Reply to is it appropriate to ask people origin of their last name? should it be?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I often go down this conversational path if I have a follow up story about the nationality in question (like I love the country or speak that language).

If someone were to cut the discussion off with a cold expression, I would consider them to be rude.

Has the US gotten to a point where all discussions of ethnicity or race are kryptonite? I hope not. [/quote]

I think the issue is that the person asked has probably already dealt with countless micro-aggressions before the well-meaning person asks. This happens all the time to myself and other women and girls with natural AA hair. I’m often very standoffish with white people who ask about my hair because in my experience, a lot of questions are followed by a request to touch it or worse, the questioner just reaching out and copping a feel sans my permission. The result of a number of those experiences is that I have instinctively taken a step back sometimes when people asked. While that put me out of arms reach, it did nothing about the torrent of stereotypes and insensitive questions. Some people just get a diarrhea of the mouth and have to ask you everything they heard a racist person say about black hair to see if it’s true. When a grown woman asks you if your hair is waterproof, you start shutting down this curiosity as soon as you detect it.[/quote]

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