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  • you know there was this for, um Okay.

  • So people always ask me on you too.

  • What's your background?

  • What's your ethnicity?

  • What race are you?

  • So I'm answering that by asking all my brothers What is your background?

  • So I'm asking you what is your background before we get sidetracked about what ethnicity is?

  • Let's just go with the generic Wikipedia one on ethnic group are on.

  • Ethnicity is a category of people who identify with each other based on similarities such as common industry, language, history, society, culture, our nation.

  • If you keep on reading, there's so many ideas of what it could mean.

  • But in this video, I'm simply asking my brother's what's our background?

  • Oh, hey, you know what?

  • I actually have a pie chart that shows that you D'oh!

  • Okay, well, yeah, What is it?

  • Just see.

  • I think it is this folder of Seems they got home from work today.

  • Why would you have a pie chart of our background at your work?

  • Funny is people's absolutely follow time.

  • Like where you?

  • Yeah.

  • And so I feel ecstasy fresh one days, like of all of our different ethnicities.

  • And then my girl and I did like a pie chart of what I was in what other girls were.

  • What is our background?

  • Our background.

  • Well, um, from what I understand, we have the majority Chinese on one side, the majority Scottish on the other side.

  • But within that the Scottish right side, We have some Spanish, possibly Semyon.

  • And on the Chinese side, we have some Portuguese.

  • I mean, what do you think?

  • Like off the cuff?

  • If, like, somebody has to ask you and you can't refer to your chart, what do you say?

  • Well, you know, like I think, before Mom did her her blood testing and DNA test.

  • Oh, yeah.

  • So last year, our mom did a DNA test and found out we have some Native American inner ancestry.

  • So that quarter Spanish, we thought her mom was really turned out to be mainly mine.

  • How could that happen?

  • Yes, I believe that great Granny Auriol could have had some background as being a cookies.

  • The door, um, the core gets the door of the Spanish came over, and essentially they decimated.

  • The Aztecs and the incomes were trying to take over that region there, whether or not she was from that group or not, I'm not sure.

  • Mostly Chinese with a bit of African import.

  • Two keys mixed in there.

  • There is no African in the blood.

  • I don't know where that started from, but they said there is Portuguese, and by the time it gets down to our level, it's 1 30 to 1 32nd Oh, well, let's see that.

  • That's the complicated thing, right?

  • Is that there's so many influences in in us, right?

  • Four boys are five boys now, um, cultural boys, I would say, like moral West Indian fuel.

  • Though growing up, I didn't really know what that meant.

  • I guess, like, you know, we have roti and curry and stuff, and I was I just saw those normal I didn't realise growing up that my parents had such think Caribbean accents.

  • And But now that I've been told, No, your mom does have a Caribbean accent showing I'm like, Oh, really?

  • I guess that's right.

  • Yes, I just That's just the way Mom sounds, But no, she has an accent.

  • Hey, you know what I noticed is in the background, like you look right?

  • Yeah.

  • Um, one of months were that from it's from the Caribbean.

  • Why should the country actually Caribbean, West?

  • Indian, Chinese, Scottish What in the world?

  • Well, our parents are both from British colonies.

  • Christiana, British, Honduras, now police.

  • And now Guyana.

  • How did the Chinese get to British Guyana?

  • Our ancestors came from indentured servants initially coming from China to British Guiana.

  • Toe work on plantations.

  • So an indentured servant is only slightly above a slave.

  • And then, after five years of servitude, you'd be granted their freedom.

  • I should point out for future family historians, that was only half our line that were officially indentured.

  • The other half did goto British Guiana freely.

  • Although upon disembarkation it seems their fate wasn't much different than all the non free boats that came before them.

  • This is my question for you.

  • You are one of many questions.

  • What is your background?

  • Probably British.

  • Mostly, you know, Easter.

  • I guess I should back up a bit.

  • This is my little brother, Mikey, who's actually my half brother.

  • And this is his father, my stepfather.

  • But I don't ever use those titles.

  • But I have to explain to you guys.

  • So there you.

  • Anyways, my brothers and I used to joke that the second oldest one.

  • Sean was the white one.

  • But since Mikey came along, I guess you'll have to be the whitest one.

  • Do people ever ask you where you're from?

  • No, I would say, Actually, I was asked once, but, um, I looked like a tourist.

  • I don't think people would really look at me that frequently and say not white where they might think.

  • Well, he's got some other things in him, but, um, do people ever ask you about where you're from?

  • Uh, yeah.

  • Time.

  • No one's No one's Just like, Oh, So where you from?

  • Friends like No.

  • Doesn't happen.

  • Okay, So, like, um, what do they guess?

  • Uh, I'm here.

  • It's, uh, Filipino.

  • Oh, yeah.

  • So the frozen face thing, despite my best efforts to properly record things, I failed miserably.

  • But I tried.

  • I really did speak good.

  • Full screen, This sucker camera.

  • No, I think just better use the phone.

  • Is that better?

  • Oh, the audio is way better.

  • Can you do it?

  • Horizontal.

  • I think that yeah.

  • Don't take my camera gang some kind of paranoid, you know, a lot of feedback here.

  • Yeah, it's I don't know why I like between us two video guys were having the worst quality.

  • I know where your headphones anyways, back to my brother's experience in Vancouver was always taking, you know, since I've come back to one of Beckett really noticed.

  • This is people think I'm Filipino even when I tell him not folk, you know, like I'm half Chinese and, like half Chinese and half Filipino, right?

  • Like No, no.

  • Just like have trainings much other stuff.

  • There's a large Filipino community here, So I've had a lot of people come up to me.

  • I've only been here for, like, 23 weeks, but a lot of people come to me.

  • They're Filipino and say Hello.

  • You new to the city.

  • How's it going?

  • You know, you want to come meet my family?

  • I'm like, Do you think I'm Filipina?

  • Really?

  • Aren't team like no, not for thank you.

  • And then what about back in Winnipeg?

  • Uh, I guess there's a lot darker pact and I have long here.

  • So if you if I was needed Sorry, quick pause here Back then people said native as a native American, although in school they taught us aboriginal.

  • However now the term is indigenous Ok, pause over.

  • I can fly.

  • You got mistaken for Mexican are like Latino or something?

  • No, that's why I'm down in the States.

  • I'm down the state so it's called, it was asked me from Block, Mexican Assume is a mix of blocking next.

  • Well, Davey, I think the term they're looking for is Afro Mexican.

  • If you can trust Wikipedia, the most frequent would be Mexican, and I even have Mexicans addressing me in Spanish When I was in Mexico, that happened a few times.

  • So if anyone was curious as to what black and white Mexican brothers would look like, This is your answer, the other one, that we get quite a bit as Mexican.

  • And now that it's, uh, getting some euro, I noticed that, you know, especially.

  • But we're like a hat or something like that.

  • And I were like, You know, like it just the white shirt with buttons on it, and it's kind of a diner whenever people will think I'm like from Central America or Mexico or something.

  • Interestingly enough, actually, Ah, lot of people think I'm Jewish.

  • What was telling for me is I had one of my friends came from China on.

  • He had only been here for a few years ago.

  • He goes, You know you love your award, right?

  • These were right on these dishes, like Condi with you know, that fermented egg and those are the dishes and all the stuff is horrible.

  • You know, it's not.

  • It's horrible, but it's not like it's not, You know, the food that we're accustomed to, its really authentic Chinese food, and some of it's, you know, it's very different, and they serve it at the same restaurant we go to just be.

  • We're treated like white people when we go there, because we're just ordering Dimson stuff up and you're off the curry, whereas this guy walks in and he's talks, tells what he wants.

  • And of course, the preparing will make up right.

  • So anyway, that was where I thought, OK, you know, I'm really not terms like banana.

  • Sometimes have you thrown around right yellow on the outside, white on the inside, although I think I'm the opposite of that more white on the outside, Chinese on the inside, I know, but it's a term, doesn't it?

  • In those things, you know, like it's you tell the old old Chinese person that you're trying to have Chinese and they go like No, you're not.

  • You don't You don't speak Chinese.

  • You don't pull of Chinese traditions.

  • You're not Chinese.

  • And then you tell us.

  • I mean, you know, you're bit basher of a Scottish like No.

  • Did you ever feel any discrimination at all in Canada?

  • No, I I don't think so.

  • All right.

  • I don't I don't remember feeling any.

  • Um, I think a lot of it.

  • Really.

  • Even if you're lying, All four of us brothers up.

  • There's four different shades from, um and I am the fairest on that scale there.

  • So, uh, uh uh, I couldn't say I felt anything specific number.

  • I think I did.

  • You know, I'm probably a bit darker than you on.

  • Uh, I was also, what, four years ahead of you.

  • So I think you know, you can I think you're great at school.

  • There was actually a lot more Asian kids.

  • Probably Maybe there was, but I just never pay attention.

  • Yeah, that's what I've always thought like, Seriously, I'm thinking like I just so naive that I don't see it because I just can't think of any incident where ever felt like I've been discriminated against?

  • There was just a very few other essence disease other than wait on by the time you know, just four years later.

  • By the time you're coming through, there's a lot more.

  • I think about the time Davey went through.

  • It was very mixed rate.

  • He had, you know, African kids, Indian kits and Middle Eastern kids.

  • He had a mix of kids in his classes, and that's only seven years difference for me, right?

  • So I think I was just like that kind of a tip where they're really what weren't very many colored people at all in the schools that we were, I don't know, maybe people secretly discriminating assess that, like me, that I just never really paid attention to you, who would just figure like, Oh, they just don't like being whatever.

  • And Iose is focused on who the person was.

  • So I just assumed that if someone didn't like me is because they just didn't like me as a person, not because of my color or my race or whatever, but now, like I look around and, you know, I've been here for 33 weeks walking around with a chicken.

  • Not there's a lot of Asians, half Asian mixes.

  • There's a lot of African lot of Middle Eastern like it's a very mixed city now, like a lot of the cities.

  • And I just feel like, Hey, I just write in one of these folks that air around and where we belong here, Right?

  • So, uh, that's more how I've been thinking that, you know, I've got girls now, huh?

  • They're you know, they show up at a part, play with the kids.

  • There's no one says, Hey, where you from?

  • You know nothing, right?

  • Let's just Abel's playing and so I don't know.

  • To me that just feels normal and natural, and I don't see a difference.

  • You know, it's funny is, I don't know if you've noticed there's been a couple of articles lately about people that have gone back and looked at their race and what it means to be the necessity.

  • And it was about the lady who was on the front of Times magazine.

  • I think it was maybe 10 years ago okay to correct my brother's shoddy memory, which is ironic, since the podcast is about a lady who fact checks Hearst Body family history to cover a pair 25 years ago, and the lady herself wasn't interviewed.

  • But she felt like she had looked like the computer generated face of the future and that letter on the path to research her family's history.

  • And she was kind of similar to, lastly, some Asia, some Hispanic, some Caucasian, just a mixture of races.

  • And when I look at her, she could have been like one of our sisters, you know, or you had a sister were obesity.

  • I think of us as kind of the future of what the world's gonna be, anyways, just a whole bunch of mixed race where there isn't really an identifier.

  • The podcast, though, talks about her kind of going back and doing all of this research to try to figure out her own background role, heritage, history and all that stuff.

  • Spent a long time doing it learns a lot of things about her list.

  • A lot of interesting stories about her family that you're really No.

  • One, covers all that stuff, and then kind of the end of the day, she says.

  • It really doesn't matter kind of your history or your heritage like that lineage that you don't know about.

  • It's actually about you know, you your immediate environment that formed you and those influences.

  • That is very interesting about her conclusion, because that's honestly how I'm feeling right now because I'm like, I'm sure I have Somewhere in my notes is like, What does it even matter?

  • Great, Yeah, I'm like 1 32nd Portuguese, 1 16 Spanish.

  • Maybe had some African and us.

  • Maybe we all have Afghan like way back when anyways.

  • And all we have mine now like it's just so crazy because none of that effects who I am today.

  • It's more like the fact that I grew up in Canada.

  • And that's why my last question is my last question is, if you have to pick like one identity, what would you say you are?

  • Mmm, It's good question.

  • I would.

  • I mean, it's it's complicated, yet.

  • Is it really that complicated?

  • I'm Canadian.

  • More and more.

  • I consider myself just a Canadian.

  • Actually.

  • See, honey, I think that's the clearer one.

  • You know, I think a lot of times we ask the question, you know where we from and we tried to ground ourselves with with an identity with a sense of belonging and place, huh?

  • And you know, there is value in that, their security, that there's important Soon that I believe.

  • But maybe the bigger question is where we going?

  • What are we gonna do?

  • Would have been accomplish?

  • You know, I'm just a bit of everything and a bit of nothing at the same time, Does he kind of like, you know, you kind of fit into every category, but you're not really any of those categories because you're not enough of anything to be the new them.

  • At the end of the day, I really don't care.

  • You know, I am who I am and wait, It's It's interesting to see where, uh, where we come from, but I think it's more interesting.

  • See where we're going?

  • Well, it just got deep.

  • Yo, and I know what you're one drink.

  • Where's the pie chart?

  • Without DNA testing to myself?

  • This is what I've come up with.

  • My older brother never did find that chart in time for this video.

  • And to tell the truth, this video's kind of like my long winded way of explaining why I'm making a documentary about Japanese identity because all my brothers and I, as Canadians, can simply say where Canadian and boom, end of story the past is important.

  • People will ask about it.

  • But the future is where it's at.

  • I don't believe identity is that simple in Japan.

  • It's something as a Canadian, I think I can't completely grasp and probably never will.

  • But I think it's an important topic and one that's ever more pressing as immigration, even if on Lee of temporary foreign workers is increasing in Japan.

  • So if you want to support my documentary tentatively titled Being Japanese, you can head on over to Indiegogo to do so.

  • And if you're someone who has a story to tell about being Japanese, are know someone who has.

  • I'd love to hear from you.

  • Thanks for watching.

you know there was this for, um Okay.

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