Try not being white. My wife gets asked "are you Chinese???" by some random every time she's in the midwest.
I realise this might sound negative or naive-for-the-sake-of-political-commentary, but it isn't. I legitimately do not understand what the parent says.
I mean, I understand it literally, but the statement seems to me to convey some meaning that I am unable to decipher.
Perhaps it's because I'm not from the US?
Imagine random people coming up to you and asking you "where you're from" and "what's your homeland like" and so on, just on the basis of your appearance.
Especially if you're "from" Seattle and your "homeland" is just like here but with less weirdos treating you like a fucking zoo exhibit.
It's supposed to come across as a polite curiosity, but for many people, it comes across as a "midwestern nice" way of reminding you you're different and don't belong. Or, in the best case, simply annoying and vaguely insulting.
FWIW both intentions and perceptions matter in human communication, so neither side of this possibly miscommunicated hostility is necessarily "right" or "wrong". But swolchok's point stands none-the-less.
That's what I am unable to do based on what he wrote. I am unable to infer anything from it.
Where I'm from, that type of question is never a negative, and everyone is subjected to it in the starting phases of all social interactions.
That's probably why I'm having problems inferring anything from the comment, because it's supposed to convey a negative about something I view as exclusively positive.
Plenty of countries deal with xenophobia and racism, but it always feels a little different in the US because as endemic as it is, people do ostensibly agree that it is wrong and strive to call out and condemn it.
At least, I've always thought they did...
It's hard to tell if that's a big part of it, but I suspect that it is.
But there also isn't really anywhere that I've found which seems both implicitly tolerant and kind/friendly/open-armed, so...jeez, I don't know. Maybe it still wouldn't be so bad to go somewhere where I'm not the implicit enemy, bad guy, danger, what-have-you. I mean, it hurts; after some point, you just break down when it comes to thinking things that far through.