“Your English is fantastic! Where did you learn it from?”
I cringe internally, but answer laughingly with a practiced ease, “I’m Canadian”.
Always immediately, they ask, “Oh, why did you come back?”
“I didn’t. I’m not Chinese. ”
Sometimes, when I’m feeling particularly vindictive, I’ll say I’m Korean. Just to watch them stumble over their mouths trying to pull their feet out.
Mostly, I smile and nod and laugh.
“Your Chinese is terrible. Why don’t you speak your own Mother Tongue?”
In these cases, I tell them I’m Korean straight up, or any other form of Asian. I don’t bother saying anything else because “But you don’t look Canadian” is engraved in the roundness of my cheeks, the thickness of my hair and the shape of my eyes.
I am a 3rd Culture Kid. Born in Singapore to parents who are 3rd/4th generation Australian/American-something Asian, raised in a menagerie of cities and countries that eventually plateaued into Canada. My first language is English, not because it is my Mother Tongue, but because it is universally understood.
I am Asian, and not even the easy blend of ABC or ABK. I have no idea what my family’s history is because my family has never been consumed with the idea of belonging. My family’s tradition is exploration. All the facets of ourselves, the universe and the world. I am a child of this world, of my parents’ parents, the travellers who came before me, gave me life and breathed into me my own wanderlust.
I have been told, asked, prodded and dissected repeatedly by White, Black and Asian people alike:
Your English is fantastic. You can understand Dutch? Why don’t you speak Korean? Why don’t you speak French better? For a foreigner, your Chinese is pretty good.
I can say I’m OK in 7 languages and in all of them, I am met with an incredulous stare, an indignant chuckle and a quick aversion of the eyes. Mostly, they are quick to point out what I already know — I am not one of them.
You think racism is locked into the shade of your skin, the colour of your eyes or the language (or lack of) that you speak?
You are wrong.
It is your reaction to that which does not fit, that you cannot comprehend. It is in your casual stereotyping of Asian — must not be able to speak German. It is in your casual assuredness that I must be able to use chopsticks, that I must be able to speak Chinese, that since I live in Shanghai, it must be because I’m coming back. Because my parents have to be Chinese.
It doesn’t matter that I was 16 the first time I ever had Chinese food. That I’d lived in more cities in Europe and North America than I’ve ever visited in Asia. It doesn’t matter that I stumbled, for a long time, wondering how to answer the casual question of “So… Where are you from?”.
Because Canadian, American, Singaporean, Australian, Chinese… Whatever it is that is engraved on my passport, means more to you, than it does to me. How can one tiny booklet tell you all my experiences, of where I was when my identity was shaped? But you need to know where I’m from, because that is what defines me for you, more than who I am as a person.
In an increasingly flat world, in a world where 3rd culture kids are quickly becoming the norm — e.g. the French kids with their nannies in the streets of Shanghai. Blond hair and fair skinned, who spew rapid fire Chinese at each other— I have to wonder, why the outrage about racism is often shunted towards debates formed around the colour of our skin.
I have to wonder why casual Racism isn’t addressed more often.
I have watched it in the way my friends defend their ancestry, as if trying to prove some pedigree. I have watched it fall casually from the tongues of my ABC friends: it’s in the stubborn tilt of their heads, in their faux-embarassment of speaking Chinese like a foreigner. I have watched it in the casual actions of my White friends, when I first moved to Shanghai and was learning Chinese, the way they stood up for me whenever the waitstaff asked me questions I couldn’t understand. I have heard it drop from the mouths of friends and boyfriends, “Well, she wouldn’t react this way if she was White”, and “But you’re Canadian! You’re different!”
So I know. I know you aren’t interested in hearing my story, or all the countries I’ve lived in, and all the myriad schools I’ve attended.
I know you are caught up in the idea that Racism cannot be applied to you, because you are not White. Or you are White. Because you have White friends. You have Black friends. You have Asian friends. Because you are part of the minority, wherever you’re from. Because you are aware of being culturally appropriate. Because you are outraged on my behalf when anything you deem inappropriate is said or alluded to in my presence. Because you’re an ABC who’s parents are 3rd gen Americans, or because your skin tone gives you firsthand information regarding all my perceived sufferings.
Because to you, I am the colour of my skin and the colour of my passport combined.
So I fall back onto my default, every time you say, “Your English is fantastic! Where did you learn it from?”, every time you ask, “So which part of America are you from?”, every time someone tells me I look like a Cali girl…I smile and I reply,
I’m Canadian.
Because that’s all that you want to hear. #WestCoastBestCoast
