People need to get some fucking manners

PEOPLE NEED TO GET SOME FUCKING MANNERS

SAYING EVERYTHING YOU THINK ISN’T COOL

BY NATALIE COMFORT

I grew up in a diverse family. Nearly half of my family on my father’s side are in interracial marriages. As I was growing up from a toddler to a young adult, I’ve been surrounded by a variety of languages, cultures, and traditions. As someone who is of primarily African, Mexican, European, and Native American descent, I appear pretty ethnically ambiguous. For some reason unbeknownst to me, I notice a small subset of the population tends to view this as an invitation to either assume, take an unusual amount of interest or expect a disclaimer about my ethnicity. I’m writing this article to argue that basic social rules around conversation and prying into strangers’ lives still stand and should be treated with more reverence than they currently are.

I mean, would you show up half an hour late to meet your friend? Or randomly start eating someone’s food out of their fridge with no invitation? Ask someone how much money they make within the first 10 minutes of meeting them? Probably not. These social rules are basic. They are so well-understood because they all stem from the desire to not make others feel uncomfortable or intruded upon. Conversational social rules are also there for the same reason. I don’t think any of that should fly out the window, simply because one is asking about your ethnicity instead of your job.

It’s one situation to ask someone about their ethnicity/culture if you believe you might share that in common. However, it’s an entirely different situation to play a socially inappropriate game of jeopardy with my ethnicity as I am simply trying to go about daily tasks. It’s especially rude when they keep guessing after guessing incorrectly once. Once at work, a customer, who I was helping in passing, asked if I was Arab and when I said no, proceeded to rattle off a list of several middle eastern countries that I might be from… even though I had already said I was not Arabian.

I can remember on another occasion, I showed up to a hair appointment to get my hair blow-dried, only to be told at the end of my appointment that I needed to make sure to indicate that I had textured hair next time. The admin, who managed the schedules, complained to me that my appointment could have gone overtime if they hadn’t by chance paired me with someone who knew how to work with curly hair. It seemed absurd to me that I should know that my natural hair was going to be an inconvenience to their schedule or that only a couple of their stylists would know how to work with curly hair. I mean, they hadn’t even given me the option to select hair texture or length. There was one pop-up asking if I had extensions.

Unfortunately, regarding my natural features, people think it is appropriate to make comments. When I was younger, in elementary, it was considered harmless, just kids being kids. Is that your real hair? How did it get like that? I will admit it was frustrating having a handful of teachers and students who had known me for half a decade, ask if my hair was naturally curly. I wanted to respond: Of course it is, do you really think I have been curling my hair every day for the past five years? But as I got older, people still made comments, less than before, but more than acceptable.

A combination of being a woman and being a person of color is that people feel a certain level of entitlement to tell you how you should modify your appearance. From daily conversations to bringing it up in group semi-professional settings. I would love to see your hair straight. Do you curl your hair? Imagine how out of pocket it would be if I told someone they should try microblading their eyebrows, or they should dye their hair or get a spray tan.

Another pet peeve is people wanting to touch your hair . When I was younger, until about midway through high school, I felt a sense of guilt to tell people no. So for years, I just went along with it, feeling uncomfortable the whole time. I’m glad that now I feel confident to set that boundary. No, you can’t touch my hair; it’s annoying and weird. Curiosity isn’t an excuse to invade people’s personal space.

Don’t get me started on people who try to call you exotic as a compliment. It’s become a blanket term to describe anyone that isn’t white when the average person cannot immediately discern what racial group they belong to. In particular, men tend to use the phrase to fetishize and sexualize your features. Part of me wonders if it is just because they value being with women that look unique, as some sort of trophy. Another pet peeve is the various ways people imply that all people of a certain ethnicity or racial group look the same. I don’t go to movies much anymore but I can recall many times one of my friends would compare me to the singular black or mixed actress in the movie. Even when we looked nothing alike. Oh, you look just like her! People would look at me sideways if I told them that Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Anniston looked exactly the same.

Beyond how you look, there are also those who will tell you, often after you explain your background, that you don’t act like the ethnicity or race you are. Usually, it’s because you don’t act like some caricatured exaggerated version of all the stereotypes they have conceived in their head with how you act. It very rarely tends to be those who share an ethnicity in common with you but still feel they have the right to define how you should be acting.

Whether it is how I act or look, people need to understand that not everyone who is ethnically ambiguous wants constant questions and comments on their background. Sometimes people need to keep their thoughts to themselves because not everyone is interested in hearing them.