i'm a german. period.

i know that non-white people in the u.s. get asked where they're from all the time and i've heard many incredibly offensive stories concerning my american-born friends being probed about where they're "really" from. interestingly enough, until yesterday i hadn't heard such a conversation take place here. i would venture that that's largely because the level of offense is different when one has an accent that clearly marks them as foreign, and also because people tend to assume here that brown=turkish, though that's rather often not the case. and of course, even if one does have turkish ancestry, identity is still of course completely complicated, etc. etc. in any case, i overheard this conversation in the changing room at the gym yesterday:

two women (one pale-skinned, one darker-skinned) were talking in accent-free german about their kids and playing outside and wishing it were sunnier. the non-white woman said something about how her son's hair turns nearly blond in the summer and how cute that is. the other woman briefly paused, then said something about her kids' hair. then she asked "so where are you from, actually?" (as though this question would answer the ever so pressing mystery of why this darker woman might have a blond son) and the other woman answered, "germany." "right, but, i mean..." "oh, berlin." "yes, okay, but..." "actually, i prefer not to say anything beyond that, because the fact is that i was born and raised here just like you and that's all you need to know about me. i'm german. period." then she just kind of casually switched back to talking about her son and the other woman took it in stride and the interchange seemed to blow over for the time being.

i found this conversation interesting both because of the tactlessness of the woman doing the asking and also because of the strength of the answer given by the other woman. her resolve to simply not engage with the question as well as her swiftness of response indicates that she must get asked that all the time, most likely because she was clearly not turkish, and also clearly not white german. but if you heard her speak for two minutes you can tell that she's a berliner, sooo, what's the point of asking where else she's from? and this brings us to why this question is offensive in the first place. i love to know where people are from, i love to know family history, i love to talk about travel, migration, and personal history, so i ask where people are from all the time. but i'm also very aware that context and framing are very important, and that sometimes asking about family history directly overrides the identity of the person you're talking to. by asking about the gym woman's family history, the other woman was basically asking "why would you, as a black woman, have a son with blond hair?" and clearly, the implicit biases bound up in this question are huge. but it's also clear that she didn't mean offense, and that she spoke before thinking. which i suppose is why the other woman's refusal to grant information was so interesting, but her ease of moving back into conversation let the questioner off the hook. basically - i'm not going to give you that detail just so you can build a picture of who i am based on my (as germans say) "migration background," but i will continue to talk to you as a person. her identity is german, she's a german. period.

this interchange also made me reflect on a brief conversation my friend marissa and i had in the bathroom (all the interesting conversations happen in these intimate women's spaces... hmm) after the harry belafonte interview, with a jamaican woman who had also been part of the studio audience. the woman was very moved by the interview (which i found moving but also totally bizarre - another case of how weird germans are with dealing with race issues) and commented to us about the fact that belafonte is "a proud jamaican, but also proud american, and a proud black man." in such a compact way, she had covered his heritage, his personal identity, and his racial identity, and was granting him the right to be proud of all three. while i recognize that it's absolutely not easy to always embrace all such elements of one's person, i do still feel that it's easier to do so in the u.s. than in a place like germany. the terms of the debate are simply different here, with integration as a main focal point, and citizenship still largely based on lineage rather than birthright. and then of course there's the whole nazi past that makes it hard for anyone to be a proud german. ak, it's all so complicated. well, for now, i'll stick to being a proud new mexican who's happy to be living in this fair, if identity-confused land.