying or something to ask The Question these days? Has it become taboo to even notice ethnic and racial differences in massively multicultural societies like Canada's? It would seem to me the mélange of difference now would be even more intriguing and wondrous than the limited variety I experienced so many years ago. To leave it avoided and unexplored would appear close rather than open doors to understanding and gaining wider knowledge and experience of others. "Only in Canada, eh? Shame."
When I first moved here I was a bit awed by the multiculturalism (the same mc that I got tired of hearing about in CT, lol) and when I wrote my second novel, I set it in Toronto and highlighted the multiculturalism...but humourously, not reverently...because I really do think human beings are funny. If I did anything edgy, it was to make a Muslim woman, Indian Hindu woman, and a Jewish woman friends. But the rest of it was "Let's have fun with Toronto culture through my immigrant eyes!" Today I'd get murdered on social media for this. But we are funny, and my Jewish friends were like, "How did you know Jewish mothers were like that without one yourself?" No, my mother wasn't Jewish but she knew a lot of Jews in NY, and she told me about them, and apparently I nailed it :)
We are so wonderfully different here, and I want to see us return to where it was in the mid-oughts when we could talk to each other like normal people without having to worry about saying something 'stupid' (i.e., only offensive to the professionally offended).