Your Privilege Doesn’t Exist Here
How a trip to Canada helped me understand discrimination.
Photo by Ali Tawfiq on Unsplash
I pass as white. I actually pass as many cultures and not just white. I can count on more than two hands the number of times strangers have asked me questions in Spanish. And Vietnamese people who assume I’m related to them. And French people who are offended when they realize I don’t speak French because I blended too well into their country. With the right makeup, I even pass as a very light-skinned Indian woman. I love the fact that I blend into so many groups and can pass through, invisible.
But most white people collect me in their group and without question. Those who have taken a closer look have dared to ask me “what are you?” It doesn’t bother me at all, because the context is curiosity and understanding, not division. I wish more people had my experience.
However, in Canada, any privilege that I might carry with me in America is completely gone. From what I’ve learned from my Canadian family and friends, most people are equally discriminated against in Canada. I’ve been there at least a half dozen times now and it’s always a mind shift to remember how I’ll be treated.
If you’re a person of privilege and you ever want to understand discrimination, take a trip to Canada. Or if you can’t afford a trip or just don’t want to go, keep reading and I’ll give you a handy tip on how to witness the discrimination and profiling people experience there.
I love Canada, don’t get me wrong. Some of my favorite people are from Canada. This is not a post that’s meant to be anti-Canadian. This post intends to promote anti-racism and create allies. And one of the best ways to understand discrimination is to experience it yourself.
Before I continue, let me make this clear. I am in no way trying to say that a privileged white person going to Canada equates to the typical racism experienced by a person of color in America. That’s just dumb. But what I am saying is experiencing the overt skepticism of the Canadian people about everyone they come in contact with is getting closer to that experience.
I’ve traveled to Canada for both business and pleasure. It’s an…interesting…experience crossing that border and being stopped by customs because of something as simple as being nervous. Anyone who has ever been interrogated by Canadian border security is sure to suffer from anxiety the next time they go through, so being nervous is a normal affliction. If you’re not used to discrimination, which I wasn’t my first time through, you’ll experience an array of emotions once it happens to you: anger, fear, and maybe even outrage. Aside: imagine having to experience this every day in America.
The first time I shopped in a retail store in Canada, I was followed around. A naive person might stop here and point out that it was due to personal reasons. Maybe I was acting shifty or nervous or…somehow like a criminal. No, everyone in the store was being treated that way. I checked.
In Canada, shop managers can be naturally skeptical of shoppers. White, Black, Asian, whatever…you’re all suspect. It was a surreal experience seeing the judgmental eyes of the shop owner and feeling super conscious of my actions.
It was blatant.
It was…normal.
I’ve been to Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver, and Edmonton — not just a single location. And this has happened at least once on every trip.
I was once also questioned and reprimanded at the border for coming in for four days of work and not getting the appropriate work visa. Work visas are big there. They can detain you for hours if you don’t have the proper paperwork and then send you back to your originating country if you don’t answer their questions correctly, or if you’re lacking the necessary paperwork. This has happened to multiple colleagues of mine. It’s just the way it is.
If all of this makes you not want to visit Canada yourself to better understand discrimination, there’s an alternative. One night when I was there I had insomnia and came across their TV show “Border Security: Canada’s Front Line.” I became instantly addicted to it.
It’s a reality TV show that depicts the day-to-day life of Canada’s border security teams. It’s scary, it’s funny, and it’s downright appalling. If you think Canada is lenient on their citizens you’d be wrong. They’re even more skeptical about their own people.
The lessons I learned from this show are: no one is above the law and you can’t get away with anything in Canada.
I once saw an episode where a woman crossed the border by car. Her car was “randomly searched”. They immediately became suspicious of her because she planned to stay for a couple of days but had no luggage in the car. She said she was visiting a friend. Then they confiscated her phone (yes, they can do that), forced her to input her phone’s passcode (yes, they can legally do that, too), and read her text messages. They didn’t like how many short text conversations she was having with men. Suspecting her of prostitution, they denied her entrance into the country and she had to turn around and drive back home.
There was another time when a man entered Canada by boat from the United States. You can only bring in a certain amount of cash from another country. The limit when this episode was aired was USD 10,000. He had something like USD 10,300. They confiscated his money, detained him for hours, and then fined him for carrying the extra USD 300. He was allowed into the country after paying the fine, and yes, they gave him back his money, now less than USD 10,000 due to the fine.
You can’t make this stuff up.
The last time I re-entered Canada was the summer before quarantine. I visited the wonderful, cultural city of Toronto. I followed the rules. I nodded at the store owners who followed me around. I stayed pleasant and polite and tried not to take anything personally. And I made sure all my paperwork was in order for customs. It was the best experience I’ve had in Canada so far.
At the end of the day, don’t let any of this scare you from visiting Canada. It’s a great country with super nice people. Check out Banff — it’s one of the most gorgeous places in the world.
My advice is simple for future travelers: understand the rules about what you can bring in and take out…and for Pete’s sake, while in Canada don’t commit any crimes.