The Daily UbuntuThread 01 · Exile and Migration · September 29, 2026
"You're not from here": the weight of four words
A harmless-sounding question can draw a border. Even people born in Canada are often reminded that they supposedly come "from somewhere else."
1 · The scene
Some sentences stick in the memory like shards of glass. Mine, I heard as a child, in a schoolyard: "You're not from here." Four words. Not a shout, not an insult. An invisible border, drawn right through the heart.
A friend knows this wound. Every time someone asks him "So where are you from?", he hears less curiosity than distance, no matter his years here, his degrees, his commitment.
And yet I remain hopeful. If four words can wound, four others can heal: "You are home here."
Original vignette
2 · The documented case
Born here, and yet "from elsewhere"
The question "Where are you from?" seems ordinary. Yet the numbers show it touches a nerve. According to Statistics Canada's Canadian Social Survey, from 2021 to 2024, 51% of racialized people aged 15 and over said they had experienced discrimination or unfair treatment in the previous five years. That is almost double the proportion among non-racialized people (27%).
The perceived reasons speak for themselves: first race or skin colour (66%), then ethnic origin or culture (49%), accent (28%) and language (27%). So many signs that, without saying it out loud, whisper: "you're not from here."
The most striking detail concerns Black people. Those born in Canada are markedly more likely to report discrimination (71%) than recent (51%) or established (59%) Black immigrants. Being born here, then, is no protection from the look that sends you somewhere else.
Ubuntu offers another way of seeing belonging. It is not a certificate issued at birth or at the border: it is woven through relationship. Every time we tell someone "you are home here," we also enlarge the "us" we belong to.
3 · The voice
“The only way to undo racism is to consistently identify and describe it”
“A person is a person through other persons.”
4 · The question
In your everyday words, what tells someone they are already at home, and what, without meaning to, tells them the opposite?
Sources
- Statistics Canada, The Daily, "Half of racialized people have experienced discrimination or unfair treatment in the past five years," May 16, 2024. www150.statcan.gc.ca
- NPR (via KPBS), "Ibram X. Kendi Says No One Is 'Not Racist.' So What Does It Mean To Be Antiracist?," August 15, 2019. www.kpbs.org
- Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria, tribute to Justice Yvonne Mokgoro and ubuntu, 2024. www.chr.up.ac.za
Every figure on this page links to a verifiable public source.
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