What’s Wrong with Asking “Where Are You From?”
Rakshitha Arni Ravishankar
Asking someone, “Where are you from?” can seem like a very innocuous question but can quickly turn into a microaggression. It reduces someone’s identity to a social group, a city, or a culture, and that can trigger feelings of alienation. Microaggressions can also reinforce differences and magnify unequal power structures. What can you do instead? Rethink your own unconscious bias, listen more deeply to what people want to (willingly share), and apologize if you hurt someone (even unintentionally).
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Harvard Business Review
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Summary.

Asking someone, “Where are you from?” can seem like a very innocuous question but can quickly turn into a microaggression.

It reduces someone’s identity to a social group, a city, or a culture, and that can trigger feelings of alienation. Microaggressions can also reinforce differences and magnify unequal power structures.

What can you do instead? Rethink your own unconscious bias, listen more deeply to what people want to (willingly share), and apologize if you hurt someone (even unintentionally).

Four years ago, I moved to New York to start pursuing my journalism degree at a graduate program in the city. I spent my first week researching and reporting an audio story about the local farmer’s market. When I handed it in, my professor looked down at the script I had written, looked back up at me, and said, “Your English is good. Where are you from?”