Them: Clausnitzer... that's an interesting last name, is it German? Me: Yes Them: Huh.. Me: (Giving them what they really want) My father is of German decent and my mother Mexican. Them: Oh, that makes sense. Granted, this happens once a week because I am in front of a LOT of people every week with a business card in hand. Often, they'll only know me from email and my email address is my name, so they probably have a preconceived mental image of some arian fella. It's normally done from a place of genuine curiosity and for that, I don't fault them.White people? Polite white people, at least, have long since learned not to ask
They ask. They're just much stealthier about it. I get asked about once a week this question:
Dude, they ask about my wife, too, and her name is about as Teutonic as you could possibly imagine (most people on Facebook spell it with a ß). AND she looks the part - chick coulda walked off the pages of Heidi and you'd think nothing of it. The same people who will ask about European-sounding names are the exact same ones that aren't allowed to ask about names from literally anywhere else.
I just don't know about anywhere else. I went through a family tree phase recently and learned a lot about names from a few european countries, but outside of that I'm pretty ignorant. That said, I also never really liked the lineage small talk, it always seems to dead end pretty quickly for me: "That an interesting name, is is German." "Yes, my great, great grandfather was German." "...good for him?"The same people who will ask about European-sounding names are the exact same ones that aren't allowed to ask about names from literally anywhere else.
And that's part of the problem: it's small-talk, used as a silence-filler by people who don't know each other. The goal of asking is "say something I can relate to" - so in your example, you're hoping for "my dad was German" which you can follow up with "Oh yeah? I've been there twice! Where in Germany?" and now you have a vague, thin, irrelevant point of affinity between you and this total stranger. The argument of the article is "don't look for affinity with me in any possible way, because everything you do as a white person offends me."
Man, trust me I know when it's a "that's an interesting name" inquiry and when it's a "that name doesn't fit" inquiry. It's pretty obvious. Then theres the "you aren't fit for the name boy," inquiry which is rare, but happens. More so in South Carolina... I took a meeting at a business that was literally right across the street from this place and had that third type of inquiry. Pricks.