By Eric George Tauber
SAN DIEGO — There’s been a lot of buzz about whether or not it’s racist to say, “Go back where you came from!” Most white conservatives are saying that it isn’t, while virtually everyone else is saying that it is. So here’s some food for thought:
In my training as an actor, singer and teacher of English to speakers of other languages, I’ve learned to enunciate my words carefully. My students really appreciate this. One commented that my English was not “dirty” as she found other Americans to be. I have to enunciate clearly or all I get is a room full of blank stares.
But this isn’t just my classroom and stage voice. That’s how I talk and this is confusing for Americans who meet me for the first time. Many will say, “I can’t place your accent. Where are you from?” Or “Are you English/Irish/European…?”
Now I’m actually a fourth generation American citizen. I was born in Cincinnati, Ohio and raised on hotdogs and baseball. There were some amber waves of grain quite literally next door to our property. But nobody every guesses that these are my roots.
My favorite story was an instance when a man who –for some reason- pegged me for a foreigner. And he hadn’t even heard me talk. He just looked at me from across a busy street and shouted from the other side of the crosswalk.
“Hey! You’re not an American. Where are you from?” He looked at my brother who was standing next to me and added, “Now you’re definitely an American. But you, you’re not an American. Where are you from?”
So I told him to guess. He looked me up and down, mused for a moment and said, “Germany.”
„Ja!” I replied, Ganz gut, mein Herr. Ich komme aus Dusseldorf.”
[Yes. Very good, Sir. I come from Dusseldorf.]
“Yeah, I thought so,” he said, and walked away smiling, clearly pleased with his own cleverness.
So I’m taken for a foreigner all the time. But unlike the four members of Congress in “The Squad,” I have fair skin, blue eyes and a red beard. And not once have I EVER been told to go back where I came from.
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Tauber is a freelance writer based in San Diego. He may be contacted via eric.tauber@sdjewishworld.com