A microracist question
Black and South Asian postwar immigrants to the UK and their descendants are often asked ‘Where are you from?’ – a question loaded with a queasy mixture of idle curiosity and unconscious racism.
Begun 2019 | Revised 2025 | 1,300 words | Contents
This post, a revised version of a section in my post Asian, Indian, Pakistani: what’s in a name?, refers to South Asian colonial and postcolonial history. African Caribbean colonial and postcolonial history is addressed in another post.
Where are you from?
Contents
Where are you from?
Introduction
Othering
Britons with brown or black skin are often asked:
Where are you from?
How should they respond to that loaded question? It’s a minefield.
For a white Briton like me, asking that question of a brown or black Briton who’s a stranger or casual acquaintance is a bad idea. Much worse is asking as a follow-up question:
Where are you really from?
Such questions are inconsiderately intrusive and, at best, microracist. Unpicked – though the questioner might not consciously realise it – the question is likely to mean:
Your skin colour and facial appearance suggests your ethnic origin isn’t north European. In which country are your family origins? Actually, though, I don’t really care where you’re from. My question is mainly rhetorical and microracist. I’m really just drawing attention to your otherness.
A 2022 high-profile incident involving a UK royal aide and a black British charity worker is a good example of this phenomenon.
The aide, ‘Lady’ Susan Hussey, widow of former BBC chairman ‘Baron’ Hussey, close friend of ‘King’ Charles, ‘Queen’ Camilla and the late ‘Queen’ Elizabeth, and godmother to heir ‘Prince’ William, resigned after the incident.
The incident supports Meghan Markle’s implied claim of racism in the royal household; and implies widespread casual racism amongst the ruling class.
If the question, as in that case, seems offensively rhetorical, the asker’s bluff can be called: ‘Why do you want to know?’
Where are you from?
Not so easy to answer
It can get complicated
If the question seems genuine, and worthy of a helpful response, it might nevertheless be not so easy to answer.
For an answer to be accurate – and understood – both parties need good geopolitical and historical awareness. It can get complicated.
For instance, If a British person of South Asian appearance is known to be a Muslim, they might not be – as might be assumed – of Pakistani or Bangladeshi origin. Many UK Muslims have origins in the Indian state of Gujerat. (Almost 20 percent of Indian people are Muslims.)
Where are you from?
Kenya and Uganda
Out of East Africa
Many South Asian people came to the UK from Kenya and Uganda. South Asian communities were established before partition in East Africa and the Caribbean, mainly in Kenya, Uganda and Trinidad. They were there because of another piece of clumsy and careless social engineering by the Brutish Empire: indentured servitude.
Between 1834 and 1917, many people were induced to move from India to other colonies as indentured labourers for the empire. Unsurprisingly, the conditions were harsh and the wages low. The workers were derogatively called ‘coolies’.
Indian indentured labourers, seeking to escape the poverty and famine frequent during colonial rule, came mainly from the Punjab and Bengal regions (both later severed during partition).
On completing their indenture, some Indian people stayed on in Africa or the Caribbean. They were joined by family members and formed thriving expatriate communities, albeit protected by the brutal stranglehold of empire.
After those colonies gained independence, many South Asian residents moved to the UK. Those in Uganda were famously expelled by Idi Amin. In Kenya, harsh changes to citizenship rules prompted mass voluntary emigration.
Those UK immigrants, whilst identifying by religion, often also identify by their diaspora community. For instance, people may identify as Kenyan Muslims.
My South Asian Muslim wife, when asked ‘Where are you from?’, sometimes says ‘Nairobi’. Her ethnicity is Punjabi but she was born in Kenya and spent her childhood there.
The person asked that question could give an informative reply, such as:
-
My family origins are Punjabi Muslim in what’s now Pakistan. In the late 1800s my grandfather went from the Punjab to work in what’s now Kenya. Our family lived there before coming to the UK in the late 1960s.
They could summarise it: ‘Pakistan’. But the question is more likely to provoke a passive-aggressive and deliberately obtuse reply, such as, ‘I’m from Leicester – where are you from?’ (or the deliberately annoying ‘from my mother’s womb’).
Where are you from?
Why are you here?
Racism is never far below the surface
The question ‘Where are you from?’ might seem like casual curiosity framed as a friendly enquiry, but it’s microracism – at best.
To unpick it further, behind that innocent-seeming question – though, again, the questioner might not consciously realise it – lies a worse question:
Why are you here?
The questioner might therefore reasonably be told to fuck off, or be given the pithy retort that emerged from antiracist immigrant activism:
If you’re asking why I’m here, we’re here because you were there’.
Where are you from?
Why don’t you go back there?
There it is
The hidden question, ‘Why are you here?’ at least offers the possibility of debate and reason; but behind that lurks the racist rhetorical question:
Why don’t you go back there?
For postwar immigrants to the UK and their descendants, such racism is never far below the surface.
Note: My post Racism explained as a redundant instinct suggests racism is a redundant anti-stranger instinct revived and twisted by colonialism and postcolonialism – and, sadly, provoked by the postwar mass immigration carelessly engineered by a patrician government. We anti-racists choose to reject and oppose that twisted impulse and to embrace our brilliant multicultural society.
Where are you from?
Conclusion
Don’t answer
Thoughtful white Brits aware of all that – or just wary of the social minefield – don’t ask that awkward, loaded question. But it does get asked.
If I was a British person of colour asked by a white person, ‘Where are you from?’, and the question seemed intrusive, I’d want to challenge it, but it in a non-hostile way.
I’d initially bat it back by – politely – saying, ‘How do you mean?’ If they indicated they were asking about my ethnic origin rather than my place of residence, I’d ask – still politely, if possible:
Why do you want to know?
The questioner might well find it difficult to explain themselves. Serves them right.
British people of colour people also ask the question, ‘Where are you from?’ of each other. The purpose is to find out the other’s origins: country, religion, region, town, caste, class, whatever.
That’s a different can of worms – and it doesn’t excuse white Brits asking that question. As always, context is crucial. The context is the white west and – as always – racism is prejudice plus power.
Where are you from?
Postcript
Bookish
After writing this post, I came across a 2024
book, Where Are You From? No, Where Are You Really From? by British mixed-ethnicity teacher and writer Audrey Osler.
Osler takes the question seriously, exploring her complex Empireland* family heritage, but she starts by explaining how that question can undermine one’s sense of belonging and nationality with its implied accusation:
You don’t belong here – you’re not British
Clearly, not everyone asking that question is aware of the toxic smog it stirs up – but ignorance is no excuse. Osler suggests a barbed comeback: having answered (or not answered) the question, turn it around and ask:
Where are you from?
* Note: The resonant name Empireland was used by award-winning British journalist Sathnam Sanghera as the title of his 2021 best-selling book, which shows how empire shaped modern Britain – but is now weirdly absent from mainstrean cultural awareness.
The End
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