What Are You Anyway? My Experience of Being a Child of Mixed Ethnic Heritage
The following is something I wrote when I was 22 years old, having recently moved from Calgary, Alberta to Vancouver, BC. I am a second generation Canadian of mixed ethnic heritage. I was born in the early 1980s in the city of Toronto. Toronto is a densely populated and culturally diverse city located within a large and culturally diverse Canada. Looking at me, I swear you would not know it know it, but I'll let you in on a little secret; I’m not really White. I am a second generation Canadian. My mother immigrated to Canada from the Philippines and my father immigrated to Canada from the former Czechoslovakia. My mother has brown skin. My father had white skin. They both have incredibly thick accents that I never noticed until someone pointed it out. Despite the fact that I believe that most people probably consider me Caucasian when looking at me, I assure you that have personally felt the impact of racism. Though perhaps today I could pass for “white”, when I was a child I