What's your background?

I was out at a bar last night and making small talk with this stranger when he hit me with the question, "So what's your background?"

My chest tightened and my stomach turned a little bit. "Ugh!" I thought, "really?" I really despise being asked that question. If I feel like being a jerk at the time I usually fuck with them a bit by replying, "Canadian," like, "What do you mean?" which forces the inquirer into the uncomfortable position of asking,

"No, I mean, where are you from originally?"

"Oh, I was born here."

"No, but, where does your family come from?"

. . .

While to most people it may seem like a relatively innocuous inquiry, to a visible minority, "What's your background" is a very loaded question.

If it's followed by a statement like "Wow, we don't see many of 'you people' around here" it obviously smacks of racism but even when it isn't so overt there's still a subtle underpinning of racism that can't be ignored. While it's not the pitchfork-wielding lynch mob racism of past generations it's still an indication that the "perpetual foreigner" image for ethnic minorities is still alive and well.

I was born and raised in Canada and consider myself as Canadian as maple syrup and bitching about the weather, it really irks me to no end that people can still view me as an outsider who somehow doesn't quite belong. It's a subtle, seemingly benign undercurrent of racism yet it's unsettling because I know that if push comes to shove it would manifest itself in ugly ways.

I guess it's a pet peeve of mine. Even without the racist undertone I always thought it was just kind of rude and socially unacceptable, like walking up to a guy in a wheel chair and asking point blank, "So what? Did you lose your legs in some sort of car accident or were you born that way?" and nobody ever walks up to a white person and asks them out of the blue, "So what are you? Irish? French? Lithuanian? Khazakistani? Like, where are you from?"

While I'd like to dismiss this incident as the social faux-pas of a backwoods rube, part of me is still offended because I've struggled all my life to find acceptance in this society and with one comment I'm reminded that acceptance isn't a given and that I still have to struggle with these issues. It's frustrating.