To ask the question of that person, while not asking it of others at the company whose experience in the area you also don’t know?
And if so, why?
Why should we be expected to pay attention only to the OP’s conscious intent, and not to their erroneous assumption?
And why, while focusing only on the OP’s intent, should we be expected to ignore any intent on the part of the co-worker, and focus only on how the OP may have interpreted a single word that the co-worker used?
– and I say ‘may have interpreted.’ The OP seems to have disappeared from the thread, but I don’t think we have any evidence that the OP interpreted the co-worker’s reaction as meaning that the OP was racist as part of their essential nature, despite the wording. The evidence we have is that the OP came here to ask
which seems to me an entirely reasonable reaction to being told that one said a racist thing, if one genuinely doesn’t understand what was wrong with having said it: but, not being deliberately a racist, wants to understand in order to make sure that they don’t do it again.
If they do it deliberately, yes. If they do it unthinkingly, they’re only bad people if, when called upon it, they then continue to do it; including because they refuse to think about it.
I don’t know why the OP hasn’t responded further to the thread; but I hope that they’re thinking about it.
The saying, it is better to say nothing (more) and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt comes to mind. Saying more would only dig a deeper hole quite honestly.
I don’t know that the OP was in a hole to begin with. Maybe they just got their question answered, and having figured out why the co-worker said they said something racist and what it is that they did wrong, they don’t feel the need to get involved in any further arguments.
As I said, coming to a place like this for help figuring that out is an entirely sensible thing to do.
I don’t know about “right” and “wrong”. I’d pitch things in terms of reasonable and unreasonable. Was it reasonable to think that the only person with Indian heritage might have some knowledge of India? Yes, I think so.
Would it be reasonable to assume they were an expert or that they would have knowledge? no.
Like the word “expert” has now been mysteriously abandoned from your version of what you think I was claiming?
I’m perfectly happy with the consistency of what I said.
Okay, which member of my wife’s family do you work with?
My wife, incidentally, refined the response for when people ask the utterly rude follow-up question, “No, where do your people come from?” To which she replies, “California.”
Native St. Louisans have a traditional ice-breaking question for strangers, “Where’d you go to high school?” Sounds relatively innocent, but anyone who’s lived in St. Louis knows that where and when someone went to high school pinpoints what neighborhood they grew up in, their approximate family wealth, what religion they were raised, and probably a half-dozen other tidbits demographers would pay to know.
Interesting. I had someone ask me what high school I went to just yesterday, as we were getting to know one another (at work, small world situation). I don’t know what that told the other person, but it makes me now think why they did not ask me what college I went to instead. Hmm.
The response from someone who’s asking the question innocently is something like, “Hey my cousin went there, Class of '99 I think.” The two of you have now bonded and can have a beer together.
My wife (the one from Cleveland) went to a high school with a name that isn’t shared by any in the St. Louis area. Sometimes when she tells people they react like a computer that’s been fed the wrong data.
Just to emphasize the racist nature of the forever foreign issue, I offer myself as a counter example.
One of my parents is an immigrant to the US. For my entire childhood, she was a “resident alien.” (Now a naturalized citizen.) We lived in her native country for several years when I was a kid, I went to school there, and I speak the language. She speaks English very very well, but does have a slight accent. I mention her nationality from time to time to friends and acquaintances and colleagues if it comes up. We are both white. She comes from a Western European country.
I have never ever been asked where I am “really” from. I have never been asked where she is from. People will talk to me or in front of me about the problem of “foreigners” moving here, or about “anchor babies,” etc., because no one thinks of me as having a “foreign” parent, even if they’ve been told her nationality.
If something came up at work involving her native country, I doubt most people would remember my connection to it, or that they would ask a question like the OP’s even if they did remember. Because the country isn’t seen as having such a foreign culture from ours – I don’t think the OP issue would be seen as one involving culture at all.
I do. I claim that distinguishing between a person who made a racist comment and a Racist is important. And that the first is a request that you change your behavior so as not to inadvertently harm others. Whereas the second is likely fighting words.
I claim that it’s helpful to recognize that it’s human nature to notice who is different from us, and who looks like those in power, and who doesn’t. But it’s possible to be aware of those tendencies and to treat coworkers as individuals, despite that. And that it’s easier to be careful if you are aware of your own prejudices.
And I further suspect that the co-worker who looks Indian is not unfriendly towards the OP, and worded his complaint the way he did because he respected the OP enough to think they might change.
Years ago my university sent me to Thailand for a few weeks; I was introduced at one of their Universities to a Thai student who spoke decent english (most didn’t at the time). Nobody ever asked me, but assumed because I am white that I didn’t speak Thai… they were correct. I assumed this student, who looked very Thai and had a strong accent when speaking english to me, could also speak Thai and could help me understand what the other students were saying. I was also correct. I suppose you could say we both made racist assumptions… but neither of us got offended at the other.
There’s a young Youtuber I’ve watched who now lives in Vietnam and is about as white as you can imagine, with red hair, blue eyes, etc. He also speaks fluent Vietnamese as a second language he picked up. His videos are collections of him walking around ordering food from vendors and stopping at small businesses to talk to locals. He’s pretty much always greeted in english, and always draws very surprised looks when he answers in Vietnamese. Such assumptions are made every day by millions of people… a lot of the time they are benign.
I have a stepson; I know his biological father has a family history of heart problems and that biodad himself suffered a heart attack in his 30’s and is now on permanent disability. I am going to assume that this family trait may also affect my stepson, and see to it both that his doctors and the kid himself knows about it. I’m not worried about hurting anyone’s feelings making such assumptions; I’d feel a lot worse if my kid dies in his 30’s from a treatable condition.
Perhaps you are referring to making assumptions about behavioral traits rather than physical traits… ok. I’ve noticed the kid shows signs of a bad temper and sense of entitlement same as his biodad has (which landed him in jail multiple times and to ultimately lose custody of him). Kid has not been taught or exposed to such behavior by mom or myself. I’m going to pay special attention and try to help the kid out early with what I assume are natural tendencies to certain behaviors, rather than just assume the behavior is part of a normal phase or just random dumb choices which will work themselves out by the time he’s grown.
This to me is genuinely interesting and confusing at the same time. You got offended at being asked about your looks… ok fair enough. But it was why you thought you were asked about your looks that offended you, not that you were asked about your looks.
The thing is this person still noticed your features and made an assumption you might be native, just like a white/yellow/black person would right? And you presumably judged them initially to be non-native by their looks as well which led you to believe they had some dumb reason to be asking you. It was only their story of also being native which came after you’d already been offended that led you to change your mind. So… is the lesson here that a plausible back-story is what makes a statement racist/offensive or not? What if that person’s story wasn’t actually true after all… who you go back to feeling offended?
If I try hard enough, I can put my mind through enough contortions to find the first two sentences of yours which I just quoted to be consistent with each other.
But it certainly isn’t immediately obvious that saying it’s reasonable to think they have knowledge and unreasonable to assume they have knowledge isn’t a contradictory statement.
Do you mean that it’s reasonable to think there’s some possibility they have knowledge, but unreasonable to feel at all certain that they do?
If that is what you mean, or I suppose even if it isn’t, do you also mean that you think it’s unreasonable to call them an expert? Which the OP said that they did.
And do you mean that you think it’s unreasonable to think that there’s some possibility that someone who doesn’t seem to you to have Indian background might know something about the subject?
Seems to me the point of those videos would be that a lot of the time they’re also wrong. I think your YouTuber is having fun upending people’s assumptions; that those people may be a little less likely to make them next time; and that that might be one reason why he’s doing this.
I have read various things, some of them quite funny, by people who speak a language that they don’t look like they understand and who have had people who assume they don’t know it say unpleasant things in their presence because they assumed those things would not be understood.
That’s a situation in which you know a great deal about the medical history; and in which you are not, I presume, assuming that the child must have that medical problem but only saying that his doctors should check for it. That’s so unrelated to the OP that I don’t see it as relevant.
And that one needs a whole lot of caution, because if people who know his family history assume that he’s going to show bad temper this may actually push him into doing so. If you come at it right, then you may be able to push him the other way; but if casual acquaintances and co workers all go around expecting him to blow up at any moment, or if you come at it wrong, that’s very likely to do damage.
The lesson is, as @puzzlegal had just said in the post which I was replying to, and which I included in a quote when answering it, that including somebody is different from othering them.
I’m partly face-blind. I’m not color-blind; I can recognize skin tone differences when they’re significantly different; but I may well not pick up on more subtle cues. I also know that adoption into Native American tribes can happen, as can intermarriage etc., and that not all genuine tribal members share the same appearance. I didn’t assume the person was non-native because of their looks, but because of my previous experiences in that particular locality (as well as others) which led me to assume that the person was othering me. And one lesson I take from that incident was that I shouldn’t make that assumption, but should instead, as the co-worker did in the OP, ask ‘why are you asking me that?’
We have the “being/behaving” distinction kind of playing that role in English. The co-worker’s complaint seems to have been not that the OP is racist, or is a racist (generally connoting even more intentionality and immutability), but rather that he was inadvertently behaving somewhat racist.
That’s a good point–and the co-worker was careful to say, “I think what you just said was racist,” not “I think you’re a racist” or even “I think you’re being racist.” If we’re going to get super-defensive over being called a racist, it’s paramount that we don’t imagine people saying that when they say something else.
This is all true, but If the outcomes of being accused of saying something racist (even inadvertently) or behaving in a racist way (even inadvertently or temporarily) is the same as an accusation of being a racist then it becomes a distinction without a practical difference.
As such it is understandable that people are very defensive about any accusation of the former. Especially when many seem determined to disregard considerations of context and intent (which is critical if one is to make that distinction between inadvertent offence and a true state of mind)
