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ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: But there are some questions you just shouldn't ask or at least not like that.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: I'm Elena Hudgins Lyle.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Let's get inappropriate.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Our producer, Cindy Long, is joining us today.

HARVINDER WADHWA: She edits our podcast and takes special pride in editing out my jokes.

CINDY LONG: Wow, Harv, I mean, if they were better, maybe I would have kept them in but…

HARVINDER WADHWA: That you're not from here?

HARVINDER WADHWA: Right.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Ah.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Do any stories stand out to you of a time you were asked this?

HARVINDER WADHWA: Right.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Oh, OK.

HARVINDER WADHWA: In Canada, we always talk about weather, well, this is, I would say equivalent to that but a little more personal.

CINDY LONG: Mhm. I think that there are tons of things that we could make small talk about. And if this question does make people uncomfortable, you know, should we still use it as frequently as we do? In a lot of situations, it does lead to cool conversations. But at the same time, when I'm asked the question, my body immediately tenses. So maybe there's more to it than asking about the weather. I don't think that they're on equal playing fields as types of small talk.

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ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Eternity Martis is a journalist and author in Toronto. She wrote the bestselling memoir They Said This Would Be Fun about moving to a smaller town for university and the racism she faced there. Just as a heads up, Eternity talks about some tough experiences with this question.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Wow.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Eternity, I think Toronto takes pride in saying that we are the most multicultural city in the world. So maybe because people are from so many cultures here, people are just more interested to learn someone else's background.

ETERNITY MARTIS: I feel like I've been having this conversation a lot since I moved back to Toronto the last couple of years where I get really riled up when I'm asked this question. And people are like, “I'm just asking you a question.” And I realise I get defensive. I think just even though we have this large multicultural city that we live in, the fact that this has been going on for so long, like before, you know for me at least, before you introduce yourself, before anyone gets a chance to know you, they want to know where you're from. And especially I find that this is most bothersome in dating, because if someone asks you that question, I immediately assume it's something to do with, like, exotification. And it usually is. Because it means they're looking for a certain type of person with a certain type of mixed race background. So it becomes this very loaded question, at least to me what that question means. It has so many different meanings, can come from so many different places and has many different intentions behind it.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: What are, would you say, the most common intentions or meanings of this question you find?

ETERNITY MARTIS: OK so for me, the most common one is that you look Black but not fully Black so where are you from? And then second, where are you from, as in we don't see a lot of people like you so where are you from? And not from in terms of your city, what is your actual heritage? Third is where are you from, so that I can, like, tell my friends that I met this girl who's like half this, half that, half this, and three quarters that. And so it's those three. And then I think that for those people who are racially ambiguous, “where are you from?” is kind of like this nicer way of asking, like, you know, “what's your background?” So I would say it's those three. So it starts, the intention starts pretty OK, and then it gets into more like insidious types of intentions after a bit.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Is it normally insidious or is just curiosity? I'll give you a bit of my example. I've been here for over twenty years and as you can see me, I am also not from here, the way that here is, right? But I've never been asked that question and I feel kind of offended. Nobody cares about me! Nobody has any interest in me. And had some people asked me, I would have made some stories, some nice stories so that they can do fetishicization or whatever it is.

ETERNITY MARTIS: You want to be exoticized.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Exactly. That's the term.

ETERNITY MARTIS: You're just meeting a ton of enlightened people who are like, I shouldn't ask that question.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Oh my god.

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You're having a casual conversation with a stranger, they're not that interested in you to find out your life story. And unfortunately, if you want that question answered, that's what you're going to get. I do have my default answers. I usually say “I’m from everywhere.” I feel like it's going to take a lot of energy. It’s just a long conversation to have.

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EVA JEWELL: Boozhoo kina weya, Waawiyebii'jigan Kwe n'dizhnikaaz, Deshkan Ziibing n'doonjibaa, ma'iingan n'doodem. Anishinaabekwe n'daaw. Zhaagnaashi nooswin Eva Jewell. My name is Eva Jewell, I am Anishinaabekwe from Deshkan Ziibing. I am an assistant professor at Ryerson University. I'm an associate fellow at the Yellowhead Institute, and I am happy to be here.

HARVINDER WADHWA: So Eva, what has been your experience with this question?

EVA JEWELL: Yeah, so I, I speak from the perspective of a person who is from a First Nation community. And so in social interactions amongst people that are linked to First Nations communities, they often ask, “where are you from?” and it's an opportunity to talk about who you're related to, who you know, who you're connected to. Basically who are your people and this is something even my mom and my grandma have said, “who are their people? What family are you from?” and so on.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: OK, so can you talk more about locating? Like, why is it important in Indigenous communities to exchange, like, locations and talk about kind of the geography of where you're from?

EVA JEWELL: Well, I think for us, we have relationship based societies. And so it kind of tells you a little bit about the connections that you do have that you maintain and your responsibilities. And it's these genealogies that we have to understand that it has another layer to it that is actually related to our systems of governance, our systems of what compose our social systems and our kinship systems. And that could be related to our responsibilities of our clans or the house that we are from, if you're from a nation that has a house system. And so these are actually connected to land and places and medicines or animals or things like that. So when we start getting into kind of the philosophical aspect of where you're from, it's actually got a lot more deeper meaning to it for Indigenous peoples.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah, there's a lot of layers there. That's really cool.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Does it matter who asks the question, whether it's only Indigenous people when they ask you this question, you like it? Or if the person like me asks the question, you like it or you're okay with it. And then if a white person asks this question that it's a different story?

EVA JEWELL: That's a great question. So for me personally, where I'm located, anybody can ask me that question and I'm OK with it because I have a very clear connection to my First Nation community and it's not really a problem. Actually, it was interesting when you sent the email out and I had to think about, oh right, this is a loaded question for some people, especially, you know, racialized Canadians who may not be made to feel like they don't belong here, especially when it's a white person asking that question. But for me, as a person who's located and, you know, has a history, you know, in the lineage to a community that's been here before colonialism, it really doesn't matter who asks me that question. So you could ask me that question and I would have to explain a little bit more where that is that I'm from, but it wouldn't be problematic in any sense for me personally. Now, if another Indigenous person asked me that, it's got more layers and more excitement to it because there's an opportunity for connection and an opportunity to describe kinship and define where it is that we connect to one another.

HARVINDER WADHWA: So, so my second question is that if an Indigenous person doesn't ask you this question, do you feel offended?

EVA JEWELL: It's certainly a missed opportunity, I will say that. I will be offended and just think that you don't want to connect to me. Maybe I would notice the omission, if it were some other social cues in the conversation led me to notice that omission. But no, I don't think I would be offended.

HARVINDER WADHWA: You wouldn't consider, and here I'm just assuming, that you wouldn't assume that that person is whitewashed or something like that you know?

EVA JEWELL: Oh, definitely not. You know, whitewash is an interesting concept to bring up because now we're getting into the complications of settler colonialism and how some Indigenous people don't get to grow up within their communities and they may not have these same social cues or same socialization. And so it's always something that we have to think about and be considerate of.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Wow.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Really?

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

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HARVINDER WADHWA: Yes, and I am interested to know if there is an appropriate way to ask it.

KEVIN NADAL: I mean asking someone where they're from might seem like a very harmless type of question, you know, as simple as, you know, asking someone what their name is or so forth. But for a lot of people hearing something like that conveys that you're not really a part of this country. In the U.S. context, you're not really American, you're not really Canadian. You're so exotic. You must not be from here. The presumption is that you're not really part of, you know, of this community. And so they may already be on the defense of, you know, what is this person really trying to ask me? I mean, so on one hand, you have somebody who just may be curious about either where somebody legitimately is from or what somebody’s racial ethnic background is. I mean, for the person who's receiving the question for them to already presume that the question is coming from, you know, a less benevolent place, that might be coming from a more racially charged place and so then there is the conflict. And what microaggressions often are, as they are conflicts between, you know, what somebody may intend to be communicating and what somebody else is receiving.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: With that difference between intent and how something is received, I feel like sometimes people get confused when something they didn’t intend to be offensive is called a microaggression. Like, what would you say to someone who says, “if I don’t have a bad intent, how can that harm someone?”

KEVIN NADAL: Yeah. You know, one of the best analogies that somebody shared with me about this idea of intention is this is that if I was walking into a building and I didn't see that there was somebody who was right behind me and I slammed the door behind me and it then hit the person in the face, I would say sorry. I didn't mean to do it. I didn't honestly see them as they were walking behind me or any number of things that we do to people that we didn't mean to do. And so why would this be any different? And so if I say something that was meant to be a compliment or meant to be harmless or even nice and benevolent, but I realized that it caused them some sort of pain, why can't I acknowledge that that still hurt them?

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: That's a super good analogy like I wouldn’t have thought of it that way. I was curious about why this question is such a staple of small talk, you know, like why you meet someone and you're like, “where are you from?” Like, why is that such a normalized thing?

KEVIN NADAL: When we don't know what to say, like your body and your mind, you know, it feels tense and an unease. And you try to say something, you know, what we often would say is to break the ice or just to, you know, start off conversation. But when you're awkward, you really don't have a lot of control over that. You know, I find that when people are awkward, that's why most microaggressions may occur, and I shouldn't say most, but that's when a lot of microaggressions may occur. They're just saying whatever comes to their mind first, and sometimes that is something that is racially biased. But, you know, just this idea of “where are you from?” being small talk. I mean, I think it could be small talk. I think when you remove the cultural implications and the dominant group or if there is no dominant group, I should say that it becomes very innocuous talk. So, for example, like if if I'm with somebody who has pretty much the same identities as me. They are queer, people of colour, let's say they're even Filipino American and somebody says, “where are you from?” I'll take it exactly as that and I'll tell them what neighbourhood I'm from or what city I'm from. But if it's a stranger and the person has many more dominant identities than I do, I might be more cautious of it.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Right.

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I decided to start the project in 2018 because I spent my whole life being asked that question “where are you from?” I really was quite alienated by that question. It was something that was asked very casually and flippantly. So it made me feel like when I did have a strong emotional response to it or I did feel marginalized by being asked that question constantly, that maybe I was overreacting or becoming too emotional.

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HARVINDER WADHWA: Exactly.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: Yeah, it's really interesting to me to see how this question can lead to so many different experiences for people, you know, to hear Eternity say that I've really never had a good experience with this question. And then hearing Eva's context and how this question has led to so many connections.

CINDY LONG: For me, I don't think it's a bad question. I think it's definitely going to still persist in society. But I hope that, like, we can all think more about it. And me personally, I would rather make small talk about something else. Maybe a good topic for small talk for people is like, “hey, let's debate whether this question is appropriate or not.”

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: There you go!

HARVINDER WADHWA: I'm Harvinder Wadhwa.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: And I'm Elena Hudgins Lyle.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Thanks for getting inappropriate for us.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: A huge thanks to our guests Eternity Martis, Eva Jewell and Kevin Nadal. You heard voice notes from Carlos Krefft, Arman Aghbali, and Sabina McKenna.

HARVINDER WADHWA: Every episode has an accompanying webcomic and this week it was illustrated by Grace D. Chin. You can find it on Instagram @IQ_podcast. Also, make sure to visit cbc.ca/iqpodcast for a full transcript of this episode.

ELENA HUDGINS LYLE: The tenacious troupe behind this podcast are Sabrina Bertsch, Cindy Long and myself. The show is mixed by Andrew Norton. Our chase producer is Sarah Melton and our digital producer is Judy Ziyi Gu. Our senior producer is Geoff Turner and our executive producer is Arif Noorani.

HARVINDER WADHWA: An inappropriate question is like having all your fantastic jokes cut out by your editor.

Transcript: Inappropriate Questions - Season 3, Episode 2

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