Your friends are singing a song. One that is accompanied by gestures. The bouncy, happy intonation is inviting. You want to have fun too. Just kids having fun on the playground, reliving one of the precious few moments where an older sibling had allowed you to play with them—something that has been slowly declining in frequency for mysterious and confounding reasons. Where the rhyme had come from before them wasn't of your concern. And so... you raise your fingers up to your eyes. You gently press the pads of your index finger to the outer edge of your eyes. Left index finger to left eye; right index finger to right eye.
The words are simple and you join in, chanting like it's a secret password that will grant you access to a world where you never question your belonging—as if everyone is in on the humour together. When the song gives its cue, everyone pulls their eyes back and upwards. Chinese. And then, you all tug the skin down, Japanese. But your upper eyelashes tickle your lower waterline. While everyone else's lashes reach towards the sky, yours bend towards the ground. And finally, the delightful punchline, one eye is pulled upward and one down: Both. An eruption of giggles. "Let's do it again!"
After recess, your eyes are a little sore, but you had a good time. No one had told you that you couldn't participate because your eyes were part of the joke. Nobody pointed out that being part of a white family didn't change your Chinese-ness. They hadn't explained to you that Chinese eyes were too slim to see properly. No one had clarified that racism wasn't something only imposed onto and endured by Indigenous folks in Canada and Black folks in the United States. That race and ethnicity are read from the body by others as if they're the same thing. As though the shape of your eyes, colour and texture of your hair, and pigment of your skin gave away inherent secrets about being from Over There. No. Back then, you weren't aware that your difference indicated anything other than a quirk of the universe, just one thing of many that couldn't be explained. You were just kids. Mimicking what you had been shown. On the playground. At recess.
Encountering racism as a child who didn't understand what it was means experiencing the discomfort and alienation in the future. Even though it wasn't intended to hurt me, the simplicity and strangeness of a rhyme of unknown origins, I am now realizing the complications of not recognizing my own race in a community where I am racialized.
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