And it feels like I’m being cut with a knife. Even folks who are trying to be sympathetic and who are explaining that for new immigrants, you have no choice but to work hard because you have little money, few family members, and because of your status as a minority, you have to prove yourself or essentially get shit on for the rest of your life… are inadvertently being racist. This is true for my father, yes. He came here with $50 in his pocket and got 90s in pharmacy school. He worked 70 hours, sent money home to his parents, and worked himself until he got an ulcer… But, this is not true for me. I was born here. I don’t speak Chinese. I was raised very “Canadian” (because my mom is second generation too). I am not, basically what you’ve constructed as being “fresh of the boat” ( an offensive term, but I think fitting to describe how we’re treated and stereotyped). However, because of how I look, I’m automatically lumped into this category. All of us Canadian born Asians are lumped into this category- even though for us Canadian born Asian kids, we probably have more cultural similarities with some white folks (depending on how many generations we’ve been here etc).
And really, there’s no winning if you’re a POC. If you come here and become successful, you’re demonized for “taking your jobs” or taking too much room in your schools. These jobs and these institutions apparently, belong to you white folks. If we were to take more working class positions (such as working in a laundry like my grandma did), we’d be demonized for again, taking your jobs and settling for less pay (because as model minorities we work hard for less… and this kind of exploitation has dated back to the construction of the railroad). If we were to go on social assistance, we’d again, be demonized for being lazy POC, who are taking advantage of your government money…
In other words, ship us all back to Asia! There, it’d be much simpler! No more ‘Asian’ people taking your jobs, or taking up space in your schools, or taking advantage of your social assistance! Even the ones who were born here, just round us up and ship us back to the generic continent of Asia! We all look the same, anyway…
I also read some negative comments about Asian TAs and how they “can’t speak English,” etc, and start to feel super self-conscious about my own position as a TA. The language barrier has not been so much of a problem but I do notice a difference in how students approach me in comparison to my white coworkers… I notice how profs of colour are treated differently in comparison to their white coworkers… And I wonder, are the students thinking the same thing? ”Who is this Chink? And, why does she have the authority to teach us anything?”
Maybe I’m being ungrateful… My mom described how our relatives in China think that we live in the “land of Gold,” because our family lives in Canada. I realize that if we lived in China, our family might have remained impoverished… and I’m lucky to have everything that I do now because my family paid head taxes and because my family risked a lot to come here… But, on many levels, I am not grateful and do not consider myself a Canadian. I adopt the term Canadian born Chinese, because there are no other terms to describe me when people ask me “what” I am. But, I’ve never felt like a citizen. I’ve never felt like I belong here, so I’m reluctant to take pride in a nation that pretends to tolerate my existence through their multicultural rhetoric. However, because we’ve been here for so long, I’d feel uncomfortable calling myself Chinese too. I look Chinese, yes. My family is Chinese, yes. But, I’m so unfamiliar with the culture, and the language, and the land itself… So, I often feel unsettled, like I have no home. I don’t belong in either places, and I feel like a perpetual “Other,” and it hurts so much…
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