All White to All Inclusive, a journey.

I grew up in Huntsville, Ontario. A tiny town three hours north of Toronto, which is often viewed as a highlight of many people’s summers and a great place to enjoy the outdoors. A great place to grow up, with plenty of fresh air and forests to explore.

But to say the assumptions of small towns do not come without reason would be an understatement. Huntsville is a majority white town, and when I say majority I mean I can count the POC in my graduating class on one hand. Three of them, not including the occasional exchange student who often had difficulty being welcomed into our school environment. Huntsville is not merely white, it is devoid of multiculturalism.

My parents did their best to expose me and my brothers to a variety of cultures, but it is hard in a town hellbent on ignoring them.

Fast forward, and I am off to Ottawa, the capital city of Canada. My first time in a city, and my first time in a very, very multicultural town.

I wasn’t shocked, but it felt different at the very least. The girl across the hall, the girl who introduced herself the first day, the boy behind me in line at the cafeteria, even adults who worked at the university, were POC.

Fast forward a couple of months. I am friends with a bunch of people who are not white, and I am dating a brown guy. I go to the T&T supermarket, buy pierogis at a Polish grocery store, and listen to K-Pop, unashamed. Maybe this sounds silly like these are the bare basics of multiculturalism. But this was all new for me.

A friend, who had came with me from Huntsville, and I talk a lot about the new things we learn everyday and how there are millions of new things only a bus ride away.

My boyfriend, of only a mere month and a bit, is from Vancouver. A city boy himself, with his parents from Fiji and South Africa, he totally doesn’t get it. We even each other out a little. I’m his first white girlfriend, and he’s my first not white boyfriend. It has been a challenge, and for the first time I am beginning to think about our family’s reaction.

What would my great-grandma think of my new non-white boyfriend? What would his parents think of a white girl? What would friends, cousins and strangers on the street think?

We’ve been fortunate, since we’ve had no comments or even jokes by our friends, but it is a reoccurring conversation we have.

So what are the main things I have truly learned or discovered from all of this? And it is important to remember, I do not speak for the POC community.

1. White “culture” is not the default.

I’d grown up with the internalized concept that what I was experiencing was the norm. Christmas celebrations, church a couple times a year, and a lack of knowledge about other races was not what everyone had grown up with. I should not be surprised if someone’s life, based on race or culture, is different then mine.

2. Race fetishizing.

I’d heard the term before, but I’d never truly understood what it meant until university. Hearing girls talk about how sex with black men is better or how the only men they’d go after would be brown men. Hearing boys talk about Latino or Eastern Asian women as having the ideal bodies or being the sexiest women. Young women talking about how they’re going to have children with POC to have mixed babies. Girls talking about how they would only date lightskins and not white boys (this also involved colorism).

At first, I wasn’t sure what I could call this. Is it raceism? It is merely having a preference to a certain type of person? I still cannot answer all the questions I have, but I do know this is wrong. Fetishizing someone’s race is wrong, and is a form of objectification, and can have aspects of raceism.

Which leads me to my next lesson learned.

3. Ask.

Talking about race was a taboo topic in my town. With the worry of making my POC classmates the spokespeople on the topic and the worry of saying something wrong, race was not often discussed. We avoided raceism in class and rarely discussed the disparities and systematic racism POC faced. But being in Ottawa has taught me it isn’t something we should be ignoring. You can’t “not see color” without ignoring such important conversations and issues in our world. If you come to the conversation wanting to learn, with open ears and with an inoffensive attitude people are more often then not, open to talk.

Once again, I do not speak for the POC community. I am not a POC.

Sometimes, there are times I feel uncomfortable asking questions. I go through this little checklist in my head.

1. Is it based off a stereotype?
2. Is it a statistic or question that came from an un-credible source (someone’s mom’s facebook, a certain racist President)?
3. Am I coming to this conversation wanting something other then an answer from it (validation for being supportive, to make me feel better about myself, or to make them provethemself)?
4. Am I asking this in a way that sounds harmful in anyway I can identify?

If the answer is no to all of these, I ask my question. I also learned to be okay if the person told me, despite following the checklist, that they didn’t feel comfortable answering the question or asked it in a harmful way. I do not need to defend my question, but need to still be listening and remember it next time. I also don’t need to force them to answer it, they don’t owe me anything.

I am still learning and becoming a better ally. I am not perfect, and I can’t speak for others, I am a white person.

But we can all better ourselves and we can all learn to grow and become better listeners.

One thing else.

I always wondered why adults in my community back in Huntsville hadn’t experienced this. They’d gone off to school or grown up in more diverse towns.

This is because learning doesn’t happen all by itself. It is your responsibility to educate yourself and be a better person, as well as push yourself to grow. It is no POC’s job to educate you or ask you to educate yourself. As a white person, it is your responsibility to use your privilege to grow and better yourself.