I work as a user researcher, and today was rough. A midday participant asked me as we were beginning our session whether my name, which shows up as Hanna, Rania is ‘Hanna’ or ‘Rania.’ I told him it’s Rania, and he expressed such confusion about how a last name could be Hanna.

“Hanna’s a last name?! Last?”

“Yes,” I said, about to launch into how it’s an old Christian Syrian name, meaning “John,” but I decided not to bother.

His immediate question was, “Are you Indian?”

“No,” I said, “It’s Middle Eastern,” referring to my name.

“You’re Arabic?” he asked.

“Arabic’s a language, I’m Middle Eastern, I’m Syrian.”

“So where are you speaking to me from? What part of the world? Are you…over there?”

At this point, I’m feeling snarky, so I said, “What does my accent sound like to you?”

“Well, from here,” he said.

“Yeah, I’m American, I was born here.”

He tried continuing the conversation, but I said we had a few minutes before the session so I would be stepping out until then.

Later, during the session, with two of my colleagues on the call, this participant proceeded to say, unprompted, “I asked you if you were Indian because I don’t like talking to people in those countries. Whenever I call customer support and get a person from there…I like to talk to people who have my accent. I don’t like when a company outsources to other countries, it doesn’t make me feel valued.”

I quickly messaged a colleague with “wtf.”

The call continued, but I’d lost steam, and quickly ended the call. My second colleague messaged me, offering sympathy and support, and eventually, made me laugh about the whole situation, and I felt much better.

All this leads me to this:

We need community, we need people who reach out to others and offer support. We also need courage to say to those who have grown far too comfortable sharing ignorant opinions, “shut up.” Or, if not that, then certainly something more eloquent and intelligent.

What I mean is, we need to normalize calling people out, and teaching ourselves how to do so. Today is the first time I was confidently “snarky,” which is to say, stood up for myself. It’s not snark, it’s self-protection and calling out people, though I wish I’d done more to be more blatant about his disrespect. We need to learn, and to help others learn, how to speak up more, because so few of us are taught how to do so.

This post is not meant to be anything profound; I simply wanted to share an experience I had today, and offer some of my preliminary thoughts. I’m sure I’ll return to this in the future, once I’ve collected more of my senses and opinions, and perhaps some of my learnings.

By: Rania Hanna