As a visible minority (or majority) and racially-hybrid Canadian (aren’t most of us?), I get this question all the time. “What are you?” As though I’m some sort of unicorn, or another anomaly in the system. The other question I get is, “where are you from?” And the answer, although it is true, isn’t Canada, at least it isn’t the answer these people want to hear. I’m always reminded of the brilliant video written by Ken Tanaka titled: What Kind of Asian Are You?

After reading Fred Wah’s Diamond Grill I found myself analyzing these questions more critically from the viewpoint of my own narrative. How do I feel when people probe me for my racial ancestry, completely disregarding my conception of my own identity? Is it still insulting when the comments take a turn towards, “Oh, interesting. Mixed kids are always the cutest,” or am I frustrated only because issues of race and hybridity are sensitive to my generation, who were told growing up not to see colour?

I want to brush these comments aside, to think about them as much as I would if someone asked me about my hair or the weather, but I can’t. The commodification of mixed race kids as “cute” and “ethnic” is patronizing, and we shouldn’t be reduced to qualities that arise from our parents being born of differing colours and cultures. This isn’t to say that someone asking “What are you?” is intending to be racist or antagonizing. It only means that they are ill informed, misunderstanding, and only aware of the difference between us.

While I want to avoid blubbering on about my own experiences, I do want to use them as a springboard for a discussion on race issues and the need for alternative narratives, such as Diamond Grill, that contain race, that understand the major issues, but do not revolve solely around race.

In Joan C. Williams’ article Dissolving the Sameness/Difference Debate: A Post-Modern Path beyond Essentialism in Feminist and Critical Race Theory, she argues for a move beyond the binary arguments of sameness and difference in regards to race, gender, social status, etc. She states, “A post-modern approach to difference highlights that each person is embedded in a matrix of social and psychological factors that interact in different contexts,” wherein people cannot be “essentialized” within social subsets according to ethnicity, race, sexuality, gender, hobby, or occupation, but rather are recognized for the complexity of their experience and not seen as only victims, but as other things as well.

I don’t believe Williams is repeating the mantra that we shouldn’t see colour, but rather the opposite, that we should recognize colour and understand the implications of the history of prejudice towards minorities and also acknowledge that these histories and experiences do not wholly define people. Carmen Carrera is a former drag queen super star of Rupaul’s Drag Race, and now a transgendered model for Elite modelling agency. In her interview with Katie Couric, she explains quite eloquently the complexity that goes beyond the “difference” of being transgendered (while having to skirt the insulting and embarrassing question about her “private parts”). She highlights the issues of perpetuating a single one-dimensional narrative of a minority group quite well.

It’s really personal…I would rather talk about my modelling stuff…showing people that after the transition there’s still live to live…I still have my career goals, I still have my family goals, I want to have more kids…I want to focus on that, rather than what’s down here…they always focus on the transition or the genitalia and I feel like there are more to trans people than just that.

In Diamond Grill Fred Wah jr.’s statement on page 39 also encapsulates the concept of complexity beyond race, although with much more anger. At first he lists all of the things that make him not Chinese, and goals he has set for himself to be more White, but then he finishes off by drawing attention to the differences that are being used against him.

Well fuck! I can’t even speak Chinese my eyes don’t slant and aren’t black my hair’s light brown and I’m not going to work in a restaurant all my life but I’m going to university and I’m going to be as a great a fucking white success as you asshole and my name’s still going to be Wah and I’ll love garlic and rice for the rest of my life.

Wah uses this duplicity in order to make the same point that Williams and Carrera are making: we can be white and Chinese, we can be black and gay, we can be transgendered and parents, we can be straight men and enjoy ice skating. There is no essential category any one person can fit into; we are too complex to sum our life narratives up through one string of experiences related to prejudice.

So “What am I?” I am Chinese, a dancer, British, a writer, French, a customer service worker, Irish, a student, Canadian, shy, Gay, a middle child, outspoken, and so much more than the colour of my skin or the “cuteness” of my hybridity.