“Whoa.”
Growing, I didn’t have a lot of problems being an ethnic person in Canada. I know my brother beat up his fair share of people for it, but I don’t even recall getting angry about it ever. Both my elementary school, and high school were ethnically diverse, dominantly Jewish and dominantly Chinese, respectively.
The only time I ever encountered any kind of racism was during my hockey career. Occasionally, members of the opposing team would shout ‘Hey Chink’ as I pass by their bench.
When I lived in Korea, I blended in nicely. But my poor language skills, and my obviously awesome English language skills again made me stick out a little. But again, I rarely felt any discrimination. Usually the stories or funny, or interesting.
This past weekend I traveled out to Lindsay, Ontario to visit a buddy for the night. Walking the streets of Toronto, you really notice the interesting make up of it’s demographic. You drive no more than 50 km out of the city, that can change drastically, depending on where you go. Markham is notorious for being a China-town. A lot of my brown friends from university all lived in Malton. Lindsay however, has pretty much one colour.
I’ll be honest, it was in the back of my head the moment I left the city. “I wonder if I’m going to have deal with anything tonight.”
There’s no reason for that thinking. I never struggled with being Korean, but it was still in my thoughts.
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So we’re in this bar, fairly busy place. I’m the only Asian guy there, and we’ve got our group of people on the dance floor, and we’re all having a good time. As with any dance floor, you got the people traveling from A to B, which can be frustrating if you’re standing in what seems to be a freeway for dance-floor pedestrians.
One guy who’s going through, talking and meeting people as he goes, meets eyes with me and stops in his tracks. I had a big hood on so maybe he was surprised when he saw me. But in my, out loud he goes “Whooaa”.
I couldn’t help but laugh. He laughs uncomfortably realizing his faux pas, and goes “It’s cool man.” and pats me on the back and proceeds onward.
It was cool with him that I was Asian. That’s good to know.