Who am I?

Jared Purdy

Teddy, It sounds to me as though you’re asking people to understand a lot of which they have no clue. I’d suspect that many of the people who ask you that question don’t know much about identity issues, and they are so blind as to their own so called identity and place in the world as to think hey have it all figured out – when in fact they don’t.

As a teacher, who teaches a course that deals specifically with identity issues, most students that I meet, and most people in general, I’d have to say, understand little about those issues, and they also tend to live in an either/or world. I can’t say that I blame them for that ignorance, because of the way in which we are inundated through media with images and narratives that portray everything in binary opposites.

I don’t see myself as one thing (and that goes beyond nationality, race, culture, gender, sexual orientation, etc.), and when I am asked what I teach, I usually end up giving the short hand version because most people don’t know, and don’t want to know, really, what anti-racism is, or what broad based approaches to human rights analysis entails. True, I don’t have to explain where I am from, as I spend most of my time in Canada, and when I’m abroad, people usually think that I am American, but that is because of the power of US media and publishing and cultural capital around who is white, and who “sounds” like one of me. Canada is a small country, in terms of cultural and political capital, I accept that, and I do my best to paint a different picture to those who have the patience to listen..

I know how I see you, and we have never even met! How I see you is how I see a lot of friends that I have who happen to have either come to Canada directly from other parts of the world, or were born here, but who’s ancestors are from other non-European parts of the world, or even those who have 10th degree Canadian ethno-racial “pedigree” but are LGBTQ. How do they “fit in”? Many people that I know self- identify as multiple identity, and they are happy with that. I think that is a good thing. In an earlier post you talked about how many “Ugandans” don’t even see themselves as Ugandan, they see themselves as Acholi, or a member or another tribe. Ugandan to them is arbitrary. To other’s it’s not. What is the difference between those who have embraced it and those who don’t? It is currency, opportunity and agency?

I’ll be very interested to see how you ask that question after you’ve spent a year in Canada, a country that is a self professed nation of immigrants, many of whom continue to embrace the duality of their heritage. That does not mean tat all Canadians think that way, because, regretfully we don’t. That is not to say that when those immigrants and second generation off-spring go back to their respective motherlands (and I hear this a lot) that they don’t get labelled as being “Canadian”, instead of want they would rather hear, which could be Philipino, or Jamaican (when my wife goes back to Jamaica and walks through the local market to buy something, the locals pick her out in a second, and she is not Jamaican, despite being born there and having lived there for 12 years), or Chinese, etc. They are referred to as “Canadian”, and that tendency to label is obviously universal . Chinese immigrants, after a few years here, are referred to as “bananas” by their in-country Chinese compatriots. They are yellow on the outside, and white on the inside (they also use bamboo as a metaphor).

I see you as a African, who immigrated to the USA and moves back and forth between one country to the next, so as to contribute to the development of your respective homelands, and to maintain roots. You are an entrepreneur who works in the field of development, and you happen to have a keen interest in photography, advertising, media and communications. You use those assets, strengths and interests to further your profession and career ambitions, and to contribute to the advancement and development of the country of your birth. A very, very noble venture. You make perfect sense to me.