Growing up CBC
“Canadians come from every corner of the world, speak two official languages and hundreds more, practice many faiths, and represent many cultures. Multiculturalism is at the heart of Canada’s heritage and identity — and as Canadians, we recognize that our differences make us strong.” These are the words of Canada’s own head of state, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as he addressed the nation on Canadian Multiculturalism Day in 2017.
His impactful words hold significance in the lives of many Canadians, but often not in the way most people expect. For, multiculturalism is a great concept in theory, but in reality, it seldom achieves the “ethnic mosaic” to which it strives. Instead, Canadian multiculturalism has taken the shape of cultural assimilation for many second, third, fourth, etc. generations of immigrants, creating what many scholars deem a “melting pot.” Here, cultures and peoples become forcefully engrossed within a “Canadian” culture so much so that they begin dismantling any connection with their ethnic ones.
Such is the case for several Canadian born Chinese (CBCs). We are the highly visible, yet invisible minority who neither fit in amongst Asian communities, nor within the White groups who call us “other” and “oriental.” We exist as stereotypes in the eyes of both these people, neither of which we can call our home. We are forever the “banana,” white on the inside but yellow on the outside. We explain our culture to our non-Chinese friends, who tip-toe around the subject, afraid to overtly offend us. But on the other hand, when we are confronted with recent immigrants, we are talked down to and seen as less Chinese, or even White-ish.
In my life, this struggle is all too real, internally and externally. Both my mother and father are Cantonese Chinese, second generation CBCs, who grew up in a time when being Chinese was something shameful. When walking down the street they were confronted with the snickers of other children, throwing racial slurs such as “Chinaman” or “chink.” The insults did not stop there, but progressed into taunts and games: “chinky chinky Chinese, look at these dirty knees.” It was incessant and horrific, yet it seemed to bother them only slightly. However, it took a toll no matter how strong they were, and in a way that was not immediately evident. For, they paid the high price of a gradual loss of identity, both as an active choice and as a product of the implicit multicultural value of assimilation. Multiculturalism walks the fine line of wanting cultures to exist alongside one another in a respectful and celebratory manner, but only insofar as they abide by the overarching rules of the society into which they have permeated. In other words, multiculturalism says that “others” can be part of their nation, but may only bring with them the parts of their cultures which fit the inherently more important culture of the nation itself.
The confusion instilled by both multiculturalism and everyday racism became so prominent in the minds and spirits of my parents and people like them, to the point that they felt it necessary to separate themselves from our complex and beautiful culture. As the shame of it became too much, they resorted to White-washing various aspects of their lives and, as a result, of their children’s lives.
My parents worked hard to give me everything their immigrant parents couldn’t give them, and did so quite successfully. They moved to a well-off neighborhood in the east end of Toronto, dominated by picket fences almost as white as the families who lived within their borders. Throughout my childhood, I was one of three families in my school who were ethnic minorities. We were those dark specks in the pure white sand, seen yet underappreciated for the pearls we could become. Our parents could understand our misfortunes at school only to a certain degree, as they were educated in predominantly Chinese schools, facing discrimination mainly by passers-by on the street. But I knew it in the safe spaces of the class and lunch rooms, wherein bringing a char sui bao, dumplings, or fried rice for lunch meant going hungry that day, as the pain of hunger was lesser than the pain of ridicule.
But despite the traditional foods and obvious Chinese appearance, I was disconnected from my Chinese culture, as my parents had lost some of their identity. Thus, as another generation went on, I had lost even more of our multifaceted culture. And so, I found myself in a similar position to my parents: rejecting many parts of this culture as a defense mechanism against discrimination, all the while losing vital parts of who I am. This nation which claims to be at its core multicultural has stolen parts of me that I may never regain. I have a hard time communicating with my relatives as I can neither speak/understand the language nor read the texts in their elegant calligraphy. I have never travelled to China, wherein lies another a source of shame for me, and yet I am also glad in a way. I feel as though going to my ancestral home may be a reminder of just how far I am from many aspects of my culture, a direct product of the country in which I was brought up.
As such, whenever I’m in a group of non-Chinese people, I feel as though I’m the odd one out. And yet, when I’m in a group of Chinese people who are strongly tied with their roots, I again experience this feeling of difference. I cannot identify as a full member of either group, which has been a great struggle in my life, one that I assumed was pertinent to me alone. But beginning in high school, and especially in my second year of university, I’ve made friends with other CBCs who are going through this same crisis of identity, feeling as though they don’t have an ethnic home and must live in this liminal phase of racial identification. It has taken me nearly twenty years to address and voice this issue, but now that I have, I feel less alone and more confident in the validity of my feelings.
Don’t get me wrong, multicultural policy has done its part to lessen the amount of overt racism that I, or any subsequent generation, may experience. It has also attracted countless immigrants to our nation with the promise of preexisting communities of their own ethnic groups. But what it cannot claim is that it has succeeded in empowering these cultures to exist as they are, and asking White Canadians (the majority) to view others’ cultures through a lens of cultural relativity. No, instead it says that cultures are acceptable so long as they acknowledge the superiority of the norm, that is, White Canadian culture. And thus, us later generations, the CBCs (alongside all other ethnic minorities), are getting further and further from our historical cultures. We internalize the shame instilled by multicultural policy, slowly melting into the predominant normalcies of society, but never getting close enough to reap its full benefits. In the words of Minelle Mahtani, we embody a hyphen-identity, and are therefore faced with the reality of being quasi-Canadians who look Chinese but are not wholly embraced by its cultures. We are the CBCs; we exist, we matter, and we want to belong.
Bibliography
Mahtani, Minelle. (2002). Interrogating the hyphen-nation: Canadian multicultural policy and “mixed race identities”. n.p.: Joint Centre of Excellence for Research on Immigration and Settlement.
Statement by the Prime Minister on Canadian Multiculturalism Day. (2017). Retrieved from https://pm.gc.ca/eng/news/2017/06/27/statement-prime-minister-canadian-multiculturalism-day
