Irish Teen Gets Annoyed By Americans Asking Her Stupid Questions So She Refuses To Give Her Class A Presentation Of Her Culture

Moving countries puts huge pressure on anyone, especially if you’re a teenager. Leaving your close friends, family members, and everything you took for granted behind and finding yourself in a completely foreign environment where you’re expected to get comfy and thrive, at such a precarious time of your life, can be daunting. This is what happened to one 16-year-old Irish woman from Dublin who moved to a small town in the south of the US with her family.

Here, she joined the high school where her classmates soon picked up on her unusual accent and started teasing her with Irish stereotypes. The teen was then asked by her history teacher to present her Irish culture to her class, but this was the last thing she wanted to do.

The drama ensued, and the teen who wrote this lengthy Reddit post is now unsure whether it was the right thing to do to refuse to share her background. “I don’t want to be used as some kind of performance monkey,” she stated of this challenging situation. Read the full story below and share what you think in the comment section!

The Irish teen has moved to a small town in the US where she refused to teach her class about her culture as she didn’t want to “be used as some kind of performance monkey”

Irish Teen Gets Annoyed By Americans Asking Her Stupid Questions So She Refuses To Give Her Class A Presentation Of Her Culture

Image credits: Fotos_PDX (not the actual photo)

Here is the full story that the author posted on Reddit in a bid to find out if she was right to refuse to share her background with her class

Irish Teen Gets Annoyed By Americans Asking Her Stupid Questions So She Refuses To Give Her Class A Presentation Of Her Culture

Image credits: aoifecassidydublin

And this is what people had to say about this whole situation

Irish Teen Gets Annoyed By Americans Asking Her Stupid Questions So She Refuses To Give Her Class A Presentation Of Her Culture

Liucija Adomaite is a creative mind with years of experience in copywriting. She has a dynamic set of experiences from advertising, academia, and journalism. This time, she has set out on a journey to investigate the ways in which we communicate ideas on a large scale. Her current mission is to find a magic formula for how to make ideas, news, and other such things spread like a virus.

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What do you think ?

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Jihan Kim 3 years ago

As a Korean guy studied and still living in India for the better half of my life, I kinda understand her. Ignorant(often nasty) stereotype is really off putting and it'd naturally put anyone's guard up. It's actually pretty sad for both the parties here..

41points

Daria B 3 years ago

Finally someone who understands. I'm an Italo-Croatian in Korea since 2010 and I totally understand what she's going through. People might mean no harm, but looking different and coming from abroad lessens the general perception of you as an equal human being. As I said in a comment below, I do get the excitement, but I'm not anybody's mascot, or an exotic animal, and I can totally feel the difference when someone is genuinely curious about my culture or just asks me questions for their own vanity.

17points

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Demi Zwaan 3 years ago

Well, not an asshole, but grossly overreacting. If you want people to stop seeing you as something special and thinking you live in stone cottages with leprechauns, you need to teach them. What's the harm in telling them that you come from a perfectly normal country, with great healthcare, fast internet and all the same things as any Western country has? America has a bad school system, they don't learn this stuff, so why not tell them? Being bullied is a problem, but then refusing to stand up and explain what it's really like is just stupid.

41points

Pedro 3 years ago

Is she not a free person? She doesn't want to do it, plain and simple and doesn't need to justify herself to ANYONE. Her body, her choice. Her mind, her choice. She chose NO.

23points

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JuJu 3 years ago

"Hey google, what is Ireland like?"

16points

WilvanderHeijden 3 years ago

It's not her task to compensate a failing educational system. It's not her task to do a teacher's job. Being bullied by the school to force her do something she's not willing to do is the real issue here. She's not the problem, the teacher and the school are.

13points

Lomion 3 years ago (edited)

No, she doesn't need to teach them. Firstly, It's not her duty, the responsibility of teaching is on parents, a school theachers but not on her after all. Secondly, thouse kids are about 16-17 years old, right? Are they banned from Google, or what? If they REALLY want to know something it is a question of a couple of clicks... Or they are idiots.

6points

KatHat 3 years ago

Have you moved countries? Have you dealt with the CONSTANT comments on your accent, your differences, your [whatever]? I estimate I have been asked over 2,000 times about my accent. Yes, it's well-meaning, but I don't owe anyone an explanation and I reserve the right not to repeat myself two thousand freaking times. You sound ignorant and judgemental, laying down the law about something you haven't experienced.

5points

Gabby M 3 years ago

How can you say "being bullied is a problem" in the same sentence that you call someone stupid? It is not her responsibility to teach others about her culture. That is placing an unfair expectation on her.

3points

Dest 3 years ago

Yeah. Also, the stupid questions are probably sarcasm. I moved to a different country from Russia and had to switch schools for my ninth grade upwards. Not only was I the only person with light hair (cause it was a Sri Lankan school, and all people there were from there or Maldives/india), but my accent stood out aswell. Their sarcastic (and yes, stereotypical) jokes like 'hey, go you have a grizzly bear as a pet', or 'can you bring me a machine gun from your visit' we're just harmless jokes we laughed over. All of them are still great friends to me

1point

Monica Pryts 2 years ago

She doesn't owe them a damn thing.

0points

Aunt Messy 3 years ago

She's in the South, surrounded by racists and bigots, she's being constantly bullied and harassed, and I realize it's America, but surely at least one or two other people in her class can read...like pick up a book and read? It's clear her teacher is too much of an asshole to do that.

-1point

Jo Choto 3 years ago

As a "foreigner" who lived in the USA for 22 years, I can attest to the fact that there are parts of America where they literally know nothing about the outside world. Asking someone to talk about their culture would be seen as a compliment. Which is why they didn't ask the kid from Mexico. She is offended by what she thinks is mockery, when she should be offended by the appalling ignorance. Just as an aside, to deal with this, I created an entire program for my daughter's elementary school where parents who were born all around the world would come in on this one multicultural day, and the kids would have little passports and could go to visit different "countries". We would tell them fun and interesting things about our cultures. We got the kids to learn about their own cultural heritages. Everyone loved it.

35points

Kristina N 3 years ago

That's what our teachers organized too! And they added a food component to it too. As a kid, I loved the opportunity to introduce my classmates to my country of origin and some of the amazing food we have plus trying the traditional foods brought in by other students. We were in a multicultural city though and I was never the only immigrant kid in the class, there were always 4-5 of us.

10points

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Alphabet Soupy 3 years ago

That’s awesome!! Houston had a yearly international festival, it was soooooo freaking amazing. I believe it stopped bc other specific festivals got more popular, and the international one lost funding.

4points

Biana Vacker 3 years ago

Yes! We had an "International Stem Day", where students could set up booths with their families with food and facts about their heritage or country. All the kids had worked on projects involving different countries and showcased them as well. You could also participate in a scavenger hunt with questions about different countries. It was one of my favorite school events as a child!

3points

Mimi777 3 years ago

I absolutely love this idea. I would love to do something like this at my daughter’s school when she starts we live in a multicultural city as well and we have an event every year called Global Fest where there are booths set up with information and other things about a specific culture or country. Some have food, some show traditional clothing, Etc. It would be great to have something similar in school for kids. Once again I love your idea.

2points

Leo Domitrix 3 years ago

My moms family is n't from the US, so it was normal for us (as a collective group) to deal with the idea of our/her culture as presented in bad jokes on TV ----- and feel resentful ----- and then get up and explain, "No, we're not, but that's what your TV told you, and in other countries, TV says Americans are all (pick a stereotype)." .... EXPLAIN. Don't be mean in return. Then people learn, and it's cool. :-)

1point

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Jihan Kim 3 years ago

41points

Daria B 3 years ago

17points

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Demi Zwaan 3 years ago

41points

Pedro 3 years ago

Is she not a free person? She doesn't want to do it, plain and simple and doesn't need to justify herself to ANYONE. Her body, her choice. Her mind, her choice. She chose NO.

23points

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