Entry tags:
Oh, the dangers of procrastinating.
Discovered an old classmate's blog today. Not by snooping or anything. There it was, clear as day, on my Facebook home page thingy.
AC updated her profile. She changed her website to something.com.
So I went. And I read. And I am all kinds of mixed up about it.
This girl... woman, I guess, since she, like me, is 30...
I was in kindergarten with her. I've known her for over 25 years. Haven't spoken in easily 10. Probably 13, since we graduated.
Skimming through her blog, I see stuff about her being in therapy, her having an eating disorder (bulimia), her being back in Montreal. I see things she posts, about social change in the world and how Japan idolizes the West and... why, exactly? And I see that she's been... well, I'm not sure if she's been discriminated against, but certainly labelled a minority. And that confused me for a minute. And then I remembered that yeah, her mom's Japanese. Her dad's Canadian. So that makes her half-Japanese. I guess she does look slightly Asian -- petite, with dark, narrowing eyes, and dark hair. But she never looked "Asian" to me. Never looked "exotic" or "different". To me, she was always just.... AC. She looked like AC.
I think about how funny "race" is. How, biologically, the colour of our skin doesn't make us a different "race" at all. Certain ethnic groups are more prone to certain genetic things, sure, but... we're all human. We're all people.
And while I know that logically, I guess it only hit me today that I know it emotionally, too. At least for some people, people with whom I grew up, I guess, before I knew what "race" was, what the big deal was about skin colour. I learned early on that some of my classmates were Jewish and some were Muslim and I learned that whatever I believed, we were different from each other, but it was kind of cool. I was glad I didn't fast at Ramadan and the girls who were Jewish were glad to have a bat miztvah and the Muslim girls were pleased to get to celebrate Western holidays, at least in terms of not having school then. But I don't think I ever really learned that any of my classmates were "different" from me because of the colour of their skin or their facial features or anything like that.
I guess it dawned on me, over time, that we had Asian girls in the class, some were Middle Easterners... but these girls that I spent 11 years with, in some cases, were just... classmates. AC, half-Japanese or not, was just AC to me. FK was just FK, though her skin was probably the darkest shade of anyone in the class.
It kind of startled me to see AC talking about being a visible minority. Amazing how different people see different things, isn't it?
AC updated her profile. She changed her website to something.com.
So I went. And I read. And I am all kinds of mixed up about it.
This girl... woman, I guess, since she, like me, is 30...
I was in kindergarten with her. I've known her for over 25 years. Haven't spoken in easily 10. Probably 13, since we graduated.
Skimming through her blog, I see stuff about her being in therapy, her having an eating disorder (bulimia), her being back in Montreal. I see things she posts, about social change in the world and how Japan idolizes the West and... why, exactly? And I see that she's been... well, I'm not sure if she's been discriminated against, but certainly labelled a minority. And that confused me for a minute. And then I remembered that yeah, her mom's Japanese. Her dad's Canadian. So that makes her half-Japanese. I guess she does look slightly Asian -- petite, with dark, narrowing eyes, and dark hair. But she never looked "Asian" to me. Never looked "exotic" or "different". To me, she was always just.... AC. She looked like AC.
I think about how funny "race" is. How, biologically, the colour of our skin doesn't make us a different "race" at all. Certain ethnic groups are more prone to certain genetic things, sure, but... we're all human. We're all people.
And while I know that logically, I guess it only hit me today that I know it emotionally, too. At least for some people, people with whom I grew up, I guess, before I knew what "race" was, what the big deal was about skin colour. I learned early on that some of my classmates were Jewish and some were Muslim and I learned that whatever I believed, we were different from each other, but it was kind of cool. I was glad I didn't fast at Ramadan and the girls who were Jewish were glad to have a bat miztvah and the Muslim girls were pleased to get to celebrate Western holidays, at least in terms of not having school then. But I don't think I ever really learned that any of my classmates were "different" from me because of the colour of their skin or their facial features or anything like that.
I guess it dawned on me, over time, that we had Asian girls in the class, some were Middle Easterners... but these girls that I spent 11 years with, in some cases, were just... classmates. AC, half-Japanese or not, was just AC to me. FK was just FK, though her skin was probably the darkest shade of anyone in the class.
It kind of startled me to see AC talking about being a visible minority. Amazing how different people see different things, isn't it?