Nicholas Keungm, the diversity and immigration reporter at the Toronto Star had an article today that discussed the conflict that Chinese Canadians have over the whole Tibet/Olympics issue. Chinese Canadians in general are defnitely upset about the human rights abuses that occur in China, but they do not want a boycott of the Olympics. OK. I understand. But the problem I have with that article is how China is referred to as “the homeland” rather than “the old country” and that it seems like he only spoke with ONE CBC, a young man whose family came to Canada in 1912. So my question is this: Is Nicholas Keung, himself of Chinese descent, agreeing with the Perpetual F oreigner myth? I’m not sure of his background, whether he’s CBC, CRC (Canadian Raised Chinese….someone who wasn’t born in Canada, but came before junior high school age) or someone who came as a tween or later. And he didn’t talk to anyone who was for the boycott. In other words, the entire article is pretty shitty.
By the way, in my experience, many Chinese Canadian immigrants themselves don’t consider themselves “Canadian” which doesn’t exactly help. People do realize that you have to behave a certain way in order for others to accept you, right? If you continually call Hong Kong or China, “home” rather than “the old country” then the general public will not see you as Canadian. As we saw with the conflict in Lebanon a few years ago, too many “technical Canadians” only come here for the passport, never really considering themselves Canadian. I won’t get into the whole multiculturalism (people who know me know that I’m not 100% for multiculturalism. I’m not for complete assimilation either…I’m for people who are nice and properly cultured…more on that another time…) issue here, but I don’t understand why people don’t see this as a problem.
