Did you see this in the top 10 trending topics for Toronto last week? It was there for THREE days, you guys. That’s on some London Riots or Egypt-type shit. As a member of the #bramptongirls tribe (shout out Springdale!) the hashtag fascinated me. “#BramptonGirls is trending. tears of joy,” I tweeted. That got me six retweets, my most far-reaching Twitter ripple to date.

It’s a polarizing topic, #bramptongirls. For some, mostly scorned boys and bitchy girls, it was an excuse to talk smack about trashy, duplicitous, bumbling suburban girls. The other side (#bramptongirls and the boys that love them) told a story, via a series of poorly spelled, real-talk paeans, of multi-culti chicks with generous physical attributes and a hustler mentality. And then there were those who made the duh-obvious choice to spew racial BS about Brampton’s growing black and brown population.

For all its growing population and booming economy, Brampton can feel like a small town at times. It’s why, since I was a kid, I wanted out. That said, I’ve been thinking more and more about how distinct my coming-of-age narrative is and how that’s inextricably linked to the racial, economic and cultural mess that is Brampton: working at the mall from a young age, identity crises, taking the bus everywhere, movies on a Friday and Saturday night, all ages clubbing and very early access to alcohol, striving to date Toronto or Scarborough guys because they’re cooler. Brampton is kind of fucked up for a young person!

But beyond the self-defensive, aggressive picture woven by #bramptongirls tweeters, there’s an interesting flash of agency this points to: all of these (overwhelmingly) young people are on their phones or computers and tweeting. It might not have the blowhardy har-har of #new911calls or whatever the “Downtown Elite” are talking about, but that makes it no less valid and viable as a source of information and community, as well as a barometer of the way things are. The smart person will be the one who discovers how we can bridge these two worlds.

This post is part of the Ethnic Aisle, a blog about issues of race, ethnicity and culture in the GTA.

As you may have heard, there’s a heated war going on between the GTA’s downtowners and suburbanites. Or maybe there’s not. Who can say? You can – we’d like to invite you to a very, very informal talk session about the 416, the 905, and what race and ethnicity have got to do with it.

Date: Monday, September 26, 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Place: Room 106 at the 519 Community Centre, 519 Church St.
RSVP: ethnicaisle@gmail.com

We’ll be talking about transit, transportation, culture, lifestyle, economics, elections, class and how suburban immigrants fit into the Canadian Dream. To help stir the discussion, stayed tuned to the Ashcan and The Ethnic Aisle for related content all week.

Here’s a primer to kick things off.

We think it’s a conversation worth having. Help us spread the word. We hope to see you there.

My friend, and fellow Bramptonian, Preet Nirwal (that’s her up there!) has lived in India for the large majority of the past five years. Just after her homecoming to Toronto this summer, she set up shop at Harbourfront Centre’s artist’s market to sell a few lovely pieces of clothing crafted in India from local, heritage materials. Drawn to brights, the homespun and the unusual, I immediately fell in love with the products of a passion I’d seen budding since Preet and I first met years ago through mutual friends. And along with purchasing a gorgeous pair of printed, peacock blue pants, Preet and I were able to talk about her experiences living and working and “returning” to India. There’s a lot you hear about “us,” the suburbs-reared children of Indian immigrants, but Preet’s curiosity, productivity and dream-chasing wanderlust proves that’s just a myth.

Tell me why you decided to move to India in the first place?

Creating was always under my skin, but I never explored it and at the time I was just trying to get away. My Punjabi immigrant parents wanted me to be a doctor, engineer or a lawyer. Trying to convince my parents I might be more in my element pursuing a career in the arts was a burden I didn’t want to inflict on them. So I did my undergrad at York in sociology, hoping to eventually write my LSATS, etc. But learning about people sparked something I hadn’t anticipated: somewhere along the way I quit believing in the system altogether. One day I woke up thinking, “what am I doing?!?” That, plus the ending of a long-term, uninspiring and regressive relationship were what made me realize I had to get away and India just made sense. I figured my parents would let me go and I could begin a journey I’d been waiting my whole life to take: explore textile, study design and travel.

What was your relationship with Indian textiles before you left? How did that change while you were in India?

I didn’t really have a relationship with Indian textiles while I was living in the West: it was colourful and beautiful fabric that my mom would bring out at weddings, but that was basically it: just fabric. As a family we’d never traveled within India so Punjab + Rajasthan + Delhi = India to me. I was so far from the truth, it was bewildering. Every state is so different it feels almost like another country altogether: the landscape, languages, religion, the way people look, food, and even spices. For me, the most insane differences were in costumes and textiles. Depending on where you are, sari fabrics and motifs change, the embroidery or dying techniques are different, the way women tie their saris or men wrap dothis or lungris or pagris. And every state has their own handicraft or textile. Phulkari is an embroidery technique that uses a darn stitch in bright silk threads and is something you’d only see in Punjab. Bandhani is a tie-and-dye method particular to Rajasthan and Gujarat. The finest brocades and silks come from Benares in Uttar Pradesh. And so on. I learned so much that fabric was no longer just fabric but a voice, history and story.

Khadi, for instance, is something I used a lot in my collection: it’s a hand-woven cotton or silk cloth. During the fight for Indian independence, Gandhiji used khadi as a way to nurture his revolution. It was a symbol for independence and self-reliance that encouraged the masses to boycott foreign goods. The charkha (wheel used to spin the cloth) is still at the centre of the Indian flag to remind people of the path to freedom and independence.

What did you learn about production techniques? Have the processes for producing these textiles changed/industrialized? What relationship does a textile have with the community it originates from?

Things have definitely changed.  Globalization is killing the craft.  Machines are replacing people, skilled artists are harder and harder to come by, and hand-crafted art is becoming increasingly rare.  A couple of years ago in Benares, I walked by a little room where two old men were sitting on the floor weaving a sari. I was totally enamored by the whole process, so I smiled, greeted them and kneeled on the floor outside the room. The patience, concentration, detail, and the perfection–it is full power meditation, no doubt. I asked them, in Hindi, how long the process would take and that led to ordering chai and politicking about the weaving process, tourists, ganja, dying crafts and India then and now. They had begun the sari only four days prior, so they were about halfway through. They told me that they were fifth-generation weavers. I asked if their children were learning and they just nodded their heads, no. It seemed like mixed emotion: sad that a legacy was ending but happy an education could lead to a better job and life. But education often leads young people to “good jobs” in call centres, which is heartbreaking really. On the bright side, there are NGOs helping to preserve the craft like Dastkar and Kala Raksha, which is based out of Gujarat and works closely with rural communities, teaching them to use fabric as a canvas. Not long after moving to Mumbai, I went to a Kala Raksha workshop and met village women who had traveled all the way to the city to share stories about how they create a piece, which reflects their life paths, and enjoy the process of creation. When local people are involved with organizations, more money goes to artists rather then middlemen stealing shares.  I’m in the process of finding my place in all this because the craft that comes out of India must be preserved.  For me the combination of traditional and contemporary is deadly, so let’s see!

What are your thoughts on Western designers “borrowing” influences from places like India?

It’s cool, as long as its influence and not exploitation.  It’s important to understand the process, locale, people, and dynamics involved.  I wasn’t born and raised in India so people could argue that, despite my heritage, I’m actually a Westerner as well.  Sometimes I do feel that folks who were born and raised in India resent us coming to the country and creating all kinds of things as if we’re exploiting the motherland, like it’s a trend.  But this country is making me a better person.

What relationship does the growing middle class, especially young people, have toward Indian textiles? What about Western clothing, brands and designers?

They loooove brand names and the costume of Indian women in the cities is evolving because of it. There are less beautifully draped saris and it’s all about “jeans and kurta.” Since the demand for such textiles is decreasing, so is the supply. I think that’s why people were initially intrigued by me: I was this Canadian girl who hadn’t learned Hindi yet and I’d always wear a salwar or dhoti, a bindi, joothi or kohlapuri and some real traditional Rajasthani silver jewelery. But I would put it together in a way that they could relate to, while they were running to Mango and Zara trying to be relatable.  That’s when I figured out I had the new peanut butter and jelly–if I could keep mixing Indian textiles with contemporary silhouettes I could make magic!

You told me about working as a stylist for television commercials and print while you were in India. What’d you learn about Indian attitudes and standards of beauty?

That was a trip!  In hindsight it’s kind of sad because I had no education or experience in design, not even a portfolio, but would get offered to style commercials or promo based entirely on the fact that I “dressed good,” had a Western accent and was Canadian. There were probably thousands of people more qualified but I had the farangi (foreigner) swag and Indians were suckers for it. Initially, I loved the process and learning about cinematography, good lighting, angles, and understanding the personality of clothes.

But then I was styling a commercial for Fair & Lovely, a very popular skin bleaching cream in India and parts of Asia. Here’s the basic ad brief: Five Indian women from different walks of life (a housewife, student, corporate woman, etc.) use Fair & Lovely, check their skin against a “fairness metre” (whatever that is!) and discover they are now two shades lighter. At first, I looked at it as work, but seeing a woman checking a mirror, so happy because she was supposedly lighter-skinned was my breaking point.  I realized I was helping sell an inferiority complex. Everyone uses these products, even men. I thought once I left Canada I’d never face discrimination issues or face privilege but it’s funny that, now in India, I was on the good side of that equation. For them “West is best.” There are model rejects from Brazil, Europe and Russia who are top models in India, some even getting into film despite no acting or Hindi skills, based on their beauty, skin colour and height. They hardly use Indians in advertisements anymore unless it’s low-budget and Indians are paid less than foreigners for the same kind of work. And one of the highest-paid, most in demand, Bollywood movie stars barely speaks Hindi and is from London, but she’s fair-skinned and beautiful. People in certain parts of the world buy creams to lighten their skin and in Western places buy cancer to darken theirs. It’s completely f’d up.

This post is part of the Ethnic Aisle, a blog about issues of race, ethnicity and culture in the GTA.

Jazz pianist Vijay Iyer is a Yale mathematics graduate who also holds a Ph.D. from U.C. Berkeley in Technology and the Arts. This might seem slightly incongruous until you read the title of his 1998 dissertation, according to Wikipedia: Macrostructures of Sound: Embodied Cognition in West African and African-American Musics. There’s a real cerebral element to Iyer, who speaks carefully and at length but not without laughter, that anchors much of the free-form associated with jazz’s improvisational nature. Iyer also attributes much of this to a 25-year-long obsession with dramatic, oblique melodies of Thelonious Monk. Last year, Historicity by the Vijay Iyer Trio was nominated for a Grammy; it included a cover of M.I.A.’s “Galang.” Iyer has also worked with a slew of rappers as a composer and writer, including a recent collaboration with post-postcolonial weirdo rappers Das Racist. A first generation curio of sorts, the unique position Iyer’s found himself in has meant courting a mix of ambivalence, naive curiosity, and ferocious pride, from a varied audience from labels to critics, long-time jazz fans to inquisitive South Asians. Of course this means Ethnic Aisle had to real talk with him about what the hell it’s like to be a brown jazz musician ahead of his Toronto Jazz Fest performance Tuesday, June 28, at the Glenn Gould Studio. – Anupa Mistry

In everything written about you, the phrase “Indian-Americans” always shows up, but I’ve also read you saying that the racial paradigm is frustrating, so does that phrase ever get annoying?

Well, it’s in my bio because either people look at my name and get it or, more commonly, they look at my name and have no fucking idea what it is, you know? So that’s to kind of diffuse that tension in the first or second sentence. But also, I’m not ashamed of it: it’s made me who I am. It sets up the dynamic of difference at the beginning, but really, that dynamic is there before I even show up, say anything, or play anything so I may as well claim it.

How important is that visibility, do you think, in terms of being in a line of “non-traditional” work?

Our community only started existing in this country in the ’60s, really. That’s when the immigration law changed and the first big wave of immigrants came to the U.S. and had children. When I was growing up there weren’t any of us in culture whatsoever. This was before there were people like, even, Rushdie, you know? Now we’re on TV, and in politics (for better or worse), and in the corporate world too—and also we’re having our own scandals now! We’re in the news in a lot of different ways, some of it is tremendous, some of it is horrible—but its good when that representation gets tweaked a little. Traveling around the U.S. and meeting other Indian-Americans who come to my shows, I can see that it’s been an inspiration—especially for people who are 10 to 20 years younger than me. To be out there and doing this has, and I don’t want to self-aggrandize or anything, made some kind of difference: it’s been said to me many times and it’s meaningful and one of the reasons I keep doing it.

Okay, so my parents were weird about me listening to rap music even though they bought me Coolio’s Gangsta’s Paradise tape when I was, like, 8. How did you grow up with music?

I remember the first record my older sister bought was Saturday Night Fever. I was probably four or five. We had plenty of pop stuff in the house. I remember buying Prince’s Purple Rain right when it came out and Thriller too. In terms of jazz, part of it was that I learned to play piano by improvising—it wasn’t structured or guided in any way. The piano was there, and my ear had been trained because of violin so I was able to pick things out. I would try and play the songs I heard on the radio—Michael Jackson and the Beatles. My high school had a good music program and I was in the orchestra but they let me join the jazz ensemble. When I first auditioned, I didn’t know how jazz was structured so I kind of made my version of it without knowing what was going on. My band director said it was important to learn about the music—the history, the theory, the repertoire and so on. So I did that every day in eleventh and twelfth grade.

Do you remember connecting with a particular record?

I remember seeing Billy Taylor, who passed away earlier this year, on the CBS Morning Show that my dad used to watch. This was the mid-’80s so Wynton Marsalis was becoming prominent; he was on Saturday Night Live! I would check stuff out at the library— Herbie Hancock and Miles Davis—and look at who is playing on the record and wrote the songs. That path led me to Thelonious Monk. I’d heard so much about him. I think it was Monk In Tokyo and Giants Of Jazz that made me think, ‘Wow, he’s barely playing.’ There’s all this wide open space in the music and when he did play it was just one or two notes, and they’d have this elemental force. It was really mysterious to me. It was much more structural and would have this kind of cataclysmic effect, compared to other musicians who were orbiting around the music like mosquitoes. I was like ‘Is he even playing music right now?’ And that’s a good feeling, I love that feeling. I became obsessed with him and I still am really, and that’s like 25 years later.

“It was grounding for me to have elements in my own work that were linked to my heritage…It was a way for me to be myself in the music which I’d never really seen before.”

When did you first start exploring Indian forms?

It’s more about rhythms for me. I do deal a little with ragas, but it’s sort of hard on a piano. I was never trained in Indian music—well, but I wasn’t trained in piano either, so who cares?! I moved to California when I was 20 for graduate school and it was sort of an identity-driven mission. Early memories of seeing Carnatic music made me curious about what the percussionists were doing, and especially in South Indian music, they’re improvising and responding to what’s happening. So I got more into the structural side of that. I was starting to become more of a composer so that knowledge was helpful in creating more variety and rigor.

But also, it was grounding for me to have elements in my own work that were linked to my heritage. In the Bay Area I connected with Asian Improv Arts. They are community organizers as well as creative musicians, so they dealt with identity in this empowering way. It wasn’t just ornamental, they had this radical sensibility that connected music to activism, so working with elements of your identity or heritage in the music was part of the whole mission and ideology. That was really inspiring; it was a way for me to be myself in the music which I’d never really seen before, at that time.

Does race still play a role in jazz?

For me, to be playing jazz is to be dealing with race. It’s such a fraught, racially-charged subculture and it is polarized. You’ll find whole communities of white musicians, who only play with other white musicians. You’ll also see other African-American musicians who only play with other African-Americans, but often for the purpose of hiring or collaborating for empowerment reasons. Elder African-Americans will hire younger African-Americans because they want to nurture them. When white people do it, that’s basically what it is but it doesn’t get named as such—that’s sort of a privilege of whiteness, not having to name yourself as white.

That reminds me, I wanted to ask you about that New York Times top 10 composer list you tweeted, kinda angrily, about…

Did you know they have SIX classical critics? It’s disproportionate! Anthony Tommasini made a list of the top 10 composers and, of course, they were all dead white males. Like, why are these guys so great? Well, basically because you and everyone in your scene says so! I mean, they’re completely influential, but can you honestly say that Mozart was the greatest musician that ever lived? Particularly though, Tommasini’s not dealing with any artists from the 20^th century before 1950, and also there were no women on it. It’s just dumb. He would also happily admit that it’s a biased list and he is who he is but this was on the front page of the Times’ website for months—it wasn’t some inconsequential list on a blog. At least acknowledge how influential you are! (Laughs) It’s a cultural institution and it affects the way people think and yet this happens all the time.

The media is beyond diversity training, I think.

Well also, in a way, the language of diversity has kind of regressed in the last decade or so. I feel like, somehow, since the culture wars of the late ’80s and early ’90s, there’s been this deep backlash. People don’t even know these basic things about race and power and they act like ‘Oh, that’s all PC nonsense’ without even knowing what they’re talking about. You have such a spread of levels of awareness.

“Either you’re white and neutral or else you perform your ethnicity, like Lil Wayne or something. You can’t be in between.“

Does this kind of tie back into why you think visibility is important?

Remember though, visibility doesn’t always shift the power balance. Like, black people are visible but they’re disproportionately unemployed and incarcerated and have the highest infant mortality rate. There’s still this deep power imbalance that persists well because, I don’t know, white people don’t like to share? (Laughs) My parents worked hard and created a stable environment for me, I never wanted for anything, I had a really good undergraduate education and they paid for it. So, in a lot of ways, I’m a child of privilege. But entering culture was a different thing: trying to get a record deal it was always, ‘Are people going to buy a record with your name and face on it?’ Certainly in the ’90s and during most of the last decade the answer was ‘No.’ This is still true because now they can really track statistics on different factors and variables. And it’s purely about money. So it’s on a consumer level first, then on a label decision-maker level. Either you’re white and neutral or else you perform your ethnicity, like Lil Wayne or something. You can’t be in between.

This is why I like following you on Twitter! You’re totally present and engaged instead of just being, like, quiet about all these weird machinations. Is jazz still political then?

It is for me. There are a lot of jazz musicians today who are completely apolitical, which I find beguiling. It partly has to do with who is making the music now and why. One thing that’s happened in the last couple of decades is the proliferation of jazz schools. So people will get undergraduate degrees in jazz studies or performance, usually in some sort of conservatory model, and that’s for people who can afford to do that and would over something that’s a bit more lucrative. So it’s for people who are more privileged, basically. We’re almost two generations into that dynamic.

It’s much rarer to find people who grew up in the ghetto now playing jazz, because that path was, for the most part, not available to them. Whereas 20 years ago you would find those people, and certainly 50 years ago that was all you found. That was where the music came from: that kind of real edgy (as in ‘being on the edge’) marginality and not having anything. Trying to do the impossible is what jazz is to me. You can hear the defiance in the music, and that’s partly why it has had this universal impact: not just because people were virtuosos, but there was this storytelling quality and it literally came from struggle. Maybe people hear that in some hip-hop, certainly in the early days of hip-hop. But nowadays that stuff is on display in a grotesque way because that’s what makes money, and that theatricalism is what teenaged white kids want to buy. But anyway, in terms of jazz, most people who do it today went to school for it and because they’re good at it—privileged prodigies. Those my age or younger came through that scenario, and therefore have no reason to be political because it was never their problem.

Being the first Indian-American jazz musician, I had to create possibility from impossibility. I don’t want to say it was the type of struggle that people like Monk had just to survive, but it inspired me because of that. Like, Monk was born to a single mother who moved her three kids to New York in the ’20 so her kids could legally go to high school. It’s heartbreaking. What’s my excuse for not making it? Why can’t I? I don’t find that many younger people in this music are inspired by that aspect of it, they’re often inspired by the sound and virtuosity, the beauty of music, which is itself a great thing, but it’s not the only thing.

Is that path-forging what draws you to people like M.I.A. and Das Racist?

Yeah, absolutely. It’s the same force.

Das Racist is good, but are also kind of crazy.

In terms of ‘working’ with them, this was about 75 minutes of my life! (Laughs). It was a blast, but it was also kind of a blip. They’re hilarious and we had a good time. One of the reasons we connected is that Heems (Himanshu Suri) said he liked the way I’d make jokes on Twitter. He said something like, ‘If you didn’t have mad jokes, man, I don’t know if I’d be working with you. I respect you but if you can make me laugh that makes me feel okay.’ That makes me feel glad.

What about the M.I.A. cover from Historicity?

The M.I.A. cover wasn’t something I thought people would hear and then think that I was hip. (Laughs) I admired her because of the inventiveness and the force she brought into music that was just so powerful and inspiring and seductive and kind of hilarious. It’s outspoken and not just because she talks about Sri Lankan politics, but because her identity is so undeniable. Musically, there’s nothing there that seems accessible to an acoustic jazz trio—piano, bass and drums have no place in that music! (Laughs) It’s proudly synthetic and from the digital junkyard of the third millennium, like it was put together by consumer electronics and it’s cheap but it has improbable power. I wanted to see if I could force an alignment between my group and just that one track, ‘Galang.’ It would be so unstable that it could only last the length of the song, so I was looking at the inner workings of the track, transcribing it and orchestrating it for our instruments for something we could use. It happened in a day, which is basically how our records are made anyway—they’re a snapshot of what a band is doing.

Who are you listening to now?

Craig Taborn just put out a solo piano record that’s not like any other. To me, he’s the number one pianist living today. He’s from my generation as well, but is really interesting and eclectic and aware of all types of music. I’ve been going back to folk music too, like Gnawa music from Morroco. It’s a world I can just listen to it and be in for a while. I saw Flying Lotus play live the other day here in New York. He’s really onto something. There were two or three opening acts that were cool, but when he came on it was just… I mean what I wrote on Twitter was “uncanny rhythmic truths” (laughs) because he’s found a way to make irregular sound regular. There’s lopsidedness to a lot of the beats, but the effect it has is so undeniable. It’s kind of coming out of Dilla, sort of? It’s visceral: played at that volume at a club you feel pockets of air flying around your body and you’re moving in a way that’s tethered to rhythm. That’s what I mean by rhythmic truth, truth about human motion. Musically speaking, I don’t think it’s something that’s been articulated to that degree before. I also really like Georgia Anne Muldrow, Muhsinah and Shabazz Palaces.

You retweeted my idea about the harmonium being really conducive to the melody of Fabolous’ “You Be Killin’ Em.” Any chance of making that happen?

(Laughs) Well, I actually have a harmonium but I don’t play it much. The question would really be, why?

This post is part of the Ethnic Aisle blogging project. If you’re interested in race, ethnicity, diversity and the GTA, check it out.

The phrase “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks” has always bothered me. First, because what does that even mean? Second, because yes, you can. The idea that homophobia is entrenched in visible minority/immigrant communities bothers me, even if it’s true, because it is also entrenched in other, whiter households. And the idea that homophobia can’t be rooted out from our cultures offends me, because it means that our cultures are dead and ancient, written down and stove-hardened.

When I say I was homophobic in my early Mississauga high school years, I mean it. I don’t mean I just cracked gay jokes, or that I thought disrobing in the boy’s change room was pretty awkward. I don’t mean that I was homophobic in the way many young straight males are when going through puberty and facing real-life sex for the first time—the kind of homophobia that peters out at “ick” and doesn’t ever really go further. I mean that the idea of gay people disgusted me and I didn’t want any around me. I mean that I avoided good people I used to be friends with. I mean that being gay seemed to me one of the worst things a person could possibly be.

What got me to change my views isn’t surprising: someone close to me came out of the closet and my love for them so dwarfed whatever hatred I had for gay people that my brain couldn’t ignore what its Asian math skills were computing. (Working at a Starbucks helped, too. If you can avoid making friends with gay people while working at a Starbucks, I’ll give you one hell of a giant cookie. May you get diabetes from it.) Did I still think the idea of two guys kissing was gross? Yes. Did it finally hit me how incredibly stupid it is to form opinions on an entire group of people simply because the thought of them having sex made me gag? Well, I realized that there’s a whole lot of people I don’t ever want to watch have sex, and I don’t hate them either. Like, you know, my parents.

My parents are old dogs, but they are learning new tricks every day. I’m going to concentrate on my father here, because it’s his example as “a man” that concerns me while on this topic. Watching my old-dog dad age is so incredibly valuable for me. In his retirement, he’s learned how to ballroom dance, kept up with computer technology and become a DJ. (True story.) I’ve also seen him learn and ask questions about everything from post-9/11 Islam to, yes, homosexuality. I’ve seen his opinions change.

Maybe it’s just me being young and idealistic, but I believe in giving people time and space to grow, because it’s the only way I’ve ever grown and it’s how I’ve seen others do the same. My parents grew up with a lot of nasty ‘isms, but to say that someone is ignorant and will stay ignorant just because they’re already “old” and they come from an “old world” is itself its own kind of ‘ism. They call it maturation because it takes time. That’s unfortunate maybe, but it’s also amazing in its own way. My parents are/were everything you think of when you think “minority parents.” What they aren’t, though—and what I never want to be—is ever standing still.

Not everyone will change, but I take it as truth that everyone can. I know because I’ve done it, and I plan to keep doing it, and you’ll never catch me saying it’s in spite of my background or upbringing. I’ve learned that sexuality can be pretty fluid. I’ve learned that a lot of other things, like culture, can be as well.

I’m not entirely sure I’ve nailed my feelings on this topic. I feel like maybe I’m not using the right words. Consider this a rough draft of something I’ll write a better version of later in life, when I’m something of an old dog myself.

(Photo via Elsie esq. on Flickr, Creative Commons)

This post is part of the Ethnic Aisle blogging project. If you’re interested in race, ethnicity, diversity and the GTA, check it out.

A lot of mainstream narratives that follow Indian representation in pop culture are full of shit: everything’s Bollywood, and spices, and traditionalism, and anthropomorphic deities. In the hands of inexperienced commentators, sorry, but I expect nothing less. For FLARE, in the hands of a should-be-versed commentator, Anokhi EIC Hina P. Ansari (who wrote an interesting IIFA-themed piece about her director grandfather), I found juvenile, reductive drivel?

Y’all, why was none of this stuff questioned???

Re: Saif Ali Khan, “His comic timing makes you melt and he could charm his away into the heart of any parent.”

I mean, if we’re going there, my dad wasn’t even alive during Partition and he holds an active grudge so I don’t think any Khans will be doing any charming in my household. In all seriousness, why is this parochial traditionalism even being pandered to grown-ass women capable of making their own decisions?

On Deepika Padukone: “Co-starring Shahrukh Khan, this global blockbuster propelled this Brahmin beauty to the stratosphere.”

In university my friends and I met an international student who mentioned something about caste outright. Like, 17-years-old at the time, we took this to the logical, obnoxious extreme, cackling “HI, I’M RAVI AND I’M BRAHMIN,” every time we saw the poor guy. I was hella dumb in university but even then I knew to call people out on this type of bullshit. I’m thinking of insisting on being adjectized only as a Shudra sweetheart from now on.

Filmi mag or FLARE? “Chopra is a bombshell with a capital B.”

Oh, maybe an intern did write this?

AND, they used this picture of Aamir Khan:

WHEN IN REAL LIFE HE LOOKS (SMOKING!!!!) LIKE THIS:

This post is part of the Ethnic Aisle blogging project. If you’re interested in race, ethnicity, diversity and the GTA, check it out.

Oh sure, everybody knows that people make generalisations about other people based on ethnicity. I’m supposed to be good at math, for example, or be able to run atop a cedar forest (which I totally can do).

I’m not here to throw a pity party though. Let’s face it, we’re all human, we all make assumptions. So here are 10 things I take for granted about other people just because of where I’m from.

1) People know what HK is.

What, you mean you don’t refer to Hong Kong by its initials? I thought that was a universally accepted colloquialism, like A.C. or the P.R.C. Maybe I should have just named this point “Chinese people love acronyms”.

2) Not everybody eats all of an animal

Sure, people might think I’m weird when I say I eat tripe or chicken feet on the regular. But you know what? If your entire diet consists of items I can order at a Firkin pub, I’m judging you just as much — so, you know. We’re square.

3) People have heard of ‘Infernal Affairs’

That’s INFERNAL with an F. What the heck is a Departed anyways?

4) Everyone is tiny

I make this assumption because in Canada, I buy clothes sized XS and they fit me perfectly. In Hong Kong, I am a size XL. That kind of disparity will confuse a dude.

5) Cups are redundant

True story: until about grade 10, my house had no cups. We only had mugs. I mean, I guess my parents figured why have separate vessels for hot and cold liquids when you could drink both out of a mug perfectly well? And the weird part is all my friends had no cups either! I swear cups weren’t in vogue amongst Hong Kong immigrants until 1997. I will believe this until the day I die.

6) Instant Noodles are an acceptable breakfast food

I’ve touched on this before in Ask a Chinese Person, but eating instant noodles will not make you a social pariah in Hong Kong. If you are scarfing down pre-packaged Beef Flavoured Ramen noodles at 9am, it does not signify that you need to get your shitty life together or that you’re still living like a college student. It means you are having a delicious brunch, particularly with a raw egg and some spam. Bon appetit.

7) Girls expect to be doted on

Speaking of generalisations, I feel I can safely say that in Hong Kong dating culture, men are… how shall we put this delicately… whipped? It’s very common to see a dude carrying his girl’s Gucci purse around the mall for her, even when she has nothing in her hands. Or standing beside her in a clothing store while she picks out dresses while holding her shopping bags. It’s weird. But it’s true.

8) Pizza Hut is a classy dinner

Ok, FIRST OFF, in HK people like thousand island dressing on their pizza. SECONDLY, Pizza Hut is a classy joint over there. I mean, it’s the same Pizza Hut, but it’s not the equivalent of Pizza Hut here, if that makes any sense. It has the cache of say, The Keg. It would be fine to take your parents to Pizza Hut for their birthday. So reverse that and imagine going somewhere The Keg was considered junk? Culture shock!

9) Parents do not show affection towards each other

Unless you mean helping each other do chores around the house. But no joke, I have never seen my parents kiss. Ever. Unless they were just accidentally head butting each other in the face reaching for the same item from the car cubby.

10) All kids live at home as long as they want

When I found out Western parents encouraged their kids to move out, I was blown away. If my folks had things their way, we’d be like a farm house with all my siblings raising their children in the same building. As it were, living at home into your 30′s is completely typical amongst many people I know. It’s cost efficient you know — mortgages are for the weak.

This post is part of the Ethnic Aisle blogging project. If you’re interested in race, ethnicity, diversity and the GTA, check it out.

We all know white people listen to bands with white people in them, so why can’t I be partial to bands with brown people in them? Oh, you ain’t know there exists a significant body of work beyond M.I.A.? THERE DOES:

1. Das Racist: Here’s a sample lyric from “Ek Shaneesh” which basically made me feel 75 per cent less alone in the world:

Listening to Three Stacks, reading Gaya Spivak
Listening to KMD and feeling weird about Naipaul
Fly or style warz, war style Warsaw
Listening to jams with they pops about dem batty boys
Listening to Can while I’m reading Arundhati Roy
Yeah, yeah, my pops drove a cab homes
Now I drop guap just to bop in the cab home

I MEAN, WE ALL FELT WEIRD ABOUT NAIPAUL, RIGHT???

2.  Shilpa Ray and her Happy Hookers: Shilpa Ray, the coolest possible incarnation of a harmonium-playing Bad Indian Girl (I can’t believe that website still exists).

3. Yeasayer: Anand Wilder: a name I’d hate on a white guy (judgy face, Devendra Banhart), but turns my eyes into hearts on a brown.

4. Woodhands: They’re Canadian so I want to take Paul Banwatt to my former Brampton high school and make him play songs in the cafeteria underneath a sign that reads, “Choices: You Have Them.” (Only I’M allowed to make these jokes about Brampton.)

5. Bat For Lashes: Her name is Natasha Khan and she painted her face, minus the lazy “tribal” connotations, before Drew Barrymore and Kelly Osborne. And, OMG, Gwyneth Paltrow in that “I AM AFRICAN” campaign, which makes me feel both embarrassed for her + pukey. Back to Bat For Lashes who also rules because she did Kings of Leon’s song better than them!

6. Vampire Weekend: I actually don’t really give this band a pass because their music is basically colonialism in MP3 form. But Rostam Batmanglij is Iranian and gay, and I always give it up for the gay ethnics (hey parents, they exist!). OH, but Vampire Weekend is all happy sounding and shit, and how can I not be into that? All the more reason to be suspicious. Shout out Miriam and Amadou!

7. Jai Paul: Drake’s lifting of Jai Paul’s one and only song, “BTSTU,” means it is obviously the hottest shit out. Know how I know I’ve got a trace of “Hindustan Zindabad” in me? Because hearing Jai Paul’s whispery-sweet vocals used to fuel sub-par rapping (“too fucking busy/too busy fucking”) put me in a faux-murderous rage for at least five hours. Oh, shiiit!

8. Norah Jones: ROYALTY. Aside from owning a few 70s pop LPs, my parents basically don’t pay attention to any Western music. Here’s what my mom listens to now: bhajans, Bollywood oldies, Norah, bhajans. ALSO, OMG:

9. The Kominas: In grade six, I had the biggest crush on Tony Kanal from No Doubt because he was the first cool Indian musician I had ever seen. MY ultimate 90s couple broke up before I even knew they existed: Tony + Gwen = 4eva. The Kominas have multiple (!!) brown guitar players for maximum crush potential, plus they covered a Bolly classic at BBC’s Maida Vale studios, PLUS PLUS they are like, actually, part of a movement.

10. Vijay Iyer: A former mathematician turned jazz pianist who covered M.I.A.’s “Galang” on his Grammy-nominated album, Trio? Bestill my “Marry Up” heart.

Can’t not mention: Ramesh Srivastava (formerly of Voxtrot), Baria Qurieshi who left The XX, Soundgarden’s Kim Thayil, Panjabi MC, and the brown dude from Sum 41.

This post is part of the Ethnic Aisle blogging project. If you’re interested in race, ethnicity, diversity and the GTA, check it out.

The funniest joke I’ve ever heard goes like this, maybe you’ve heard it:

Q: What do you call a Paki priest?

(Pause with a shit-eating grin.)

A: HOLY SHIT.

I can’t even remember how young I was when I heard that joke or who it was during recess that told it to me, but I do remember hyperventilating with laughter. I tried repeating it to other people and it never got the desired reaction. I assumed it was my lack of comedic timing, but probably it was just because, racism aside, it’s a pretty lame joke.

At this point in my life I had never even met any Pakistani kids, let alone any brown kids. (I’m from Mississauga, so obviously that would change quickly and drastically in the coming years.) I just knew that “Pakis” existed and that everything about them was mind-blowingly hilarious. Don’t worry, I got over it.

Sort of.

Maybe because I was one of the few Filipinos in a class of predominantly Italians and Portuguese (I was told numerous times by classmates that I would end up marrying the one Filipina in my class, and I was so worried about it I avoided talking to her for years because I assumed she was in love with me by the sheer power of DNA), but I’ve been obsessed with race since an early age. This regard has taken on many forms, from my probably-curated-on-purpose multi-culti crew of friends, to my weird high school fetishes (ALL OF THEM), to my anti-racist activist phase in university, to my long-standing love for hip-hop culture.

It’s also manifested itself in the things I find funny, and yes, I laugh all the time at racist jokes. As anti-racist as I am, I am always confused by the sensitivity we sometimes have towards comedians who dare to dig deep. One, because of that old refrain that it’s their job to do it — which isn’t totally sound but also shouldn’t be totally dismissed — and two, if I’m not able to laugh at this shit sometimes, I think I might go crazy. I’m not convinced we all already haven’t. As important as it is, I don’t think talking seriously about race all the time is that healthy. It fucks up how you see the world, and all of a sudden you’re seeing things that aren’t there or obsessing over things that don’t matter. Excuse me if IDGAF about whether or not they put Asian kids in The Hunger Games. (Akira though is another story.) (Yes, there’s a difference, and no, I don’t want to talk about it!)

Everyone should draw their line somewhere, and I realize comedy is a tricky business, but I find it relatively easy. First: is the joke actually funny? Or is the punchline lazy? As Chris Rock might put it: is the joke about what somebody does, or is the punchline just about what somebody is? More broadly, it comes down to intent, and I’d like to think if you’re clear headed you’ll know it when you see it.

And once we’ve done the requisite soul-searching on why things are funny/not funny, guys like Dave Chappelle won’t have to have mental breakdowns and run away to Africa, and we can get back to enjoying jokes about grape drink.

It catches me off guard when I’m with new-ish people who don’t know me well and I say something racy or laugh too hard at a left-field Sarah Silverman punchline and I can see it in their eyes. They think I’m ignorant about race. I hate those moments because I want to get all serious and be like, listen, I’m more concerned about race issues than you ever will be. It’s ALL I THINK ABOUT. Let me have my laughs.

Aside from finding race hilarious, though, my other brushes with racism have come from travelling. When I spent some months working in Malawi one of the stereotypes I initially struggled with was Africans being lazy. (Yes, I am one of those people who says things like “that time I worked in Malawi.”) I knew this couldn’t be true, and yet I found myself constantly annoyed that Africans were always being lazy. My office mates would start the day with customary small talk, then have a long lunch break, which would be followed later by a long tea break, followed later by some dancing, and then we’d all go home early. Not to mention the occasional desk naps.

Here’s the truth of it, though. One, it was friggin’ hot over there, and it wasn’t long before I realized that taking a siesta or a long tea break filled with laughter or dancing worked wonders for overall productivity. Two, sometimes there just wasn’t any work to be done. Over here, we always do our best to act busy and glorify the fact that we’re “grinding,” or whatever, but really, we’re just playing solitaire or hitting refresh on Twitter. My co-workers had no bullshit about perceived workloads, and really, they accomplished just as much as I did, if not more, with half of the stress or printer paper waste. I don’t know if that’s a Malawian thing or not, but that was my problem anyway, looking really hard for Malawian things.

Here’s what I did wrong: I was so concerned, being in a new environment, with being culturally sensitive that I totally lost my sense of humour. Once I  settled myself and learned to find things amusing again, my experiences became clearer, not everything was about race anymore, and life returned to normal despite the fact I was nowhere near to home and everything was different.

So yeah, some of the things I laugh at are problematic. You win. But I think without that I’d have probably grown up to be a flat-out racist. (Not sure against whom. Probably against white people.) Yuk it up once in awhile, my fellow race-obsessives. Because otherwise, you know, holy shit. Trouble.

This post is part of the Ethnic Aisle blogging project. If you’re interested in race, ethnicity, diversity and the GTA, check it out.

Fact one: we here at the Ashcan are a multi-ethnic motley crew. Think of us as the Captain Planet of blogs, with disparate elements from far-reaching corners of the world coming together to form a heroic, mullet topped defender of environmental justice.

Fact two: White people are probably the most under-represented, mysterious people to inhabit the Earth. Nobody knows anything about us; Hollywood doesn’t pay attention to our plights; sitcoms never feature, say, the day to day life of a fat White guy and his way too attractive wife; media only shows up when something goes wrong, never, ever just publishing mindless features about the silly and whimsical things we do; politics, don’t even get me started on that. As a White male I dream of the day I can vote for someone that can truly represents me. So in light of these societal atrocities, we present Ask a White Person.

(These are actual questions asked by real people.)

Why do you guys drink milk with your dinner?

I have no idea. It’s disgusting. I still have a friend who orders large glasses of milk with dinner when we go out. Just recently another friend ordered one with Sunday hangover brunch, which is a totally new level of gross.

I thought it was universal, but I guess it’s mostly White parents who always force their kids to drink milk, and for some people it just stuck. I prefer water, because the only time I drink milk is when it’s mixed with vodka and Kahlua.

At a rap show when hands are asked to be raised in the air, why do white people do this with their index finger pointed? I’ve noticed it’s exclusively white people who do this. It looks so weird.

This is funny because it’s something I’ve not only noticed, but thought of consciously when asked to raise said hand in the air and wave it like I just don’t care (That brought me back to 1995).

The reason is pretty simple: White people do not feel comfortable putting their fists in the air, especially when the performers are Black. That sounds bad but bare with me. It’s bad enough we appropriate so many cultural aspects from around the globe and dim them down for our consumption, but there is an extra guilt associated with making the Black Power symbol. I’m guessing most White people subconsciously raise that finger in the air because otherwise it just feels, well, a bit uncomfortable. The stupid thing is that it should totally be normal, and there is really no reason to feel self conscious about it, but why else would you notice it being an exclusive white thing?

And for the record, I usually raise my whole hand in the air, which come to think of it is probably worse because it sort of resembles a cross between a student trying to ask a question in class, and a heil Hitler.

Why is it hard for some white people to understand that they can empathize with people of colour without having to coopt the cause?

It probably has something to do with that guilt briefly mentioned up top, but in all honesty, I don’t think this can be generalized to all white people. I mean, I empathize, but don’t co-opt any causes (quite frankly, I’m just too lazy). My wife, on the other hand, is much more helpful and even works at a non-profit. That said, her office is extremely multicultural, and not just filled with a bunch of altruistic White do-gooders trying to help all the other “poor people of colour,” or whatever.

Why do white people love camping so much?

Because we’re supposed to God damnit. Even if we actually hate it. It’s in our blood.

Do you ever get tired of people identifying you as just White? Do you ever want to be like, “I’m not white, I’m German-Canadian. (Or whatever it is you are!)

Hey, I’m Finnish-Canadian, and deeply resent you thinking I am German just because I have gorgeous, sandy-blond hair, stunning blue eyes and an impeccable milky white complexion (Just kidding, one of my Grandmas is part German).

You know, it does get pretty annoying whenever the World Cup is on and everyone around you seems to have some other, much cooler team to cheer for, not to mention a little-fill in country here neighbourhood to cheer in, but once it’s over I really don’t think about it again. Besides, we totally own hockey, and soccer is lame.

I know you grew up in Peterborough, and I know it’s crazy white over there. When you first moved to the city did you have any culture shock being suddenly surrounded by so many POCs?

Well, first of all to clear up some misconceptions about Peterborough’s lack of diversity. In high schoool we had a Black person. His name was Kurt and he was toughest kid in our school. Plus, Koreans owned the convenience store up the road from my house, so at a young age I was already pretty immersed in the cultures of the globe.

As far as moving to Toronto, I was already pretty prepared. I lived in Asia for a while, which is the most messed up experience for a White person. You’re treated like royalty to your face, but there is a deep-seated racism against you (as an outsider) as well. We once weren’t able to rent snorkeling gear because of the colour of our skin. Oh, the oppression!

Why do folks wear shoes in the house? As an Asian, that just seems particularly crazy to me.

My friend does this every time he comes over. He walks in with these big clomping boots on and refuses to take them off, insisting that they are clean and showing me the bottom of the soles to prove it. Actually, a lot of White people I know do it, and I’m always yelling at them to take their shoes off, and they always come up with some excuse not to. But in all honesty, I turn around and do it at other people’s houses. You can’t really blame us though. I mean, there is the bending over, the unlacing of laces, and then the removing of shoes, and since only some of us still have servants to help, the rest of us have to do it all on our own. It’s exhausting.

What’s up with having like 15 pillows on a bed that you have to put away before you sleep on it?

I thought this was a girl of all colours thing? I really should have married outside my race. You wouldn’t believe how much time I spend throwing pillows on the floor one night, then pulling them out from under the bed, all covered in dust, a few days later.

Obviously, this has to do with our God-given right to be treated like royalty.

Do you consider people of Eastern or Southern European descent to be white? Like, say, Italians, or Russians.

Italians not so much. Italians are Italians.

Russians, for sure though. They even have a region that is named after White people. Plus, Russians are probably the scariest, toughest White people on the planet, so we need that to counter balance all the rest of the doughy, milk-drinking, shoes in the house wearing, finger raising softies that sit back on a bed of 400 pillows and co-opt all the causes of the world. It’s nice to know that some White people just want to look mean and drink vodka.