Digital Nomads

100% white american here. People still ask me where i'm (my family/ancesters are) really from.

I’m both American and British, my parents were born in East Africa and ethnically i am Indian. I leave it at I’m American or British depending on how I feel. Strangers aren’t entitled to my life story especially if I’m showing no interest in them.

If they persist in asked me questions I ask “Why do you want to know? Are you trying to identity theft me?” Usually ends that nonsense with a laught.

As a nation, we're causing this kind of international ignorance by putting so much emphasis on ethnicity rather than nationality. All of these hyphenated-American subgroups are watering down what it means to be an American. If people would stop focusing on skin color, eventually the U.S. WOULD be seen as a diverse place, but instead we're all focused on the differences and not the areas in which we are the same.

Having said that . . . . the U.S. is not truly one nation in culture so it's really hard to define what being in American is. We have the deep south, the northeast, the midwest . . . . and the left coast and we couldn't be more different than many of the tiny european countries are.

As an Asian, you get this in America, too.

Yeah I've traveled all over this country working remotely and there are definitely some small towns in the sticks where I thought to myself "Damn I'm glad I'm white" because the people just seemed like such backwater hicks or I heard them say some racial slur. And down South I've had some store clerks be super friendly to me or even give me free shit in ways I'm positive they would not have done if I didn't look like I just stepped off a Viking longboat.

Imagine being 1) Born in the United States, the wealthiest society in human history, and B) someone with enough resources to travel, and still finding a way to feel like a victim because someone asks you where you are from.

I hope you can grow up and see how ungrateful, out-of-touch with reality, and (for me) repulsive this attitude is.

Your parents or grandparents didn't make tremendous sacrifices to bring you to a wealthy country, where you would have resources and freedom previously unprecedented in your family, so that you could twist reality to cry victim.

I know mine didn't.

Let's honor the generation of our Latino parents who made great sacrifices to raise us in prosperity by not falling into victim mentality - they didn't uproot their lives and travel halfway across the world for us by feeling like victims.

You want to be recognized as a Latino, but crying that someone asked you where you are from while you have $$$ and are traveling the world is the most un-Latino mentality I can possibly imagine and an insult to our parents and grandparents.

As a white American, you are 100% American… we are on the same team brother.

Not that you need any validation, just trying to be supportive because I disagree with the people who assumed you aren’t American.

Have you tried giving a more specific answer? Pretty sure if you said, “Atlanta” or any major metro no one would question it. Every white person from Michigan gets asked where on the hand.

Last, I didn’t realize this until later in life (half Asian), but people asked me that because they were genuinely curious and thought I was attractive. The curiosity may be a compliment, not judgement.

I don't get it. I am proudly telling everybody that is asking where I am from.

I just say I’m from this city in the USA and leave it at that. I am of South Asian decent. I don’t think I have yet received a follow up or the “where are you really from?” Though I think that may have a lot to do with the fact that I look very unambiguously South Asian and they probably already clocked me as that, so…