I’m from Canada so everyone except for the indigenous originally came from somewhere else. I love it when people ask my about my roots, but someone told me it was rude.
The way I do it is I ask “Are you from [city we are currently in]?” The immigrants and visitors say no and I get to ask where they’re from. The locals say yes and don’t get offended. There’s no presumption, no implication.
I need to use this because I’m always awkward trying to figure out ways to get people to open up. I work with a couple of Asian guys at work, and one of the guys is VERY open about his background. I could write an essay on his life from age 13 to 60. The other guy is a complete mystery. I’ve worked closely with him for 3 years and I still have no idea about his background. A few years ago he told me he was taking two weeks off “to go back home” and I thought that this was my chance to find out more, I asked “where’s home?”. And he replied “L.A.”.
A friend of mine gets asked that all the time, cause he’s brown-skinned with dark, curly hair in Germany. There’s the implication that although he’s a German citizen and was born and lived in Germany all his life, his “roots” are somewhere else, and therefore he isn’t a “real German”.
If you get asked that question constantly due to your looks, it gets annoying quickly, cause it implies the question whether you fully belong in this country, so keep that in mind.
So here’s the thing. I wouldn’t view it as impolite in all cases. It just… depends on the context a lot.
I have no love for my cultural heritage at all. The reason I came to Canada was to get away from… all that, right? So if you’d ask me excitedly about my “roots”, I would give exceedingly one worded answers hoping that you’d drop the topic. I don’t want to glorify the culture I grew up in, because there’s nothing to glorify. Ah, now if you wanted to have a sociological discussion about it, I would be very interested in talking with you. So as I said, “context”, right?
Often, racist white folk also tend to ask about “culture” as a sly way to remind non white folks that they “aren’t really Canadian” or whatever. Yeah, it makes no logical sense to do that, but well… It happens. So you know… It depends.
Yeah I honestly think its best to just let people offer up that information if they’re interested in sharing it, which they often do after talking to them a few times. I don’t get asked questions like that but I do get questions about other peoples ethnicity which I find pretty annoying, like “are they from China” or something like that. I’m like I have no idea they’ve never mentioned it
