” Where are you from ? “, the ordinary racism of the primaries on Tinder

The year I turned fifteen, I spent a summer at the Perche, staying with an aunt whose house contains my childhood memories.

Since all the other adults were away that summer, my aunt and her husband took me to a cocktail party one evening, with some rather snobbish friends who, I remember very well, had a certain agility in raising their elbows.

Ordinary racism endured since childhood

I had fun, because I liked the presence of adults and the alcoholic atmosphere. My aunt introduced me to her Parisian friends who spent their weekends at the Perche.

One of them came up to me, gently pinched my cheek, adding:

“How cute is this little Afghan girl! »

I will never forget this reflection, which in addition to being heavily erroneous about my origins, it was something creepy, without me really knowing how to put it into words.

I soon realized that the problem lay in reducing myself to my physical particularity (my skin color and my features) instead of simply considering myself a human being.

I was a little girl “not from here”and even though this gentleman’s tone sounded more like fascination to me than revulsion, he treated me differently because of my skin color and features.

In short words, he had managed to make me feel like an inquisitive animal, an educated monkey.

A little surprising in 2008, but good.

Reducing a person to his physical and ethnic particularities

I had already noticed it as a child, having attended a school that was 98% white, that my origins have aroused a lot of interest among other childrenespecially boys.

One of them, in particular, regularly addressed me: Hey the Chinese “.

Not only was he seriously confused about my origins, but he also delivered this phrase with the intonation usually reserved for insults.

What prompted him to choose China? My elongated eyes, which at the time my companions called oblique.

I remember, for once, explaining to this little boy that I wasn’t Chinese at all, but that my father was from Mauritius, a pretty country in the Indian Ocean where canaries made their nests.

A clarification from which the boy had absolutely nothing to shake since he called me ” The Chinese “ all the rest of CP, with astounding contempt for such a small child.

In an article published in 2020, I deciphered in detail how this type of sentence originated a very tenacious complex about my skin color and my physique in general.

Neither black nor white, I have spent most of my life suffering from origins that people cannot identify, which arouse a permanent and strenuous interest.

My skin color, coupled with my features and my name are subject to all questions.

What if you were treated just like a person, not a big-nosed mestizo with the name of a poisonous plant?

Ordinary racism in the evening

In 2014, I was at a student party, in a shitty bar playing Pitbull to fill the speakers, when I met the first person who drove me crazy.

Far from being amused by the very masculine atmosphere of the pub, where all the screens showed old football matches, I went for a cigarette in the smoking room with two girlfriends.

A boy rushed at me, stared at me with a mixture of longing and contempt before asking me in the most natural way in the world:

” Where are you from ? »

I replied exasperatedly that I was French, born in the 15th arrondissement of Paris.

“No, but that’s not what I meant. Where are you from?”

Before I could tell him where my parents were born was none of his business, since we hadn’t raised pigs together and he hadn’t even taken the time to say hello, he continued:

“Wait, go ahead I guess! You are Spanish? Oh no wait, Egyptian? Or maybe Lebanese? »

But what??

From now on my origins, or my personal story, that of my parents, their meeting, their possible difficulties due to distant countries of residence, their integration: all this had become just a simple game for a boy that I knew neither Eve nor Adam.

Since then, this phenomenon has occurred twenty times. At least.

The blurry line between curiosity and aggression

So I know. I KNOW the intent behind this question is not malicious.

I know that sometimes it is also positive, and reveals my interlocutor’s desire to be interested in me.

But what these people don’t understand, and this is normal because very little diversity education is done at school, is that reducing a person to his physical characteristics and the color of his skin is neither more nor less than ordinary racism.

Second Jerome Jamin, professor of political science at the University of Liège, this ordinary racism is the conclusion of prejudice.

He explains :

“Prejudice is above all a judgement, a belief produced by an individual or a group even before having the necessary knowledge to form an opinion or an idea on the matter.

In the face of a threat, a situation that one cannot control or that one does not understand, prejudice can mobilize ordinary racism, that is to say a more or less unconscious association of negative elements with skin colour, origin or the culture of a group of individuals. »

I find the term racist “microaggressions”. defines very well how I feel when people ask me where I’m from before even saying hello.

THE ” Where do you come from ? it’s boring even when it’s not mean

I repeat: I know these questions are rarely malicious.

Often a ” Where do you come from » is pronounced with jovial curiosity, which demonstrates the total benevolence of the interlocutor (more rarely in my case).

So, I almost never get angry, I try to do, as best I can, pedagogy by explaining why I think it’s inappropriate to ask this question of someone you don’t know..

I often run into misunderstandings, my interlocutor being convinced that his approach only shows interest in my “difference”, as I explained above.

Sometimes, fortunately, I have a chat partner who just wants to be more awake, and then we start exciting discussions together!

Tinder and ordinary racism

The place where I undoubtedly have the most reflections on my origins remains Tinder.

Indeed, playing the great origins game seems to be the favorite card of the men who approach methinking of themselves as original.

And honestly, I don’t have time to teach on Tinder!

So I delete any guy that starts with a:” Hey, what are your origins? and then list the countries I might be from.

Luckily I now have two articles to send to all those men who find it flattering to attribute imaginary origins to me, before deleting them completely and permanently from the application.

Who knows, maybe that will make them think?

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