A loaded question: Where are you from?

Where we come from (a state that is a garden with many exits) and other places we have lived (such as the one that currently has a mayor who has a TV network named after him and the place where they love Joe Carter) the simple question "Where are you from?" was answered with either a town, neighbourhood, Roman Catholic parish, or state.

So you would think when asked "Where are you from?" in Philadelphia the normal answer to the question would be the one that the questioner wanted. Of course, this is not the case. When we gave the standard reply (in this case "Jersey") we were asked the question again, but with more emphasis. Again we gave the same reply which had our interrogator only ask the question with even more vigor. At this point we said that we have told them twice, which lead them to ask the real question - "What is your ethnic/racial background?"

Given that Philadelphia is one of the most ethnically and racially segregated places we have ever been in the United States, this is not a shock. Apparently, as this has happened to us on repeated occasions, it appears to be some sort of defence mechanism by the locals in order to size up someone they encounter for the first time so they can place them in the proper category.

We of course obfuscated when we finally replied to their actual query, as we are not quite white, by stating we are "assorted Western European". This of course did not fully satisfy the interrogator which was our intended result. There is nothing like playing mind games with small minded people.