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So let me tell you a story. One afternoon, I walked into one of my environment classes and noticed an unusual amount of black hair sitting in the classroom. Now, in other classes that I’ve taken, this would not have elicited a second thought (or much of a first thought, for that matter). But a large number of East and South Asians in an environment class? I didn't need a syllabus to tell me I was in the wrong classroom. What happened to the light hair and the blue and green eyes? Is there a colour barrier between courses? Some sort of academic apartheid? Being an Asian environmentalist, I had to investigate.
A quick survey of my ethnic Chinese friends from high school gives me a long list of B.Engs and B.Comms. Two have just been accepted into med school. It seems I may have been the only one of ‘us’ who went for a Bachelor of Arts.
I didn’t have to look much further to find other correlations between ethnicity and vocation. That afternoon, not only did I figure out that the class I had come across was not my environment course, but I was reasonably sure I would be able to guess which faculty’s class I had walked in to. So I asked the guy next to me...
Bingo. Computer Science. Web programming.
So I seem to have ignored some sort of genetic calling by going into Environment. What was I doing in an Arts Environment program? Eventually, at the University of Toronto’s OPIRG, I met an ethnic Chinese, queer, social activist - one who definitely did not fit the mould. I had to have a talk with her.
"No matter where you go, there are prejudices and social pressures, even within liberal social activist circles." She told me, smiling as she recalled workshops on racism where she was the only visible minority present at the table. Even so, it seemed as if the people she worked with seemed okay by her Oriental orientation. But what about her romantic partners?
"When I first started expressing my sexual identity, I looked like the ‘typical’ Chinese girl: conservative-looking, petite, long straight black hair. I’d go to lesbian bars and no one would pay any attention to me." So to help remedy the situation, she took some razor clippers and shaved off her long black locks, and the phone numbers fluttered into her hands.
So racism doesn’t seem to be the main problem. If it was, my Toronto friend wouldn't be able to get any phone numbers whether her hair was shoulder length or not. But something as simple as a hairstyle is still a judgement based on one’s outward appearance.
And is that so wrong? People are judged by their outward appearances all the time. Anyone who's ever watched the Discovery Channel knows that visual cues are important in any social interaction. This isn’t a problem based on race, it’s a problem based on the human natural instinct to categorize on sight. An old girlfriend of mine once told me that she was attracted to people with dark eyes and darker skin. It was lucky for me, but her particular preferences also left her with a very large dating pool – Africans, Arabs, Indians, Japanese, Latinos, dark-haired Caucasians with tans – that’s a lot of people to compete with.
But what are the implications if I'm able to determine the course material based on the class’ attractiveness to an ex-girlfriend? Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe ethnic minorities just aren’t signing up for these faculties simply because they don’t feel like it, and instead opting for more technical-based classes. For no particular reason at all. Period.
But maybe there are other factors involved. Maybe they’re based on some socio-cultural factors. The wishes of parents or of family, for instance. Peer pressures of some sort. It could be any one or a combination of many things.
So this semester, I've decided to look more closely at the demographics of each of my classes. At the very least, I might be able to better understand the forces that attract and, more importantly, repel certain types of people from taking certain fields of study. It’s the least I could do.
I am pretty confident, however, that this strange colour wall between faculties will eventually crumble, much like the gender wall is crumbling in universities across Canada. Just look at McGill. The male:female ratio is something like 45:55 percent.
Not a bad dating pool for fellas like me. That should show my ex a thing or two.
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Howie
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