INVISIBLE IMMIGRANT
Position of Privilege
I won the white privilege lottery without knowing that I had a ticket, or that there was even a game going on.
(This is Part 3 in a series that started here: Part 1 and Part 2)
I grew up in Scotland, a white male. Everyone looked like me in school and in my neighbourhood, until I started my first job (delivering newspapers) for the local newsagents, which was owned by an immigrant from Pakistan. He and his family were the first people I interacted with regularly who didn’t look like me. But they had the same accent I did.
My parents used to also take us regularly to a favourite Chinese restaurant in Glasgow, run by immigrants from Hong Kong. It was a family business, staffed by relatives and friends from HK. I didn’t think anything special/take notice, because they also had the same accent as me.
I never questioned why people from Pakistan or Hong Kong would live in the UK. I just assumed everyone I met in Scotland (unless they were obviously a tourist!), was Scottish, until they said otherwise.
History I Didn’t Know
I didn’t know the history of the British Empire, the impact that the UK on so many places, going back hundred’s of years. In school we learned Egypt/Greece/Rome, then the roughly 700(?) years of fighting in the British Isles before the United Kingdom was formed. Then World War 1 and it’s origins. Then World War 2 and it’s aftermath in the UK. Communism was lightly covered across WW1-WW2. And that’s all.
I didn’t learn about colonies in the Caribbean, the founding of Canada, or immigration to the US. I “learned” about the founding of America from movies. I heard of the American Civil War, but didn’t know the details.
I didn’t know anything about Africa, Apartheid, the partition of the middle east, slavery, how Australia was “discovered”, the Conquest of South & Central America by the Spanish/Portuguese…
In Scotland I was raised to treat everyone equally, judge them by their actions and behaviour, rather than the colour of their skin. I was confused about the need to push for it, to dream and imagine it in the USA, 30 years before.
From what I “knew” of America, and what it stood for/why it was founded, it was the country of the free. Everyone was considered equal. What Martin Luther King fought for and dreamed of, I had naively assumed was already granted to Americans of every race, colour, or background. I was sorely misinformed.
Finding out about the history of slavery and racism was eye-opening.
Seeing it Close-up
In Junior year of university (2002) I got the chance to go and study abroad in Atlanta, at GeorgiaTech. During my year living there, I visited the Martin Luther King Centre; a museum dedicated in memory or Dr King.
It was an incredible and moving experience (the only similar experiences I have had were probably visits to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, and the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb & Peace Museum when I lived in Japan). Seeing photos of lynchings, watching the oral histories of survivors, or the family members of victims, Emmett Till’s story, Jim Crow laws, the KKK, school segregation (then & now), and learning about Dr King’s life & death were extremely moving.
It was a terrible eye-opening to discover that people could once have treated each other in this way. It was even more gut-wrenching to learn that it still happened in America at that time.
A visit to Charleston for the Spring Break was my first time seeing “the Antebellum South” mansions, the slave plantations, up close. It was not pleasant to think about the history of the streets I was standing on.
Being a Visible Minority
In 2004 I moved to Japan, and lived there until late-2019. I was far removed from what kept happening in the USA. My life in Japan basically sheltered me from this. Growing up in Scotland, as a white male I was in the majority.
Living in Japan, a significantly homogeneous country, made me a visible minority. Japan groups all non-Japanese people under one word, “gaijin”, which means “outside person”. It literally means ‘other’.
Wherever I went, I would not be known as a Scottish person. Regardless of if you came from Canada, China, Nepal, or wherever, you would also not be recognised at first as anything other than “gaijin”.
Unusually, if Japanese people travel overseas, they will often still refer to the people around them as gaijin, even though the roles have actually been reversed. It’s a strange dichotomy.
Another strangeness is (in general) that they don’t really recognise other mixed cultures and races. While you can be Japanese-American, or Jamaican-Canadian, or any whatever combination, in Japan if one parent was Japanese and the other wasn’t, you would be called “half”. As in, half-Japanese and half-something else. Half sounds like “less than”. For my friends from mixed cultural or racial backgrounds, being called half could be quite jarring.
While I certainly don’t claim to have lived the same experience that visible minorities in the UK or USA or Canada are going through, I can understand the feeling of having all eyes on you when you step into a room. When all conversation stops because of your presence.
I have been rejected when trying to rent an apartment because the owner didn’t want to deal with a foreigner for a tenant. Although illegal, the real estate agent shrugged and said “Well, what can you do..?” ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Not a great feeling..!
Or that uncomfortable feeling when you sit down on the train or bus and the person next to you gets up and moves away? Or a parent protectively puts their arm around their child because you sat next to them. I experienced those kinds of reactions regularly for 15 years.
I used to motorbike tour around the more rural parts of Japan with a white male European friend. We would stand out even more in those locales because we were in places where “foreigners” normally wouldn’t go. People would come up and try to practice their English on us, or interrupt our meals to ask questions, or even take a photo.
Even in Tokyo, when I would go somewhere for the first time (even for work purposes), the staff would get tense and worried, whisper to each other “It’s a gaijin! Um, we can’t speak English… who should talk to him..?”
Often, I would order things in restaurants, or be checking into hotels, and the staff would ignore me while looking expectantly at my (Japanese) wife or (Japanese) friends to talk to/interact with. I would become invisible by virtue of being non-Japanese. Something like this:
They weren’t being deliberately offensive, but they were judging me on that immediate appearance that I couldn’t understand the language, or their customs, or things like that.
Instead of giving me a chance to start a conversation, they would pre-suppose that I was helpless, and therefore they needed to deal with me differently than a Japanese customer/visitor. Sometimes I surprised Japanese people by just being in the same place they were, e.g. on top of a mountain trail, or in some small rural town.
I was a fluent Japanese-speaker, so this would eventually be listened to and understood by whoever was shocked at my appearance, and then things could get moving again.
A small but tiring thing in all of this is that I would then often be peppered with random questions, about “What do gaijin do for X?” or “What do gaijin eat?”. I never knew how to answer those questions, because I can only speak for myself, and not on behalf of the other 7.7 billion people in the world who aren’t Japanese…
In fairness, as a white person you get the best level of treatment in Japan. White Americans are #1. British & white was probably the classed as being the “2nd best kind of foreigner”. 3rd I guess would be a tie between Canada, Australia & New Zealand. But if you came from an Asian country, or if your skin-tone was not white, Japanese society would look down on you. Under the word “gaijin”, there were hidden sub-levels of “good” foreigners and “not-so-good” foreigners.
The Black Lives Matter movement has also captured some attention in Japan, so hopefully things will start to change for the better.
When I landed in 2004 in Tokyo, the foreign population was ~1.5% (2mn out of 127.8mn). When I left in 2019 it had grown to ~2% (2.93mn out of 126.26mn). With a looming population drop, and the most graying population in the world, openness to immigration will be a huge factor in determining Japan’s future.
What About Canada?
Now I’m in the majority again. I recognise it though, and this time I need to be aware of what it means. I think that this time it means I need to do the work to afford the same opportunities to everyone who is not in the same position as me.
Oppression against minorities has been happening for centuries. It’s not “a US thing”, or a “not-in-Canada thing”. It happens everywhere.
The thing is, I thought by my not being like that, or not participating, was enough.
But, staying above the fray is not action, prevention, or assistance. It is ignorance.
I’m grateful to live in Canada now. I am privileged to be here. I am lucky to have the skills and experience that Canada wanted I was ready to leave Japan. So, if I benefit from a privilege, then I am in a position to create change. In the case of racism, the black community cannot affect change alone; the issues are systemic and deep-rooted. Everyone needs to step up:
- Communities of other colour and race need to support those who are not benefitting from the same privileges that we do
- For gender discrimination and the wage gap; men have to do better
- To close education and poverty gaps, the wealthy need to do better
Educating Myself
Since last writing about this topic here and here, I have tried to educate myself by watching documentaries & movies, reading the available topics, listened to a few relevant podcasts, and looked into online courses.
I have personally done the following, and can recommend any of them as a good place to start:
- Selma, a movie covering Martin Luther King and his drive for voting rights in Alabama in 1965
- I Am Not Your Negro, a tough documentary featuring the writer James Baldwin discussing his memories of American racism during the era when civil rights leaders Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. were all assassinated
- 13th, an Ava DuVernay-directed powerful documentary, now available for free on YouTube or Netflix
- American Factory, a Barack & Michelle Obama produced movie on the effects of work moving out of small-town America, and tensions from incoming Chinese business
- 42, a movie about Jackie Robinson and the difficult integration of major league baseball, starring the late Chadwick Boseman
- The Hate U Give, a recent movie that covers the police murder of a young Black American, based on a popular book
- The podcast Unlocking Us, by Brene Brown, which digs into the human connections, the core of who we are, with Black American thought leaders such as Ibram X Kendi
- The Michelle Obama podcast, where the former First Lady talks with her family & friends about relationships and her experiences growing up to become a successful Black American woman
- BBC archive of video interviews with Windrush Generation members
- Joined PMI Toronto’s seminar for I IDEA (Intersectionality, Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Anti-Black Racism), in order to understand more diverse perspectives on the topic
Moving forward, I have also registered for this free University of Alberta course on Indigenous Studies, to learn more about Canadian history:
What Can You Do Next?
The chances are if you are reading this you are in a position to help. You are able to educate yourself, spread awareness, make room for everyone at the table. You are able to help deliver equality.
I also know that as a newcomer in Canada, I need to educate myself about history & social issues here- if you can suggest any recommended reading, please do so.
You can also check out my recommendations for relevant movies, podcasts, online courses and books from my earlier articles on American- and British-related history here and here.
Thank you for reading. Let’s work to make tomorrow better than today.
