The question is always the same. The speaker is different. “Where are you from?” In the beginning, dating back to the sixties, I would say proudly, The Bronx. And I would think, that was enough. But, the questioner, sometimes some white guy from Manhattan or Queens or even Brooklyn, would dryly ask again, “No, where are you really from?”

I would, without a hint of being insulted, proudly proclaim again that I was from the Bronx.

It took years before I realized that simply stating your birthplace in the United States wasn’t enough. The questioner wanted proof that you weren’t from somewhere else because, well, since you didn’t look like them or act like them, they couldn’t be sure you were, like them, good old red, white, and blue Americans.

It didn’t matter that my father was from Puerto Rico, where its residents have been American citizens since 1917. Yes, my mother was from the Dominican Republic, but she came here legally and became an American citizen.

Not that any of that mattered, because I was born in the U.S.A. The South Bronx, at the old Lincoln Hospital. Didn’t matter. The question lingered because this is the U.S.A.

They can’t help themselves.

I didn’t think much of all this nonsense as I moved through life. It didn’t matter because, in the early seventies, I hung out mostly with people who looked like me or were other people of color who didn’t give a shit where I was from.

They might ask, “Where are you from?” which usually meant, “What city are you from?” (they assumed New York) because I had this accent that I never noticed until years after leaving the city.

When I moved to New England, I would sometimes be asked, “Where are you from?” by folks who said they traced their roots back to Plymouth Rock (man, there sure were a lot of people on that damn Mayflower). And I would dryly reply, “New York.” I’d forget the South Bronx part because I thought it would be too complicated to explain the whole Bronx borough thing.

“No, really, where are you from?” they would ask again, and I would immediately know what they were asking.

You don’t look like us, so you must be from somewhere else, maybe from another country. I would get a little annoyed because I knew it was a question about which crack of the Caribbean, South America, or Central America I was from. 

“I was born in the United States,” I would indignantly state. Still incredulous, they would walk away or change the subject.

Over the years, my American English, along with my fading New York accent mixed with all the other places I’ve lived: New England, and that semi-Southern accent, inherited from nearly ten years in Washington, D.C., answered their questions before they even asked.

I mean, no foreigner talks like that. Most people quickly realized I wasn’t from around here, but still, some would stare at me, wondering, “Yeah, but where are you really from?”

After I moved to Southern California in 1984, I saw graffiti in big ass letters on a low wall on the 405 freeway at the Santa Monica Boulevard exit:

“MEXICANS GO HOME.”

It wasn’t long before, as I worked my way through low-wage jobs to pay the rent, that someone inevitably would ask me, “Where are you from?” And they weren’t just white people, but mostly.

“I’m from New York, but I’ve lived in other states, and I just came from Washington, D.C.,” as if they gave a shit about my residences. “No, where are you really from?” And I would just mumble something about New York and move on.

In the eighties, I worked as a bartender at a German-themed restaurant. It was full of ex-pats from Germany (before the reunification), the former Yugoslavia, and the U.S.S.R. (before the fall of the Empire). Some could barely speak English (well, American English), and they would sit on their stools in front of me and in accented English or broken English or straight out English (obviously, here a long time), “Where are you from?”

And again, I would dryly say, “New York.” I knew this question wasn’t about where they thought I had lived, but rather where I was born, since I was obviously not from around here. I don’t mean like from New York or Southern California.

“No, where are you from? Where were you born?”

I was born in Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx, a borough of New York City.” They had no idea what the fuck I was talking about. There was a pause, and then it came again. “No, I mean, where are your parents from?” Oh, now we’re going to talk about my parents.

Does this sound like a broken record?

I was born in the U.S. of A. Raised in everything America, believing that qualified me to be called American. The United States of America is a feel-good fairy tale, an exceptional one even.

When we want to feel the exhilaration of patriotic music and blood-boiling flag-waving, we all stand and sing the Star-Spangled Banner and dutifully recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Some residents of this country who believe that there is a sacred halo surrounding the good old U.S. of A. love to invoke images of America the beautiful to justify why this here America is their America.

They think it is an exclusive club from coast to coast, across wide fields of wheat and corn, mountains, rivers, small towns, big cities, and the centers of growth and industry, and our revered majesty. And some of us, well, many of us, are not members.

I consider myself incredibly fortunate. I have lived in diverse communities: New York, Washington, D.C., Southern New England (more than you might think), and Southern California. I move easily among many ethnic and racial groups as well as economic classes, sometimes selfishly taking in everything I can from them. 

I listen to their words and speech patterns. I am interested in what they’re feeling and thinking. Their religion, ethics, philosophy, politics, music, culture, and writings are all sources of information that I absorb through a straw. It doesn’t matter if they are American-born or foreign-born (No, I don’t ask them where they’re from that way). Or whether raised on a farm in Iowa or in a five-million-dollar condo in Manhattan, New York.

I just want to swim in this diverse America, soaking it all up to keep growing in life and with the people I know.

I’ve traveled to many parts of this country and met many great people who never once asked me where I was from. They might say something friendly like, “You ain’t from around here,” but not in an insulting way, as if I wasn’t American. Instead, they understood I wasn’t from there and would light up when I told them I was from New York or the South Bronx. They never questioned my Americanism.

Nativism, nationalism, xenophobia, small minds, and small worlds are a disease that suffocates one’s ability to see and experience the full spectrum of humankind, and that’s a damn shame — their loss.

Now, ask me again where I’m from.