I remember being in Jordan and trying to explain to Jordanians that Ian (a friend) was Chinese/Irish in heritage, but Canadian in nationality. They just did not understand that he wasn't Chinese, becuase he looks Chinese.
I am looking at our Olympic team right now. The field hockey team has five players that wear turbans. Our best fencer actually won a medal for China before she became a Canadian citizen. Our most famous wrestler has gone home to Nigeria to "do for Nigeria what Canada has done for me".
My impressions of Australia (and please keep in mind that there are the impressions of a 13-year-old in 1997, just as Pauline Hanson was coming on the scene) was that racism was much closer to the surface than it was in Canada. I didn't meet a black person until I was about 5 (and apparently what I said to my mother was "Mummy! Look at that woman! She is so beautiful!"), and didn't encounter my first Asians until high school...but I was also raised in a family where basketball, baseball, the Olympics and football were akin to religion, teaching tolerance and world unity and an aristocracy of talent instead of heritage.
I sort of lost that somewhere in the middle. The Olympics make me verbose.
Anyway, I understand what you went through as a child, though I can only slightly empathize because my differences from my schoolmates were social and not physical. It's a tough road for all of us, I think, for whatever reason, and tolerance and fair play is something that cannot be overtaught.
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I am looking at our Olympic team right now. The field hockey team has five players that wear turbans. Our best fencer actually won a medal for China before she became a Canadian citizen. Our most famous wrestler has gone home to Nigeria to "do for Nigeria what Canada has done for me".
My impressions of Australia (and please keep in mind that there are the impressions of a 13-year-old in 1997, just as Pauline Hanson was coming on the scene) was that racism was much closer to the surface than it was in Canada. I didn't meet a black person until I was about 5 (and apparently what I said to my mother was "Mummy! Look at that woman! She is so beautiful!"), and didn't encounter my first Asians until high school...but I was also raised in a family where basketball, baseball, the Olympics and football were akin to religion, teaching tolerance and world unity and an aristocracy of talent instead of heritage.
I sort of lost that somewhere in the middle. The Olympics make me verbose.
Anyway, I understand what you went through as a child, though I can only slightly empathize because my differences from my schoolmates were social and not physical. It's a tough road for all of us, I think, for whatever reason, and tolerance and fair play is something that cannot be overtaught.