Cultural Insensitivity or Plain Ignorance? I say "Both."

I read this article and was immediately affected. I am what Canadians call a "Filipino-Canadian." I grew up in Canada and while I was born in the Philippines, I never felt that strong emotional connection to that country that my parents, like other Filipino-Canadians who grew up in the Philippines, continue to feel even after almost 30 years in Canada.

I also went to McGill University Faculty of Law, which is located in Montreal, Quebec, where this incident took place. I liked Montreal but only as a place I like to visit, not a place where I would feel comfortable setting up permanent residency. I always sensed an air of superiority or, more accurately, supposed superiority among the Quebecois: they thought themselves culturally superior - as pseudo French, extended Francophone, France's long-lost and long forgotten distant cousin - to most everyone else in Canada. To say the least, I was not surprised that this incident occurred in Quebec.

What angers me is that these adults would insult a child in this way, perhaps forever instilling in him a sense of racial inferiority. I felt that inferiority a lot when I was a child, surrounded by white Canadians children who would laugh at the food my mom packed for me or who insisted I was Chinese. (To them, every Asian person was Chinese. I have learned through the years that this is not limited to children.) If I could speak to this boy, I would tell him to ignore what he has been told by his teachers and to take pride in his cultural roots. He is, and always will be, Filipino and that means something. It means he is part of a culture of hard-working, God-fearing, compassionate, intelligent and kind-hearted people. It means he is part of a culture and of a people who have survived numerous foreign invasions, a culture strengthened, not diluted by attempts by those who aimed at "converting" them into mirror images of their invaders.

I have another connection to this story: I interned at the Centre for Research Action on Race Relations ("CRARR") and worked closely with Fo Niemi, the gentleman hired by boy's parents to represent them before the Quebec Human Rights Commission. I know he is more than capable in handling this case and feel good knowing that he was the person chosen to handle this matter on behalf of the boy and his parents.