Dear Ms Understanding,
I am curious about people’s ethnicity but am never sure whether I’m allowed to ask (being a white Australian person) or how to ask. For example, if I’m working with someone who is dark skinned and I’m curious about what race they may have in their family tree, can I (and how do I) ask them?
Dear Curious,
Thank you for this question. I suspect a lot of white people will relate to your curiosity and with the awkwardness that comes with wanting to answer these questions without causing offence.
Before we begin, let me note that like a lot of people, you have used ethnicity and race interchangeably though they have different meanings. I’ll accept your terminology because it is clear that you are referring to people with darker skin than yours – typically people of Indigenous, Arab, Asian, African or South American heritage.
There is no hard and fast rule about whether you can ask someone about their race, ethnicity or heritage but you should understand that your words will have consequences.
The person you are curious about would not be wrong to assume that you are asking them these questions solely based on their skin tone. I shared your questions with assistant professor Kathomi Gatwiri, one of Australia’s leading Afro-diasporic scholars.
Gatwiri makes the point that “If the question of the ethnicity of a Black person is the first thing that you would be curious about as soon as you meet them, then that can come off wrong and strong. It’s not that Black people are offended by curiosity in general; it’s that often Black people become fatigued with being only (maybe mostly) experienced in racial terms through the white gaze.”
Gatwiri is referring to the cumulative tiredness of having been asked these questions countless times. It may be the first time you are asking this particular person about their ethnicity; but they will have encountered curiosity like yours many times before.
In addition, each time we answer, people of colour and Black folks are aware that we have to act as though we aren’t annoyed – if we don’t, we face a backlash. As Gatwiri notes, “our irritation is often weaponised against us.”
This means that even though answering all these questions can be burdensome, we have to operate as cultural ambassadors. Ultimately, the curiosity of white strangers comes at a cost, and makes many of us feel that our heritage will always be the first – and perhaps the only – point of interest, no matter how long we have lived in a place.
As Gatwiri notes, however, the bigger question to ask yourself is: “What is driving your curiosity? Are you also curious about all the people you encounter or just dark-skinned people?”
To be fair, I hear from many white people that they are curious about racial or ethnic background because they want to connect with people of colour and make them feel welcome. In other words, their questions are based on goodwill, on a charitable instinct rather than malintent.
As a general rule, no matter who I am meeting, I assume we have something in common and I ask open-ended questions that move us in the direction of finding points of connection. At the moment, your questions are geared towards exploring difference.
Gatwiri reminds us that “Questions that touch on who we are must be relational. The goal here is to learn how to build relationships that offer a trustworthy enough context through which asking certain questions is not only permissible but also celebrated.
“My aim here is not to discourage you from asking such questions but rather to encourage you to prioritise a relationship ahead of your curiosity. You can interrogate your curiosity by asking: ‘Do I need to know this, or do I want to know this?’. Finally, you can ask yourself: ‘Have I earned the right to know this information about this person?’”
This point is so important. It may sound counterintuitive, but true curiosity is based a desire to find what is familiar, rather than to scrutinise what is exotic. I wonder what would happen if you interacted with people without being held hostage to your curiosity about their skin tone?
I am not suggesting that you try to ignore race – we all see colour. Instead, I’m urging you to put race in its proper place; to see it and resist being seduced by its superficiality.
If you focus on getting to know people slowly, and in good time, you might find out that the darker-skinned person you have just met is an early riser, just like you. And as you discuss the joys of watching first light and the awe of sunrise, your new acquaintance might just reveal that they grew up on a farm outside Caracas, waking up when the cock crowed. Imagine the delight of discovering where someone is from without having to ask: “Hey, so what’s your heritage”?
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Sisonke Msimang is a Guardian Australia columnist. She is the author of Always Another Country: A Memoir of Exile and Home (2017) and The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela (2018)
