London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Thursday, Oct 30, 2025

What is it like to be repeatedly asked where you are from?

What is it like to be repeatedly asked where you are from?

When a senior royal aide repeatedly asked a prominent black charity boss where she was "really from", during a Buckingham Palace reception, it sparked an outcry. Being intrusively probed about your cultural and ethnic heritage is an unwelcome but frequent occurrence for many people. So what makes the question "where do you really come" from so loaded?

Ngozi Fulani was attending a reception hosted by Camilla, the Queen Consort

Most people belonging to an ethnic minority in the UK will have been asked this many times, by people of all ages and political leanings. It is so common it has become a cliche.

Reading about what happened to Ngozi Fulani at Buckingham Palace reminded me of being asked this question a few years ago. I was out for drinks with a large group of friends and a young white man of about my age repeatedly asked me where I was "really from".

Each time I answered with increasing levels of detail, until this stranger had heard about my entire childhood. But he still kept asking.

I eventually gave up and said that I am Indian.

"Aha!" he exclaimed. "Got there in the end."

I'm proud of my heritage, of my religion, of being South Indian - I have a strong connection not just to the culture, but to the physical place too. With the exception of the pandemic years, I have visited Bangalore about twice a year.

But if I want someone to know about my cultural background, I will bring it up with them myself, or it will inevitably come up naturally in conversation. This man's insistence really bothered me.

"I hate it when people ask me that," a friend of mixed-ethnicity tells me.

"At university it was constant. I just used to say 'London', and then they'd say, 'but where are you really from?' and gesture towards my face. No-one else in my halls was asked that question, because they were all white - they all got asked what they were studying.

"When it's someone's first question, and no-one else is being asked, it makes you feel like you don't belong somewhere."

Another friend agrees: "I forget sometimes about how I'm perceived - and it's really irritating to then have to explain my difference. Especially as I have no idea why my ethnicity even matters."


Born and brought up in the UK, Ashitha Nagesh is often asked where she "really" comes from

My sister says she finds being asked where she is "really" from "crushing". It makes her remember primary school teachers challenging her as a young child, when she told them she was British.

"It's such a toxic question," she says. "It makes you feel like because of your skin colour, you can't be 'from here'. When they say, 'where are you really from?', they're saying, 'you're not really from here'."

This is ultimately about being made into what theorists call the "other" - to be identified and characterised wholly by your difference. Someone has seen your skin colour, and has immediately registered you as different from them because of it. Finding common ground and feeling a sense of belonging is an innate human desire - this denies us that.

Identity is complex and constantly changing. If I tell someone I'm Indian, what does that mean to them? Does it imply I must have more in common with someone who has lived their whole life in Bangalore, than I do with a white person who grew up in the same city as me, went to the same school, walked the same streets, drank under-age in the same pubs and taunted the same teachers?

When I am asked where I'm "really from", my personal history is being dismissed in favour of an imagined similarity with a place I have never lived. I am seen as a stereotype, or a puzzle to be solved - how did someone with my skin end up in this country? The subtext is that rather than belonging here, I must belong to somewhere else.

Ashitha Nagesh and her late grandmother pictured in Karnataka in 2012


Interestingly, everyone I spoke to told me they do not mind being asked where they are from by another person of colour, particularly if they are of a similar ethnic background. I have noticed this too - when someone who is visibly South Asian asks, I have often chosen to say that I am Indian.

"It's because they're not asking you to differentiate you," my sister says. "They're asking to find common ground, to make you part of their community."

I wonder if any of this feels different for my parents, first-generation immigrants who grew up in Bangalore and moved to the UK in the 1980s, a few years before I was born. They have lived all over the UK - from the Shetland Islands, to Wales, the north-east of England to London.

"I didn't mind being asked in the first few years I was here," my mum says. "At that point this wasn't really my country yet - and for other people, I didn't look like them and I didn't sound like them, so I understood why they were asking. But I still get asked the same question now, after being in this country for almost 40 years. It makes me feel that whatever I do, I'll never be considered as really 'from here'."

The final person I asked was my husband - a white recent first-generation migrant, who moved to the UK from the US when we married six years ago.

How does it feel for him to be asked where he is from - is it offensive in the same way?

"To be honest," he says, "I don't really get asked that."

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
UK and Vietnam Sign Landmark Migration Deal to Fast-Track Returns of Irregular Arrivals
UK Drug-Pricing Overhaul Essential for Life-Sciences Ambition, Says GSK Chief
Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie Temporarily Leave the UK Amid Their Parents’ Royal Fallout
UK Weighs Early End to Oil and Gas Windfall Tax as Reeves Seeks Investment Commitments
UK Retail Inflation Slows as Shop Prices Fall for First Time Since Spring
Next Raises Full-Year Profit Guidance After Strong Third-Quarter Performance
Reform UK’s Lee Anderson Admits to 'Gaming' Benefits System While Advocating Crackdown
United States and South Korea Conclude Major Trade Accord Worth $350 Billion
Hurricane Melissa Strikes Cuba After Devastating Jamaica With Record Winds
Vice President Vance to Headline Turning Point USA Campus Event at Ole Miss
U.S. Targets Maritime Narco-Routes While Border Pressure to Mexico Remains Limited
Bill Gates at 70: “I Have a Real Fear of Artificial Intelligence – and Also Regret”
Elon Musk Unveils Grokipedia: An AI-Driven Alternative to Wikipedia
Saudi Arabia Unveils Vision for First-Ever "Sky Stadium" Suspended Over Desert Floor
Amazon Announces 14 000 Corporate Job Cuts as AI Investment Accelerates
UK Shop Prices Fall for First Time Since March, Food Leads the Decline
London Stock Exchange Group ADR (LNSTY) Earns Zacks Rank #1 Upgrade on Rising Earnings Outlook
Soap legend Tony Adams, long-time star of Crossroads, dies at 84
Rachel Reeves Signals Tax Increases Ahead of November Budget Amid £20-50 Billion Fiscal Gap
NatWest Past Gains of 314% Spotlight Opportunity — But Some Key Risks Remain
UK Launches ‘Golden Age’ of Nuclear with £38 Billion Sizewell C Approval
UK Announces £1.08 Billion Budget for Offshore Wind Auction to Boost 2030 Capacity
UK Seeks Steel Alliance with EU and US to Counter China’s Over-Capacity
UK Struggles to Balance China as Both Strategic Threat and Valued Trading Partner
Argentina’s Markets Surge as Milei’s Party Secures Major Win
British Journalist Sami Hamdi Detained by U.S. Authorities After Visa Revocation Amid Israel-Gaza Commentary
King Charles Unveils UK’s First LGBT+ Armed Forces Memorial at National Memorial Arboretum
At ninety-two and re-elected: Paul Biya secures eighth term in Cameroon amid unrest
Racist Incidents Against UK Nurses Surge by 55%
UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves Cites Shared Concerns With Trump Administration as Foundation for Early US-UK Trade Deal
Essentra plc: A Closer Look at a UK ‘Penny Stock’ Opportunity Amid Market Weakness
U.S. and China Near Deal to Avert Rare-Earth Export Controls Ahead of Trump-Xi Summit
Justin time: Justin Herbert Shields Madison Beer with Impressive Reflex at Lakers Game
Russia’s President Putin Declares Burevestnik Nuclear Cruise Missile Ready for Deployment
Giuffre’s Memoir Alleges Maxwell Claimed Sexual Act with Clooney
House Republicans Move to Strip NYC Mayoral Front-Runner Zohran Mamdani of U.S. Citizenship
Record-High Spoiled Ballots Signal Voter Discontent in Ireland’s 2025 Presidential Election
Philippines’ Taal Volcano Erupts Overnight with 2.4 km Ash Plume
Albania’s Virtual AI 'Minister' Diella Set to 'Birth' Eighty-Three Digital Assistants for MPs
Tesla Unveils Vision for Optimus V3 as ‘Biggest Product of All Time’, Including Surgical Capabilities
Francis Ford Coppola Auctions Luxury Watches After Self-Financed Film Flop
Convicted Sex Offender Mistakenly Freed by UK Prison Service Arrested in London
United States and China Begin Constructive Trade Negotiations Ahead of Trump–Xi Summit
U.S. Treasury Sanctions Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro over Drug-Trafficking Allegations
Miss USA Crowns Nebraska’s Audrey Eckert Amid Leadership Overhaul
‘I Am Not Done’: Kamala Harris Signals Possible 2028 White House Run
NBA Faces Integrity Crisis After Mass Arrests in Gambling Scandal
Swift Heist at the Louvre Sees Eight French Crown Jewels Stolen in Under Seven Minutes
U.S. Halts Trade Talks with Canada After Ontario Ad Using Reagan Voice Triggers Diplomatic Fallout
Microsoft AI CEO: ‘We’re making an AI that you can trust your kids to use’ — but can Microsoft rebuild its own trust before fixing the industry’s?
×