Where are you from?

 White person: Where are you from?

Non-white, non-Indigenous person: Melbourne.

White person, confused: No, no. I mean, where do you really come from?

It is a question that very clearly asserts its purpose: “People who look like you don’t come from here. White people come from here. So, where do you really come from?”

It isn’t always said with malicious intent.

The underlying meaning is still the same, though – you can’t be from here. White people come from here.

It was common within western literature that the terms “people” and “white people” were readily interchangeable.

But they still kept all the racialised adjectives, classifications and slurs for everyone else.

It is why generations of people were taught that when a newspaper refers to “a 23-year-old Sydney man” that man is probably white, because if they weren’t, it would have said “a 23-year-old Aboriginal man living in Sydney”.

What is racial invisibility, and how do white people benefit from it? | Luke Pearson for IndigenousX | The Guardian