[#49046] I moved to Canada from China when I was 11 years old and my English level was basically as bad as one can expect: understand basic words like tree, water, sky, etc, but not enough to communicate well. The kids in my elementary school was generally nice as there were a lot of Cantonese speaking Asians, but I still insist on speaking English so I could improve. However, there was this one little white boy that left my earliest memory of encountering racism, but back then I didn't understand what it was. He would constantly pick on me but I had no idea why. One day after we had gym class he just came over and told me that my eyes were small, I'm going to fail English class, and I should go back to China. I didn't know how to react to it so 11 year old me started crying. My teacher came over to me and asked me what was wrong but I didn't know the words to describe what just happened so I just said that he was "being mean". The teacher gave that kid a talk, saying things like "don't be mean", and he obviously didn't care. What surprised me even more than such bigotry and hatred coming from an 11 year old kid is how his ASIAN friends didn't say anything about him saying all these racist things to me. They were slightly uncomfortable but still hangs out with him. I want to share this story because racism against Asians is often overlooked by society because it's not as prominent as other forms of discrimination, but they still exist in such a progressive country such as Canada.
Posted from U of T Confessions - [#49046]
