Race and ethnicity were never a major part of my identity growing up. I am a first-generation born Canadian with Chinese background. My parents immigrated from Malaysia over 30 years ago to give me a better future. They gave up their Malaysian citizenship as the country does not allow dual-citizenship and have fully integrated into Western society and norms. While I learned very little about my race and ethnicity through my family, most of what I have come to know has been through my own research in recent years. My parents believed that by adopting Western cultures, this would make life “easier” for me. This worked for the most part as I was growing up, because my classmates were primarily first-generation born Asian people like me. In the media and our curriculum, I rarely saw myself represented until the later years of high school. However, this never bothered me, nor hindered my learning experience. It was enough to be surrounded by like-minded people who looked like me, had similar experiences to me, and shared the same wavelength of thinking.
The first time I really started noticing my race was when I moved to Kingston for post-secondary education. Suddenly, I was the only Asian person in the room. I would not say that my race has ever deprived me of an opportunity, but people always wanted to know “where I was from.” This question never made any sense to me. I was from Canada. I have almost zero affiliation or connection to my parents’ homeland. Why did it matter to other people? I can have a strong sense of self, without feeling particularly connected to my culture. The realization that I was too “white” to be Asian but did not look the part continues to be something I struggle with.
Today, I work at a school where the majority of the student population is BIPOC. There is a sense of understanding amongst most students and staff, who all have experiences with racism. Even though my race is not the majority at my school, I have found that working in this community has given me a fresh perspective on my ethnicity. “Race creates new forms of power: The power to categorize and judge, elevate and downgrade, include and exclude.” (Kendi, 2019). It has been refreshing to be in a community that strives to empower, elevate, and include all. This is why I have become more willing to learn and conduct my own research on my background. A conversation with a staff member reminded me that no matter how far we, or our families may move away, our culture is always a part of us.
In my present-day teaching, I do my best to represent all students from all backgrounds. While this looks different for each student, it is an important goal I hold myself to for each of my classes. I acknowledge when I have made mistakes and encourage learning together with my students in a way that is respectful and does not put anyone in a challenging position. There are topics that I acknowledge I cannot speak on from personal experiences. For those cases, I do my best to find somebody who is comfortable to speak on them, rather than trying to myself and being ignorant about it or ignoring the topic entirely. One thing that became apparent for me during my time in post-secondary, is that not all students want to speak for their entire race and/or ethnicity. Nor should we ever expect them to. Making students relive their personal experiences and trauma without first creating a safe space for them is not the solution. Furthermore, as DiAngelo (2011) described, many BIPOC are skeptical about sharing their experiences in fear of racial arrogance being the response. In my experiences, I have found that if I structure my response in a way that is too generalized, I will be pressured to go into detail. The person posing the questions is almost always somebody I have just met, and because we have not established that connection between us, it leaves me feeling dreadfully uncomfortable. This is never something that I want my students to experience in my classroom, so I am careful not to approach the topic in this manner.
I have also learned that the same applies for assignments in post-secondary institutes and graduate studies programs. There have been countless times where I have been asked to share a very personal story that reminds me of a traumatic experience for an assignment in a class I just enrolled in, to a group of people I have never met. While I see where some of these instructors are coming from, expecting BIPOC to do this when trust has not been established, is not the way to hear our perspectives. This is why in my classroom, I strive to establish a safe space with my students first, before asking them to share. I have been experimenting with different ways to go about doing this; whether that’s through full-class discussions, small group/partner activities, or one-on-one discussion. I am learning that there is no one-size-fits-all method that works best. It is usually a combination of all of these and understanding that what works one day with a group of students is not necessarily going to work the same the next. The key is to be flexible, patient, and continuously implement and apply culturally relevant pedagogy within our classrooms.
References
DiAngelo, R. (2011). White Fragility. International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, 3(3), 54-70.
Kendi, I. X. (2019). Chapter 3: Power. In How to Be an Antiracist (pp. 35–43). One
World.
CN Tower, Toronto, October 2015
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