Who Gets to Be “Canadian”? How Race Has Operated in Keeping Canada White

Abstract

“ Where are you from?” is often a question that is asked of some Canadians – typically, Canadians for whom skin colour, race, accent, language (other than English and French), name (last, first and nick-name), religion, place of residence, “appearance,” and the organizations or clubs to which they belong, play a role in why they are being asked the question in the first place. But why are “ assumed non-accented ‘non-visible’ Canadians not asked this question? And when individuals – based on identities by which they are read as “not from Canada” – answer the question with “Canadian,” why would they get a follow-up question: “Where are your parents from?”;and/ or “Where are you really from?” In taking up this question, I discuss the treatment, settlement and experiences of Black/African, Chinese, and South Asian Canadians in terms of how Canadian laws, policies, and practices have operated to keep them from entering the country, and in turn shaped their life conditions once here. With reference to how, building on colonialism, systemic racism structures the conditions racialized people encounter daily, I go on to discuss the ways in which the history of populating Canada accounts for racialized peoples' experiences with anti-Indigenous, anti-Black, and anti-Asian racisms in living on Turtle Island.