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Confessions of a Sinophobe: The Etiology of Endogenous Racism
As a third generation Chinese-Canadian, I grew up on the Prairies, in a predominantly Caucasian neighbourhood, with predominantly Caucasian schoolmates. Since the time I began to talk, my parents drilled into me, "You'd better marry a nice Chinese boy. If you marry a white boy, we'll cut you out of our will." My father still admonishes me for not being able to speak Chinese and chooses to ignore the fact that I was fluent in Cantonese until I entered Grade One. At that time, my parents, concerned that I wouldn't pick up English, decided to stop speaking Cantonese at home. As a result, I quickly dropped Chinese as a spoken language and didn't pick it up again. The last time I tried to order in a Chinese restaurant using Cantonese (about eighteen years ago), the waitress asked if I was Japanese.
In school, I never considered myself to be visibly set apart from my Caucasian friends. When I had the Chinese culture continuously jammed down my throat by my father, I rebelled against the sense of...