Anonymous #1 10w

Yes, it happens often. People knowing Black Americans are American does not stop them from asking what African country we are “really” from, then judging us for not knowing because slavery severed those records. Asians and Latinos experience it too, but saying it mostly happens to them dismisses a very common Black American experience that you may simply not see in your own demographic.

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Anonymous #1 10w

“Where are you from” is something that is applied to people of visible immigrant origin to deny their Americanness. African Americans only exist as an ethnicity within the context of American racism and slavery unifying formerly disparate ethnic groups. Racism against African Americans is not based on trying to deny their Americanness, it’s done through other means.

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Anonymous OP 10w

That’s kind of wild to me I’ve never met anyone who is so clueless to ask something like that. Granted I’m from the south so maybe people actually know the history of African Americans as a community here more? I totally believe you if you’ve experienced that. That’s just so fuckin wild I didn’t know people were stupid enough to ask that.

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Anonymous #1 10w

I appreciate that you believe me, but your original claim is still historically wrong. You can’t visibly look like an immigrant; immigration is about birthplace and citizenship, not race. Black Americans were once legally denied citizenship, and asking what African country we’re “really” from still treats us as foreign. Our ethnicity formed here, and your experience in the South doesn’t erase ours elsewhere.

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Anonymous #1 10w

Saying anti-Black racism does not deny our Americanness erases a real form of racism just because it is not the only form. Asking Black Americans where we are “really” from is still a racial microaggression. And saying “I believe you if that happened” treats it like one isolated story when Black Americans, including celebrities, have experienced this publicly on camera. Your lack of exposure does not make it uncommon or imaginary.

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Anonymous OP 10w

You can’t look like an immigrant. But the conception of American identity in terms of whiteness due to white supremacy leads to non-white people being assumed to be not really American. I just had absolutely no idea that anyone would apply foreignness to black Americans. My experience from my region is that it’s just known that black people have been here as long as white people. So I’m just blindsided that anyone would try to ask something like “where are you really from”

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Anonymous #1 10w

Like if I was to be a weirdo and go “where are black people REALLY from” my first thought would be Mississippi or South Carolina, because the south is where most black Americans originate prior to the great migration, and it’s where most African American ethnogenesis occurred.

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Anonymous OP 10w

I said it like that because I just meant that I had no idea it was a thing because I had never encountered that before.

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Anonymous #1 10w

That’s still contradictory. You admit white supremacy causes nonwhite people to be treated as not truly American, yet you’re shocked that it applies to Black Americans. Especially being from the South, with its documented history of Jim Crow and the KKK literally originating in Tennessee, you’ve never heard “go back where you came from” aimed at a Black American…even online? That is denying our Americanness. Your lack of exposure doesn’t make it nonexistent.

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Anonymous OP 10w

Tbh I mostly see the “go back” thing to nonwhite immigrants. Direct racism of the n word variety is saved for the African Americans

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Anonymous #1 10w

Your response shows how deeply racial bias can be normalized: because this form of racism doesn’t match what you personally recognize, you dismiss it as unusual. Centering your own assumptions over Black Americans’ repeated experiences is ignorance, not evidence. You understand that nonwhite people are treated as foreign, yet somehow exclude Black Americans from that reality…that contradiction is exactly the problem.

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Anonymous OP 10w

People who are Latino or Asian are assumed (often incorrectly) to be of recent immigrant origin. Whereas black people have always been here. There’s nowhere for them to go back to. I haven’t encountered people who assume black people to be foreign because black people have always been a part of southern society. Everybody is southern, you’re white or you’re black.

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Anonymous #1 10w

Systems like Jim Crow were designed within the context that black people were always an integral part of southern society. In many ways Jim Crow was working against the deep economic and social integration that was created by antebellum slavery. Black people were forced into positions of servitude but they were expected to be there.

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Anonymous #1 10w

I guess this is why I assume this is a northern thing. The great migration brought black people into formerly white areas. Redlining and sundown towns were used to exclude black people from society, while Jim Crow was meant to keep them at a marginalized position that was still absolutely essential to the southern economy. So my assumption is that the north maybe doesn’t have the same ingrained knowledge that black people have always been a central part of America?

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Anonymous #2 10w

What you “mostly see” is not proof that it only targets immigrants. Black Americans have repeatedly been told to “go back to Africa,” and being treated as not truly American is a documented anti-Black microaggression. Anti-immigrant racism and anti-Black racism overlap, so they do not stay in the neat categories you created. The n-word being used against us does not erase the other forms of racism we experience.

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Anonymous #1 10w

You’re basically saying that this is common in your experience but I’m just trying to come at this with the idea that this is an absolutely unfamiliar form of racism to me. I’ve seen racism plenty. God knows the south has tons of it. But this form of racism being applied to black people is very unfamiliar and that’s why I was so surprised and am trying to wrap my head around the context for it.

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Anonymous OP 10w

Dunno man I fall into the whole Latino category and I see all my fellow brothers being deported to countries they never stepped foot in or straight up being killed by ICE. African American is practically by all means its own culture group atp considering the many black generations that have passed here since the colonization began.

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Anonymous #1 10w

Your personal bubble isn’t history. Black Americans have been told to “go back to Africa,” and the EEOC has documented it. Jim Crow kept us exploitable while denying full citizenship. A Black person’s lived experience outweighs your “I never saw it” here.

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Anonymous OP 10w

My initial comments were in the context of me not being familiar with that. I asked if it really happens. You said it does. I believe you. I’m just trying to conceptualize *why* this is a form of racism I haven’t seen before, when I have seen other forms of anti-black racism frequently. You mentioned the EEOC and I’m seeing a report including an example of that happening in Texas alongside forms of southern racism that I recognize more regularly. So maybe i just missed it.

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