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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Sam2- your posts on this board are usually very thoughtful and sensible.  I find it hard to believe you would ever question a person's origin beyond the answer they gave to your first "where are you from" question on first meeting unless they led the way on that discussion. Basically, I doubt you would ever do something as socially awkward as what poor OP experienced at the school. I don't think anyone is saying that there is no point along the way of friendship where it stops being rude to ask more personal question.  At least I wasn't, and I was one of the PPs saying asking is rude.  I think the issue is about when to ask.  At a meeting in which you are just meeting a person and really the end goal (due to circumstance or otherwise) is just acquaintanceship, the question has high potential to come across as emphasizing differences, not common ground.  At the point that a meeting is in the context of a continued road to friendship or with the explicit purpose of getting to know someone better (say a date), the question is far more likely to be perceived as an attempt at better understanding and genuine interest in the whole person.  [/quote]

I appreciate the kind words, and that you give me the benefit of the doubt.  Perhaps some of my recent posts give the impression I am some sort of cranky old fusspot who doesn't care who she offends -- that would surely be inaccurate.  You are correct that I try hard not to offend people.  However, I simply don't accept the premise of some PPs that until I am several steps along the way to friendship, any question about another person's background is necessarily inappropriate.  Or worse yet, that I can never appropriately ask unless "invited" by the other person.

I can certainly imagine someone asking a question in a really obnoxious way that indicates he is in fact classifying the other person as an "outsider" (PP's favorite: "[i]No, no, no ... Where are you *REALLY* from??[/i]").  But I can just as easily imagine plenty of ways that someone who is genuinely interested in getting to know the other person might ask about about his background in a respectful manner (one example: "[i]Pardon me for asking this, but I'm immensely curious about your name, because it's unlike any I've seen before.  At first I thought it might be Hmong, but that doesn't seem quite right. ... Oh, Laotian! Very neat! You can't have been born in Laos, can you?  Your New York accent is almost as heavy as my own Bronx[/i].")

What bothers me is that some PPs want to classify all such questions as irrefutably offensive, just because those PPs [i]assume[/i] they know the other person is [i]really[/i] thinking evil thoughts.  I don't subscribe to that sort of suspicion.  Like you, I try to give people the benefit of the doubt, no matter which end of the question I am on.  But what these PPs seem to be doing is damning others for making inappropriate assumptions about "American-ness," while at the exact same time assuming all sorts of evil motives about that other person.  That strikes me as a recipe for stalemate.

Someone else posed a really perceptive hypothetical that I hope will get answered: [i]Would the OP or other PPs take offense to a question about ancestry if the questioner is herself Asian?[/i]  I'm very curious to hear whether OP and PPs would still assume evil motive in that situation.

I suppose I cannot begrudge those PPs their attitudes.  Maybe they've had some terrible experiences, and never had some of the positive experiences I have.  I never really expected my anonymous comments on a message board would change how they view the world.  I was hoping to explore their attitudes, so I can understand why we view the world so differently.

I hope you still view me as thoughtful and sensible.  [/quote]

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