The Vancouver Sun claims 43% of Metro Vancouver share an Asian heritage. I am one of those in that 43%. I am a Chinese-Canadian. In reading Fred Wah’s Diamond Grill I was pushed to reconsider my identity and place in Canada as a claimed Chinese-Canadian, and to question why can I do not simply claim to be a Canadian, alone?

Fred Wah Jr. of Diamond Grill is one fourth Chinese and “white enough to get away with it” (Wah 36), but he still identifies himself as a Chinese-Canadian. There is an obsessive need to identify the self as Euro-Canadian, African-Canadian, Japanese-Canadian, or (Insert Country Name)-Canadian because one can never be simply Canadian in Canada. I have been asked and caught asking the question, “What are you?” I considered the question of why do Canadians feel inclined to dismiss “I am Canadian” as a reasonable response? Logically, I Googled Canadian identity. Many of the search results simply reiterated a statement of how Canadians do not have an identity or that it is still in question today. The obsession with this question is a response to the unidentifiable Canadian identity.

Fred Wah calls his experience with the hyphen as “riding the hyphen,” and although I have no Caucasian heritage, I can say I ride the hyphen just as he does. Wah is able to slip between the two ethnicities unnoticed. Mixed-ethnic Canadians is a growing norm in Canada – there is even a blog dedicated to mixed Canadians – but what I am interested in is the growing number of second-generation Chinese-Canadians here in Canada. I ride the hyphen just as Wah does, because I am what Vancouverites call whitewashed. I believe it’s a crime to not use chopsticks when eating noodles, only stepped into Asia once, cannot speak, read or write Chinese, studies English Literature, am educated in a Western culture, understand both Western and Eastern ideals, and can easily ride the hyphen between Canadian and Chinese cultural practices. The hyphen allows mixed-racial and second-generation Canadians a claimed identity, but as Diamond Grill notices, there is no clear Canadian identity to be claimed; there is merely a hyphen to consolidate an unidentifiable identity.

My recent exposure to Eli Pariser’s TED Talk on online “filter bubbles” led me to an awareness of my ignorance towards the inevitable personalization of online-media pages. Pariser spoke on the automatic process of filtering posts, articles, and search results to a user’s previous preferences online.

In recent months, I noticed that the same friends and acquaintances reappeared on my feed daily, while others did not, and till now, I did not have a reason for this occurrence. The reason photography articles, animal videos, and post on the LGBT movement appear on my newsfeed more than my boyfriend’s posts is because Facebook uses my answers to the “About Questions” and previous viewing of certain puppy videos and articles to filter out what I would not find interesting.

Beyond my disturbed curiosity of what Facebook removed from my viewing, I question the influence in which these filters have on the individual’s identity and online identity. Beth Anderson et al. states virtual media seems “to offer more scope for control or variation of identity than in the real world; they seem to provide an environment in which identity is malleable and the reality or fantasy boundary can be blurred” (Anderson et al. 28). The online persona is easily changed by the user, but if certain preferences are suggested due to one’s peers, I am curious of the filter bubbles’ influence on the user’s decisions on the socially acceptable answers to the “About Questions.” The second consideration is that with exposure to posts that reinforce personal views and ideas alone, the self is unable to experience challenging perspectives that encourage development and expansion of ideas. On media, the online and offline identity is closed off from alternative views and receive little motivation to seek other arguments.

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