Aissata Drieling – "Please Meet My Expectation."

An Auto-ethnographic attempt.

This is my auto-ethnographic attempt. Read and feel the scientific subjectivity behind my words. The question my group decided to follow is one about heritage, origin, the disadvantages that come with being raced and manipulating these parts of our identities to our advantages. We asked for a lot. We asked ourselves and others “Where are you really from.”

First of all, I want to lead you through the research method we used and my first encounter with auto-ethnography.

At the beginning of the semester, I was frustrated with studying because it seemed like a lot of theories that I could not find in the world I live in. They either seemed very abstract or were only looking at very specific details of society and calling them very specific names - the way our ancestors formed a mule into their stone weapon and put another stone in there as a decoration- to give an example. Studying culture studies and art history is interesting but often times I find myself asking about the purpose of looking at life through these academic lenses. That is why I was very excited when I saw a course from gender studies called: What does it mean to be raced - an auto-ethnographic approach. That was a question I could immodestly relate to because not only was it asking about race, it was stating that there is no race but the ones we all get categorized in from society. The word auto-ethnography gave the seminar the scientific touch I fall for and so I went. The course surpassed my expectations and I experienced something I would call academic enlightenment. The word auto-ethnography describes a method of using one's subjective reality as a research field for social theories and making it all transparent by openly reflecting on the whole process. This is what I do for fun anyway, this is my diary. Experiencing, processing, sitting back and analyzing. Spoiler, it turned out to be more difficult than I thought because there is no easy way to explain a thought process understandably and then connect this to a theory you once read at university.

But without a claimed objectivity other struggles occur. There are multiple reasons for auto- ethnography not being as easy as I expected. The personal data balance being one. My research question was a very personal one, one that I had already asked myself without coming to an answer and one that I never got comfortable with. On the one hand, this made my research exiting and what kept me motivated throughout the process, but on the other hand, I made myself very vulnerable and no matter how courageous, healthy and connecting vulnerability is, the feeling of it sucks.

Another reason for my (joyful) struggle with this method was, that I did not know if my emotions, perceptions, and ideas around heritage were originally mine or at least something that came out of self-reflection or if they were internalized perceptions from my surroundings. So I stopped writing and started observing everything my reality has to offer regarding the question: “Where are you really from”. And I figured that the question makes me feel several things at once: A mixture of annoyance, mistrust, arrogance, shame, connection and sometimes boredom, all depending on the person asking, and even more relevant, the situation.

When I started this course, I had a clear opinion on when and how to ask people where they are from. Never and in no way. I did not want to make my opposite uncomfortable and I did not believe that the location you were brought up says a lot about someone. Now I see the reason behind this resentment. I do not want the place or people I am from to be a big part of my own identity and surely I don’t want it to play a big role in the way people perceive me. Origin is nothing we can influence. But consciously and unconsciously I do want to be in control about the way people think of me because it is directly related to the way people treat me.

As observing only myself became repetitive, I started interviewing my surroundings and asked people I was interested in hearing from where they are really from, what this question means to them, if they sometimes hide or show their origins to have advantages and if they feel in between different nations because of being mixed-raced or whatever other reason they had. I asked them all the questions that come to my mind when I ponder over the advantages and drawbacks of being mixed-raced, since this is what I am and these are the questions I eventually had to ask myself or I was asked too often. What made these people interesting for me, was their biracial background, their way of expressing their reflections, their openness and the willingness to share all that with me. I interviewed people I liked and valued and therefore could easily talk with.

Starting these interviews with my unhidden resentment towards being asked that question, I was surprised to hear that most of the interviewed people did not share my judgment of the question as ignorant and boring but mainly as a question out of interest. When I asked Annette, for example, she gave me a new use it can have. Testing. If I am the person asking, I am testing how much my opposite is willing to share with me at that moment. If a am the person being asked I am testing how the opponent reacts to my answer or me not answering expectedly. In these two cases, the subject becomes irrelevant and the focus lays on a different level of communication.

So besides being that boring conversation starter or that huge question about identity it is also a chance to check out people's behavior and thinking without asking them to tell you everything they tell their therapists. It is an easy way to connect if both are open for it. But back to the content of the question, and my annoyance. Being asked where I am from does brother me for the reasons below, but I will answer it because I am a polite being and society taught me that rolling my eyes and stepping out of and conversation I do not want to hold, does not get me very far, plus people are simply interested creatures. And if I answer Germany and get that confused look, as if they are surprised that I was born here and speak German even though I have black curls and thick eyebrows or whatever does not seem German enough, I might add that my dad is from Senegal.

But I get mad when people repeat that question and add that little "really" to it. The person asking me Where I Am really from is pushing me into a conversation I don’t want to be but can not get out without it being awkward for one of us. There is no polite way to answer that I am really from Germany and that I feel like a real German, that I really lived here ever since, that this really is taking away my belonging to this place on earth and showing that Germany is a diverse country with sadly not so diverse minds, that it is not my responsibility to preach that it is really normal to be German and have a "non-German looking" parent. All that never comes out politely. And politeness only gets me so far because smiling and saying "Oh so sorry to confuse you, of cause I am not a real German, I am half whatever", does not feel right.

Now, since I use that question as a chance to connect, I changed my answer. Instead of passive- aggressive racist blaming I respond with honest curiosity: “Why are you asking?” Because maybe something interesting is hiding behind that “really”.