Stop asking where I'm from
So I've just met you. Maybe we're standing in line for La Prima. Or we’re next to each other in recitation. Anyways, we're chatting casually. Name, year, major, and then you drop the question: "Where are you from?"
I'm sure you thought it was oh-so harmless. Just small talk. A tidbit of basic info.
Fuck you. Seriously, fuck you. Now I have to stammer out a self-deprecating joke about 'being not like the other Bay Area students'.
Just because I'm a math major, just because I have a secret desire to transfer to SCS and make an obscene amount of money, just because my parents have an obscene amount of money, just because I have no social skills, it doesn't mean I'm like the other Bay Area students.
The moment I say those two accursed words, I can see the little gears in your mind whirring and developing unconscious biases, dragging in all your cultural baggage. This is how implicit classism spreads.
And, if you don't ask me, I won't ask you either. Because if you're yet another Bay Area student, you're a soulless drone I have to compete with. And if you're from New York or New Jersey? Same thing, different timezone.
But if you're from, like, Ohio or Florida, c'mon. My parents aren't paying 97k a year for me to socialize with hillbillies and rednecks. But what I don't know can't hurt me, so just don't ask, don't tell.
Maybe one day, if I trust you, I'll casually sidle it into conversation. We'll be talking about the weather or our parents or any one of a million topics and I'll bring it up. Casually, naturally, like it's no big deal, because it isn't.
I don't demand extra respect for having made it through a world-class high school and competing with the best of the best, nor for being remarkably whole in spite of the crushing workload I had to endure. But if I think it will benefit me for you to know that, I'll tell you. Until then, though, it stays a secret.
Sincerely,
A Student from the Bay Area