While I was on my way to work this morning at the Vancouver General Hospital I noticed in a clear area between several buildings a young Caucasian man having a conversation with a mature woman whom I thought looked Filipino. I wondered why they would be talking together assuming how unusual it would be for two such individuals to be best friends. Both seemed very ordinary and if they only needed to have ordinariness in common then I'm sure they would get along like a house on fire. He couldn't have been older than thirty-two, clean cut, wearing jeans. Married? Possibly. Gay? Probably not but maybe. Canucks fan? But isn't everyone who lives in Vancouver, except me, a Canucks fan? No? Silly me.
The lady was well dressed, not really expensively, but used to living well I thought, in her fifties. She might be his mother-in-law? A client? Or maybe he was her client, or patient, but there was nothing of that sort in their relationship. He looked as though he was giving her directions. They certainly weren't lovers, or married to each other, and how could they be, unless she was an Asian cougar with a taste for young preppy white guys and he had a hankering for elegantly attired Asian ladies.
As I moved closer I realised that they didn't know each other. The nice young man was giving her directions, nothing else. They would each get on with the rest of their day as though the encounter had never happened. I cannot imagine what either of them does for a living. Their appearance was so generic that they could be anything or anyone not particularly interesting to me except for the fact they were human beings, which can make anyone interesting. Eventually I'm sure that they both made it home, he to his probably Caucasian wife, girlfriend,or partner unless he lives alone, or perhaps with his parents or a roommate? He could be anyone. But I'm sure one whose best friends are every bit as white as he. Perhaps an Asian or a South Asian occupy his circle. He might have even dated a Chinese girl in high school. The lady must have gone home to her family and I cannot imagine what kind of life she might have. Perhaps she is a closeted lesbian? Or a cougar in hiding? Or an ageing tarted-up housewife who can spend months fussing over getting the right shade of blue in the upholstery fabric to match the drapes and the bad art on her living room wall. If she is married, and I assume she is, I wonder who her husband is. Likely Filipino (if they are Filipino) or Malaysian, or Indonesian, perhaps Burmese or Chinese? Is it a good marriage? Do they love each other? I trust he has never hit her. They could both be working hard to put their daughter through medical school. They have two cars and a house in South Vancouver, or maybe an apartment in Kitsilano, or they live in a basement suite in Mount Pleasant? When one tries to guess by appearances one can get totally lost in revolving stereotypes.
I find it interesting how much unconscious racial selection is still involved in our choice of friends. This seems to be true in my case. Most of my friends are white, two are Latinos of mixed race, and I have had Asian friends. My first best friend, when I was a child of five was a Japanese boy who lived up the road from me. I was fiercely proud of my new friend because no one else in the neighbourhood knew him. Many years later I found out that it was a bit awkward for my parents that my friend was Japanese. Like many white people of their generation, they were quite racist. Only twenty-six years ago were the Japanese defeated in the War. Two atomic bombs couldn't be wrong. It didn't seem to matter that my friend's parents were born in this country, just like my mother's mother and father and unlike my father's who came from Scotland. Both my friend's parents spent part of their childhood in internment camps in the interior of BC. I only learned of these camps when I was in my early twenties. Till then it was almost never talked about. When I was twenty-two and staying with my mother for a few weeks while transitioning between living situations I was in the habit of visiting my old high school which was open for night classes. In the main corridor were posted photographs framed behind glass of the matriculating classes from the early 1920's on. I noticed in each year a growing contingent of smiling students with Japanese names. Then, in 1941, they were all gone. They had magically disappeared. The effect was downright creepy! The photos were almost universally Caucasian for ten years. Then, in 1951, in the graduating portrait appeared one solitary Japanese boy, smiling as brightly and innocently as a fine summer morning in Hiroshima.
One Asian friend of mine a few years ago, an elegant professional from Hong Kong, admitted to me once her unconscious preference for other Asians although she ended up marrying a white guy. I have noticed this in social groupings. Often I will come across swarms of young people speaking impeccable Canadian English and they seem to be all Chinese, or Filipino or South Asian. But not always. I also frequently run across mixed groups but even in a city as multicultural and cosmopolitan as Vancouver visible minorities (including visibly white minorities) tend to hang together. I don't think I'll ever understand this pattern and I am certain that almost no one consciously chooses to have friends who belong exclusively to their race or ethnicity. I admire the racial mixing among most of the people of Latin America: European, Indigenous and African mixing often in the same people. But also, Latino societies still tend to be quite racist and classist with the whitest representatives (creoles or criollos, with pure European ancestry) occupying the upper echelons and the descending social ladder becoming increasingly darker shades of brown. A friend of mine (white) once said that it would be so great if the entire world went to bed together!
I have come to believe that the concept of race is a myth. It turns out that the origins of white people are likely quite prosaic. According to some findings, in southern Asia early in the New Stone Age, individuals who were born albino ended up emigrating together to northern latitudes in order to cope with the sun. Eventually they became genetically fixed and hey presto! Europe was suddenly full of white folk. In other words, we are really albino, or semi-albino, given that South Asians are also Caucasian. Tribes from Eastern Asia also contributed generously to the European gene pool over the millennia. My guess is this is why Eastern and many Central Europeans have high cheekbones and broad faces. I am sure that if I had black hair and brown eyes and a slightly dark complexion I could easily pass for Tibetan!
During a recent visit to Mexico City I heard a local lady comment to her son while standing in a line up in front of the Museum of National History, about a group of Koreans standing nearby, as though they were visitors from Mars. I turned to her and mentioned graciously that in Vancouver,
Canada where I live we have people from all over the world, and some of them are Koreans. They are fine people like everyone else and we all get along and some of us even marry each other. She looked at me as though she was about to choke on her enchilada and could only reply that my Spanish is very good.
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