Multiracial Identity: Single Ancestry People's Prejudices in Fred Wah's Diamond Grill

Multiracial Identity: Single Ancestry People’s Prejudices in Fred Wah’s Diamond Grill
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People with multiple racial ancestries are condemned to a lifelong search for their identity. They are also condemned to a lifelong search for acceptance into a particular race and they may sometimes be labeled as having no race. The paradox remains that multiracial people belong to multiple races and are at the same time considered race-less. Racial prejudices of people of single ancestry consistently communicate to people of multiracial ancestry that they do not belong to any authentic race as they do not fit the full criteria of any particular race. This paper discusses the negative impact of racial prejudices or expectations from people of single ancestry towards people of multiracial ancestry.
People that have multiple ancestral backgrounds living in single ancestry countries experience a form of racism. They experience racialist attitudes from people that expect them to fit into their single grouping. Single ancestry inhabitants categorize minority and marginalized groups as ‘others’ and relegates them to objects of experience rather than allowing them to be fellow subjects of experience together with the rest in a dominant single ancestry country. The ‘others’ are commonly referred to with derogatory terms such as heathens, untrustworthy, slant eyed among others in various channels such as conversations, movies and comic books.
Racial prejudices are common in Canada as indicated Wah’s Diamond Grill. The book depicts a setting comprised of multiracial people that have been marginalized by the dominant white community (McGonegal 180). Racial prejudices are not only observed in Canada but also in America. There is racial prejudice against African Americans and Asian Americans (Lo 100). In Canada, Asian Canadians have been racialized and they are viewed as foreigners.
White Canadians consider multicultural people as a threat to their national homogeneity. For instance, predominant whites in British Columbia instigated a gush in anti-Chinese attitudes during the 1950s in Canada. The racial sentiments were a reaction against the rich Chinese immigrants that were perceived as the causes for rising real estate prices. The Chinese Canadians attracted developers who cleared land and erected architectural designs that were unpleasant to the dominant white Canadians taste for occupation by the Chinese Immigrants from Hong Kong. The whites considered the Chinese people as unpatriotic, materialistic and without regard for the environment amongst other racial prejudices (Lo 100).
Social adjustments to assimilate of acculturate Canadian immigrants to either Anglo-conformity or Franco conformity was rampant in the twentieth century. To date, such multicultural policies prevail and they have contributed to intolerance to cultural and racial diversity. Marginalization of certain groups such as the Chinese or Asian races prevails and Fred Wah’s Diamond Grill seeks to establish a point of commonality between the dominant white race and the minority races in Canada (Cameron 426). He indicates that to solve the problems posed by racial attitudes people require adopting identity based on place. He implies that where one is, is who he is and to achieve this type of identity it becomes necessary to downplay the differences in the local uniqueness which indicate the differences from other predominant whites (Goellnicht 84). Wah indicates that this is a theory of nationality that allows people in the same nation to experience security in homogeneity because nationality makes people the same.
Racial prejudices against people with multicultural and multiracial identities are known to create a sense of inadequacy in terms of racial authenticity. Wah is a multicultural Asian Canadian because of his father’s Chinese, Irish and Scot ancestral roots and his mother’s Swedish Canadian ancestral roots. Growing up, Wah recounts that life revolved around his father’s Chinese food restaurant and he struggled with identity as a Chinese among predominantly white Canadians (Jaeger 200). He is a Chinese Canadian and he seeks to construct his identity as an authentic Canadian because he was he was born there. He struggles with questions about the composition of an authentic Canadian and its meaning (Wah 98).
Many multiracial people are trapped in a struggle with questions about belonging to their diasporic places particularly when the authentic inhabitants perceive them as foreign and not having a single identifiable descent. Wah resides in Canada and is partly Chinese, Scot, Irish and Swedish and he confused and he lacks racial authenticity. His physical features do not resemble those of Chinese and he also does not speak Cantonese which is the predominant language in China and so he disguises himself as a white alongside others in his school. However, his name Wah and his father’s visible Chinese features uncover his multicultural and multiracial identity (Wah 98).
Racial prejudices against people with multicultural and multiracial identities cause them to be in denial of their ancestry. For instance, in school, Wah is faced with situations where he is required to explain why his name is not reflective of the predominant whites in Canada. The explanations he gives makes no mention of his Chinese heritage and this enables him to ‘safely’ intermingle together with other children and he escapes the ‘otherness’ label. His fellow white school mates churn racist labels towards Chinese children and he considers himself as white enough to escape such labels where he states “ I’m White enough to get away with it and that’s what I do.” (Wah136). Wah’s racial duplicity however leaves him in a confusing dilemma where his friends expect that he shares their negative attitudes towards the Chinese children and yet he is unwelcoming to such utterances because he is partly Chinese. He finds himself shunning his Chinese identity in favor of white identity to avoid being labeled as part of ‘others’ simply because he believes that he is white enough to shield himself from being scathed by such labels.
Racial prejudices towards people possessing multicultural and multiracial identities cause them to demean their cultural and racial diversity. The multiracial people despise aspects of their uniqueness that are undermined by the predominant groupings to increase their chances of fitting in. For instance, Wah indicates that he was more proud of his Scandinavian (white) roots and views his Chinese roots as an evil that he had to deal with for him to fit in. His Scandinavian roots are more predominant in his physical features and they qualified him as white enough. Canadians could identify with him as well to coexist with him as a subject of shared experiences and not as an object of the experience.
Racial attitudes influenced Wah to consider his father as unlucky because he was not white enough as his physical features indicated. He also encounters many surprised people that marvel at his name and seek to know whether he is Chinese with most of them indicating that he does not look Chinese. He is happy that it is only his name and not his visible features that stand in the way of his escape from the racism implications subjected to mult...