Maybe one day I'm going to learn to stop disagreeing with the arguments you make on my posts, and maybe one day I'll post something you like, and I won't have to. Who knows.

I obviously misinterpreted your original statement. By referring to your friend, I assumed you were indicating that you hadn't had personal interactions with them.

Again, we've probably had different experiences with our Asian American friends. I haven't experienced any of the attitudes that you're referring to, and my city has several thriving Asian American communities.

That said, I still feel like the sentiments expressed in the article are accurate. I do think it's rude to ask someone "Where are you from?" as a way of avoiding asking about their ethnicity. My takeaway from this article is that we shouldn't beat around the bush when asking someone about their ethnicity. If you ask someone where they're from, expect them to answer with their birthplace, hometown, whatever. If you want to know about their ethnicity, ask them about it directly.

The last paragraph of the article, I thought, summed it up nicely:

If the conversation is naturally veering toward a discussion of origins and there’s genuine interest, I don’t mind being asked where I’m from. I would prefer, however, being asked more specific questions—where did you grow up? Were you born there? Do your parents still live there? Where did you live before you moved here? These queries are more transparent to me, and permit me to give more concise, nuanced answers.

I think the reason I'm having trouble understanding your anger over this article is because of this difference in understanding. I don't think that the article is advocating we ignore people's nationalities or ethnicity, and I think that's the way you're interpreting it. The way I understood it, the author wanted people to start conversations on these subjects in a direct, respectful way, and the question, "Where are you from?" doesn't feel that way to the author, or any of my friends who have had this question posed to them. Maybe I'm the one misinterpreting the article, but this was the point my friend made, and the reason I thought it might be an interesting article to share.