Where are you from? A rather innocent question, isn’t it? Well… it depends. To many Irish, this question carries no emotional charge. At the same time, to many of my friends and colleagues who do not quite have the ‘typical Irish look’, this question evokes emotions, which can range from amusement to annoyance or frustration. So let’s unpack this a bit more, shall we?
"Where are you from?" is #2 on my List of Most Hated Questions, for the reasons described by you. By the way, I do not mind "Where are you from originally?", because in recognises that people come from different backgrounds and this matters. Same as for ethnically Irish people it matters if one is originally from Wexford or from Cork (especially if they are from Cork!), it matters that someone has cultural roots in Russia or Brazil or Germany.
My #1 most hated question, though, is "Do you go home much?", because it has an implicit assumption that I am just visiting here. It switches me into a defensive mode, having to explain that for 11 years now "home" is Dublin. Sometimes this is followed by clarification "do you go visit your parents?" which leads to even bigger confusion, because my parents now live in Lithuania (imagine this, two generations of the family emigrating into two different countries!). Anyway, the person asking always expects to get a short and simple answer, and instead gets a long and complicated story - not what they bargained for! Welcome to the era of global mobility (hope it comes back soon from the COVID pause).
"Where are you from?" is #2 on my List of Most Hated Questions, for the reasons described by you. By the way, I do not mind "Where are you from originally?", because in recognises that people come from different backgrounds and this matters. Same as for ethnically Irish people it matters if one is originally from Wexford or from Cork (especially if they are from Cork!), it matters that someone has cultural roots in Russia or Brazil or Germany.
My #1 most hated question, though, is "Do you go home much?", because it has an implicit assumption that I am just visiting here. It switches me into a defensive mode, having to explain that for 11 years now "home" is Dublin. Sometimes this is followed by clarification "do you go visit your parents?" which leads to even bigger confusion, because my parents now live in Lithuania (imagine this, two generations of the family emigrating into two different countries!). Anyway, the person asking always expects to get a short and simple answer, and instead gets a long and complicated story - not what they bargained for! Welcome to the era of global mobility (hope it comes back soon from the COVID pause).