Oi Gay Boy! Where are you REALLY from?

Part of our But Where Are You Really From? season

There is a shared experience amongst people of colour, where midway through getting to know someone of, I guess “non-colour”,  you see their eyes travel around your features trying to pinpoint where in the world they belong to. “Where are you really from?” (WAYRF), a racialised question where I’m never really sure if I should share where I was brought up, list the countries I’ve lived in or even explore the branches of my family tree that will affirm some of the guesses that run through their heads. As it's a question that can be asked at any moment in my life, I have tired placards ready and waiting to be brought to the front of my mind to answer said question.

Hailing from the beautiful island of Fiji, I am the version of black that sits on uncertainty. “Is he mixed race?”, “Is he REALLY black?”, “Are you Asian?”. 

Placard 1: No I’m not! I’m just light-skinned

Placard 2: Yes I am, again, I’m just light-skinned. *Pulls out various family photos with dark-skinned family members to prove my blackness*

Placard 3: No, I’m from Fiji, NOT Fuji! That’s in JAPAN! 

As a black person being brought up in heavily white spaces, having my identity questioned was common. Even in school systems, teachers have been surprised where I’m from, then with such surprise, respond, “you don’t sound like all these other Fijians, you sound posh”- A double handed-compliment making the connection between race and class; as if to be Fijian was to be low-class, as if to be Fijian, their colonial language couldn’t possibly roll out my tongue like poetry. I guess you can say that Charles Murray’s book ‘The Bell Curve’ (1994) must’ve been on all white people’s reading list - 800 pages that ‘scientifically proved’ how black people are more stupid and poor than white people. He must be rolling in his grave knowing that I, the only black kid in the class, got the highest grade in English Literature. 

The ambiguity of my blackness has also brought in anguish from those within the black community. As teens, the policing of blackness to maintain credibility was very heavy. In college, where black became the majority for the first time since living in the west, I was bombarded with “so where are you FROM, from?” by my black peers. When sharing my answer, a side-eye would follow on with a laugh- “so you’re NOT REALLY black!”. Like my counterparts, my well-melanated peers would scan me with confusion. His hair is coiled, his nose is wide and thick, but they rejected me as their brother for my island is neither Afro nor Caribbean. If the ‘one drop rule’ were to apply, then my blackness is as black as anyone as there’s more than ‘one drop’ of black in me. At this moment, I became both a participant and an observer of blackness. The validity of my blackness being based on other people’s micro-aggressions and internalised racism was an intersection I personally never thought to find myself in when coming to the west. But thankfully, in Yaba Blay’s ‘One Drop: Shifting the Lens of Race’, organising blackness into three primary sections, “Mixed Black”, “American Black”, and ‘Diaspora Black”, validated my blackness as being part of a diaspora. 

As I grew up, I was surprised to see how the intricacies of this question would develop when I came to terms with my queerness. After coming out, I had to learn to navigate a new pattern of these experiences through the lens of attraction and rejection.

Spending the majority of my childhood in white spaces, it was not a surprise that the development of my internalised racism sadly translated into my need for white validation. Subconsciously I sought out white men in every space I was in. New to the scene, my Grindr profile was one of many blank profiles that displayed alongside torso grids. Timidly I’d start conversations with white men who I’d hope to find me just as attractive. When asked about “pics?”, for anonymity sake, headless torso pictures would be sent whilst keeping in line with Grindr’s culture. “Where are you from?”, “Fiji”, “Ooo how exotic…” followed by silence, or their profile vanishing as they block me. It seemed the polite conversation allowed for some response, but it was definitely not in their books to sleep with a black person. These sort of negative reactions became patterns. Patterns that then mirror the multi-generational trauma that instills in people of colour to believe and embody the negative societal definitions of themselves. So to most, this pattern of rejection may confirms the internalised racist thought of my “coloured” skin is ugly. 

Other times, my polite “Hey! How’s it going?” doesn’t even get a response. Instead of sharing their state of wellbeing, there are other ‘big’ questions that needed to be answered. The good old ‘Big Black C*ck’ stereotype - a stereotype that originally was meant to create fear around black men, by negatively portraying black men as savages and hyper-sexual, has now turned into diminishing the character of black men to something as ‘small’ as a sexual organ. It even seems to have enough power to turn a straight man, curious. 

The power of the BBC has white, queer men running around behaving like fools, for the attractiveness of my blackness is now only based on how THEIR buns ‘don’t want none unless’ it’s an anaconda ‘hun’. At times, I played into this dynamic for the sake of white validation, either to feel attractive or to use it to my advantage to get that quick-fix fun.

In growth, you feel sorry and love the person you were because you knew, that they didn’t know better. Although pathetic it may seem for me to capitalise on my blackness for white love, to me, that misplaced truth was all I knew. 

I posed the question, ‘Has the question “Where are you really from” become the decisive factor for those you interact with to either “accept” or reject you?”, to some black/POC on Grindr to see what they had to say. Being asked by his white counterpart, @theawakeningofkw answers:

“It feels like micro-aggression to me. Like a subtle “you’re black, so you’re clearly not from here, so where are you really from?”

To @theawakeningofkw, the response will always be “‘British’ or ‘London’ in those circumstances”, an answer that will definitely boggle the mind of a racist, followed by the comical brush of misunderstanding, “oh, of course you are!”. For questions like that to come from, a white person, it confirms the subconscious mind of white people who think that to live on western land, you have to be white; forever reminding people of colour that their presence here is never fully certain (cc: Clause 9 of the Nationality and Border’s bill). 

On Instagram, we get an insight from @remmusmi on her encounter with, sadly, a straight, man of colour: 

“Where are you from (I answered ‘Chinese’)  he said ‘no you look Filipino’ (bc I’m not as pale) 2 - he then said he likes East Asians because we are very “cute” 3 - He finished the convo with calling my hand gestures “very ghetto” (basically he backed off)”

@remmusmi expressed that her rejection was based on this man’s shattered perspective of a typical “Asian girl”. 

“He was just shocked the minute I started speaking. I think because I was just aggressive instead of being submissive”

Victimised by another man of colour, this shines a light on intersectional experience. Her breaking the mould as a woman and as an Asian person challenged this man’s sexist and racist tendencies, but still he had the nerve to ‘reject’ her? We won’t even get into the problematic use of the word “ghetto” and its implication on how we see blackness as aggressive and unattractive. I guess it’s clear that if men have anything, that it is the gall. 

@remmusmi’s experience, confirms that a person of colour can experience the battle of the question even from those within the community. Multiple times the question has been posed to me by other queer people of colour (QPOC) who project their expectation of blackness onto me, and when I don’t meet their black expectation, I am swiped left. Instead, comments like “I like a rude boy!”, “I love an aggressive-looking man” would pop up. I was literally wearing lipgloss. 

@theawakeningofkw, fortunately, has a more of a positive perspective. He shares that when being asked the question by other POC, it “doesn’t come from a place of othering. Just seems like a genuine way of finding some common ground in potential culture differences”. He is more comfortable sharing the information of his Ghanaian heritage with fellow black queers for it isn’t a “litmus test to see if I’m worthy of speaking to, but more of a head nod at our shared experience of being immigrants/ children of immigrants”. 

It is clear that the question “where are you really from?” has various dynamics, where its appropriateness is all based on intention. There is clearly a fine line between micro-aggression and curiosity and if your questioning undermines the identity of a person by projecting stereotypes, then I’m not sorry to inform you that you have racist tendencies. Your fetishisation shouldn’t be an obstacle for my journey to find friendship or love. I cannot be a representative of a larger group and it shouldn’t be my role to be providing intellectual labour for you to know how to better approach and treat me; and after a lot of growing, being rejected due to racial “preferences” is not something I cry over anymore because we weren’t written in the stars in the first place. Finishing off, please don’t expect this conclusion to end with me giving you notes on how to be better, the internet is readily available, so go knock yourself out!

Isoa Tupua

Instagram: @itua92

Twitter: @Tua_92

This piece is a part of our But Where Are You Really From? season, made possible thanks to the BFI Audience Fund awarding funding from the National Lottery.