My own racism

[BobTheSubgenius]

5. This is a fabulous and thought-provoking piece.

Thank you so much for your obvious passion and a great deal of effort to write about it.

I had a VERY different experience growing up. I did all my school years - G1 through college and Uni - in Vancouver BC, and moved back to Victoria, the city of my birth, when I was 27.

My father used to tell this story that I don't remember at all, other than through his recollection...partly because I was 6, and partly because it didn't make an impression on me. I brought home my class picture and he noticed a boy that I am still in very casual and infrequent touch today. HY is Chinese-Canadian. So Chinese that, even though born in Vancouver, didn't speak English until he came to school.

Anyway, as far as my father knew, he might be the first non-white child I had ever met, and I bet he was right. I honestly don't know, though. He wanted to know my reaction, so he he said "I see there is a Chinese boy in your class." Apparently, I looked puzzled and answered "No one in my class speaks Chinese." (Well, he did, but I didn't know it until many years later.)

The point being that there just wasn't the opportunity to have the kind of interactions you were able to have. Now, however, Vancouver is populated by an Asian majority. I saw a piece on Vancouver news that happened to use as its starting point the year my family moved from here to there. At that time, Vancouver was 67% Anglo. Not Caucasian - Anglo. Add in all the other Caucasian-heavy countries who were represented there - Italy, France, Germany...etc...and it was OVERWHELMINGLY white.

30 years later, it was 63% Asian. I'm not sure if a place has ever undergone that radical a peace-time demographic shift, and I really don't know what to make of it. We think of Greater Vancouver as being very dangerous because of drugs and gangs, but I imagine it's FAR more dangerous for people "in the life" than it is for the average person. (Oddly, the largest gang by far is very egalitarian - The UN Gang. Called that because they absolutely do not recruit along racial lines - thugs of all nationalities are welcome) Still...more dangerous than a city should be, let alone a lovely one like Vancouver.

But I sense very, very little racism when I visit. I feel welcomed in business that I patronize, people are pleasant and polite in 'everyday encounters', by and large. Because of the life I've lived and where I've lived it, I am very intrigued by the life and experiences you had - so different from mine, and racial lines seem much more defined in your past than mine. Through NO fault or doing of your own, of course. Just The Way Things Were.

Sociology, even as a dry, purely academic study, can be supremely interesting to me. In "real life", more than fascinating. When I travel to places, my overwhelming curiousity is not the setting or leisure activities available or landmarks (unless it's something completely incomparable like the Grand Canyon) - it's the people and the lives they lead.

Again...thank you for a VERY thought-provoking perspective.