Where Are You From? And Other Unintentional Harms
At a recent gathering with people from around the U.S. and other countries, a white woman learned I work as a racial equity coach. Immediately she asked what I thought of this: to connect and launch a conversation, she had just asked a brown man: 'Where are you from'? The man balked, clearly displeased, and turned the question back to her 'Where are you from'?
As she continued describing how she didn't mean to offend him, how it's customary in other countries to ask this, and how she could understand that the man might have some 'PTSD' from other microagressions, it occurred to me that she didn't want to hear my thoughts. She wanted me to know that she's not a bad person, and that she had good intentions.
I get it. I can't count how many times have I said (or thought), "But I didn't mean to!"
The issue of course has nothing to do with my intentions—it has to do with the harm I've caused. I believe the woman had every intention to connect in a friendly way, and her question in a different context would have opened a door. But what showed up between her question and his response was racism. The entire history of (especially antiBlack) racism on U.S. soil inserts itself between our intentions and their impacts...and things go awry.
There are opportunity a couple of opportunities here. One, ironically, it's just what the woman at the gathering initially wanted—to connect. For white folks, these moments of not getting it right are going to keep happening because racism has been both rendered invisible & steeped into us. So let's get skilled at reaching out across the gap, and take responsibility for the harm done, listen to the pain we caused, learn what to do differently next time, and apologize.
The other opportunity is to learn how this transformation from good intention to harm happens. My colleague james and I have a new workshop about this: Not Getting It Right: How Racism Creates a Gap Between White Intentions and Impacts.
Sept. 2022 Back to Blog Home
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