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1 "Where are you from?"
"Trois-Rivières.""No, where are you really from?"2 "Oh, so you're half and half?"
"Half and half is what you put in your coffee."3 "So which side do you identify more with?"
"Neither, because I'm both."4 " I didn't know the Portuguese and the Lebanese got along."
"They don't, my parents are divorced."And I'm not even allowed to get mad at them for their drive-by fuckery because of the "I mean it as a compliment" line that's always tacked on to the end like some form of emotional blackmail. They're all like, "I'm paying you a compliment, and you will accept this compliment whether you like it or not."When I was pursuing my master's degree at York University, my professor Daniel Yon suggested I read his book Elusive Culture, a study of race and racist discourse. In it, a student named Margaret (not her real name) says,At one point I thought of myself as a Black person and that limits me because as a Black person there are things that I am suppose[d] to be. So I had to shed that. I am not just Black. I am a woman, and that limits me as well. [But,] if I think that I am limited then I don't dare risk anything or try to do anything. So "bust" being Black and "bust" being a woman.
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