There’s a reason I don’t socialize with twenty-somethings in large groups. As Ray points out, stupidity is not a crime, but I would most certainly like to make it a capital offense. Follow.
After declining many invitations to parties hosted by younger work colleagues, I attended one such function last night to help put aside any notions that I’m an anti-social snob when it comes to this set of people and to help a guy I really like celebrate his birthday. AW is a great and funny person, despite his choice in “wingmen.”
Owing to appearances made by some old (and older) friends and the ever-cute Tchoupitoulas (a.k.a. my little Tooples, whom I’m going to dress as a Mardi Gras Indian for Barkus), the party wasn’t all that bad. AW’s girlfriend made him a great cake, and I met some NOLA newbies and enjoyed talking about the local music scene with them.
As the party winded down, my friend Dave announced, “I feel old here, I’m heading to the Half Moon. Care to join me?” I nodded, grabbed my coat and hat and began to say my goodbyes to everyone still present. Escape was imminent, freedom right on the other side of that large white door, when suddenly, a young white engineer I’d met only last night called out, “Hey, May-tree, before you leave, where are you from?”
Oh dear. After approximately three decades of being asked the same question, one would think I have a standard response and can expertly avoid the hamster-caught-in-headlights look that takes over my visage. No. To this day, I am utterly perplexed by the reasoning (or lack thereof) of the person asking the question and the words that run like a stock ticker throgh my frontal lobe are: Why me? WTF?! Why me? WTF?! Why me? WTF?! …
My thoughts returned to AW’s and I said, “Well, I’m from New Orleans now, but before this, I lived in Wisco …”
“Nonononono! Where are YOU from? Where is your skin color from?” Oh, that’s a new one, I’ve never been asked the ethnicity question quite like that before. For the cherry on top, the young man took my right hand and rubbed the top of it with his thumb, as if to point out the particular hue to which he referred.
Everyone within a ten-foot radius of me felt the sudden freeze, while my brain processed whether to be Ms. Smartypants (by explanation that my complexion arises from the type and amount of melanin in my skin and how much time I spend in the sun) or to go in for the kill. “You know, that was a very rude thing to say,” I said quietly, as I ripped my hand back, my eyes turned to slits and Towanda, Goddess of Perpetual Ass-Whipping, awoke from her peaceful slumber in the fiery depths of my soul. “There are many more polite ways to ascertain someone’s ethnicity, but what you said will not fly.”
The lad was itching for an audience with Towanda for he continued, although with a nervous stammer, “You see, you see, I’m going to India next year, and I wanted to know, out of curiosity.”
“In that case, you should have asked that way. Not where my skin color is from.” I turned on my heel and walked straight out the front door muttering something about kids these days and corporate hiring practises … but not before letting every party invitee of the older variety know exactly what the clueless young fellow said to me. After enduring several wide-eyed gasps and withering glances in his direction, the poor guy scurried away from sight.
A large part of me wanted to save the land of my ancestors from a similar faux pas and yearned to tell the kid not to visit India. I let that one go, however. It might do the little twerp a world of good to get his feet wet in that planet beyond middle America, to finally take off the self-centering blinders. The question is: Will he take a good look? This is why humans hope, I suppose.
Yikes! I’m guessing he was improved by the exchange, maybe even learned something.
Always the same goddamn thing, ain’t it? Then they wonder why we turn into screeching banshees.
Wow.
Where is your skin color from?
Well, he gets an A for creativity. That’s a new one to me too. Funny how no matter how many times shit like this happens, it always feels like the first time you’ve had to figure out how to respond. I have noticed though, that I’m running out of tactful and pleasant ways to respond in such situations. lol
I have the opposite problem. I wonder where my skin color went.
I’ll be back soon, and the inbred youngsters they seem to be hiring will be taken to task. Of course a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent hardly seems fair… I wonder what kind of imprint my new ring makes?
One can hope it was booze causing his common-sense neurons to misfire.
I think you should start turning the question around – after you tell them your background, ask “What about you?” White skin is just as vague an indicator of one’s origins as any other skin color. Might do people well to remember that – that we all came from somewhere. And lead to some interesting conversations.
Also: is your name really that hard to pronounce? People know how to say ‘mai tai’ right? Or maybe they’re thinking it should be pronounced like ‘mail’. Still.
Damn. What year is this?
People can be so dumb. It’s amazing that even adults these days think that nothing should stand in the way of their infantile curiosity. This guy probably thinks it’s OK to go up to a person in a wheelchair and say, “what’s wrong with you?” I read somewhere that one good way to respond to rude questions and prying is to turn it back around on them: “Why do you ask?” or “Why do you want to know?” I’ve tried it, it definitely stops their mouths from moving.
This is one I’ll never be able to understand … undoubtedly because of my unmistakeable Caucasianess. Whereas I actually think I would welcome questions about my ancestry if they seemed innocuous enough (Spain, in general, thank you … Balaeric Islands by way of Havana, to be specific, although mingled with so much Italian, German, and English since the family came to N.O. in 1856 that only the surname is Hispanic-sounding), I also have never had my skin color used as a reason to single me out for worse-than-average treatment. Unless you count all that time I spent trying to get in pickup basketball games on the Ninth Ward playground courts of my youth. Or my elementary school days in the NOPS system, for that matter. LOL
In the lout’s defense, he DID first ask “Where are you from?” which, coupled with the admittedly inelegant clarification attempt when you answered the question “Where have you lived?” instead could kind of have tipped you off that the “skin color” query was his uncultured attempt to find out your country of origin … for some reason. I could understand your still being upset over his question if his reason had turned out to be “I’m glad you’re from India, because I hate those lousy Sri Lankans” rather than because he was going to India and likely wanted to learn something of the culture before going. And you clearly want to share aspects of the culture with us, as you drop some pretty interesting references on a fairly regular basis … one of the reasons I keep reading this blog.
I guess what I’m getting at is that his transgression seems more one of being really clumsy in the wording of a question rather than being one of trying to stereotype a person due to their skin color, which seems a minimal offense to me. But then again, like I said before … I’m a white guy in a country where that’s usually been the ticket to not being treated like crap, so I don’t begin to guess what a crude reference to skin color means to someone whose ethnicity (or more accurately, who has had others act differently because of their ethnicity) is different than mine. I’m just saying maybe we cut the guy a little slack because the reason he wanted to know if you were from India wasn’t particularly loathsome even if the way he asked pegged him as a doofus.
Puddinhead, I’m convinced that the guy was merely being dumb and not racist, but stupidity is:
a) never intended, and
b) not an excuse to be intrusive (by taking and rubbing my hand), make me feel like some exotic creature and ask me where my skin color is from.
As for your Caucasianness (and I am Caucasian, too, BTW), your skin color came from somewhere just as mine did. All of ours do. In fact, it’s equally heinous to classify someone who looks like you as categorically white when you have such an interesting ethnic background yourself. Balaeric Islands by way of Havana? Wow, tell me more.
Gee, M, Kali is pretty exotic. Perhaps he’d like to rub HER hand if she happens to visit him. Nice if we’d have cameras there, and which hand do you think he’d choose?
For the record, my skin color comes from what used to be freckles that are quickly turning into age spots.
All we know is that the family (my Dad’s, anyway) lived in Mahon on the island of Menorca (next to the better known Majorca, where the fake pearls come from … LOL), and my great-great-great-grandfather left Menorca for Havana (for two years) and then on to New Orleans in 1856. Interestingly, when he entered the US he apparently gave his full name in the Spanish manner — first name, father’s surname, and then mother’s surname. You’ve seen this, I’m sure … Jose Perez y Gomez, for example. Well…the functionary fills out all of the paperwork with the first name…followed by the last name he sees on the papers he was presented–my g-g-g-grandfather’s MOTHER’S family name. So from that point on, g-g-g-grandfather’s branch of the family suddenly has his MOTHER’S last name rather than his FATHER’S. And that’s the surname I have. Also…g-g-g-grandfather is buried in St. Roch Cemetery, right on the main aisle in front of the Shrine…with his proper first name and his FATHER’S last name on the tomb.
You should have simply told him “It came from a complex chemical square dance of melanin, folates and ultra-violet radiation.” Then everyone could watch his brain try to comprehend that. Hours of fun for a party!
-M
When he grabbed your hand, maybe he was trying to see if the brown would rub off?
Over Thanksgiving, I was in Memphis. I was shopping for a new car, and so was my sister. She wanted to swing by a Nissan dealership, so we drove to the lot and started poking around. A Southin’ gentleman of a salesman came by and asked my sister what she was looking for.
“An Altima 3.5SE-R,” she replied.
“What? Why would you want that? The 2.5 is fast enough for anyone…175hp!”
“Because…the 3.5 is MORE FUN?” My sister rolled her eyes at me. I was flummoxed. He wanted to DOWNSELL us? WTF?
The guy is like, “hang on, I’m actually with a customer at the moment, but I’ll be with y’all in a moment. It’s one of those…orientals. We call ’em ‘too-highs.’ Because you know, whenever you mention a price to ’em, they go, ‘too high! price too high!’ ”
Our jaws dropped. The guy walked off.
We walked over to a Maxima. I said something like, “I don’t think we should deal with that guy,” and my sister agreed. We got into her car and started driving off, and the salesman came running up.
“Wait! Where are y’all going? I’m done now, I’ve got time.”
“Well, I don’t think we want to do business with you.”
“Why? Was it something I did?”
“Yeah. I think you’re a racist.”
“WHAT?” And then he walked off in a huff.
Later, I told this same story to my sister’s white father-in-law. His reaction was, “Oh, I don’t think he meant any harm by that.”
Of course he didn’t. BUT HE WAS STILL FUCKING STUPID. And if I can get a speeding ticket for being ignorant of the LAW, he should damn well be reamed out for being ignorant of his own attitudes.