【在“温哥华港湾”网站上有一篇网友2cents翻译的文章，原题是Where am I from? Where race shouldn’t matter，作者Aisha Khan是巴基斯坦裔多伦多女律师。这位2cents网友认为这篇文章所描述的经历和感受，是许多第二代移民很准确的写照，所以把文章译成中文（兼编辑），贴出来和大家共享（英语原文附后）。】

你是哪来的？“一个对种族和血统没有特别意识的国家来的”

Where am I from? Where race shouldn’t matter

作者： Aisha Khan

我是70 年代出生在多伦多，巴基斯坦移民的的女儿。我父亲比母亲先登陆多伦多，他来加拿大是为了追求更好的生活，并逃离巴基斯坦社会固有的不平等。我母亲是个包办新娘，出嫁后这位十几岁的新娘随着丈夫来到异国他乡的加拿大，开始了寂寞孤单的移民生涯，那个时候加拿大还没有很多巴基斯坦移民，母亲除了她的包办丈夫之外谁也不认识。

我是独生女，对男性主导，重男轻女的巴基斯坦家庭这是不寻常的。我父母从小就对我灌输独立和自由的思想。年轻的时候，我们在家里穿的是南亚《沙丽克米兹》传统服装（shalwar kameez），说的是乌尔都语，吃的是母亲的巴基斯坦传统菜肴。可是在家外，我总是穿着“正常”的流行西方衣服，和“正常”的加拿大小孩一样带三明治午餐上学。在公共场合我的衣服没有浓烈的咖喱或东亚食物的气味。像许多移民的孩子，我是这样在一个东西方文化对分的环境里长大：传统巴基斯坦文化在家中，主流文化在家外。

随着年龄的增长，我们渐渐吸纳了加拿大多元文化的影响，母亲开始尝试做意大利和中国菜，我们开始在家里讲英语，一起看好莱坞和宝莱坞电影。（宝莱坞，Bollywood，印度孟买的电影城，名称来自 Bombay （孟买旧名）和 Hollywood （好莱坞）两个字的缩写。）虽然看起来这不是很大的变化，这却是我和家人开始被我们新的巧妙的多元文化家园潜移默化影响的作用。

中学毕业后我考上了法学院，同时我遇到了我后来的丈夫（他也是有色族裔人 --  巴基斯坦和菲律宾混血儿），之后我们搬到了堪萨斯城，在堪城我们生了两个儿子，为了让儿子在丰富的多元文化环境里长大，我们决定回去多伦多。我坚信，除了加拿大，没有任何其他国家能够在孩子们很重要的成长时刻给他们一个这么丰富，多种多样，不同观点的生活环境。

今年九月孩子们开始在一所新学校上学。有一天和孩子们谈天时，七岁的儿子告诉我已经有人问他是哪儿来的。我问他，“你怎么回答？”“美国，”他说。“他们嘲笑我；他们说，看你的棕色皮肤，你怎能是美国人？”这一事件把我给愕了。在什么时候，我们的肤色才会不再重要呢？是否要等到我的孙子和曾孙那代？是否只有他们与白皙的皮肤的人结了婚，他们的孩子有浅肤色的时候，我们的族裔和血统才不再这么重要呢？

对我儿子，做个加拿大人是他的向往，巴基斯坦只是他祖父母的出生国。他从小热切相信他是加拿大人。和其他世世代代在这里生长的人一样，他骄傲地唱 O Canada!（加拿大国歌）。他只接受一个称呼：“加拿大人”，把他挂上任何其他“标志”（如“巴基斯坦人”），等于告诉他，他不是加拿大人，他没做加拿大人的权利。

和其他加拿大孩子一样，我的儿子讲英语，能跆拳道 (tae kwon do)，打网球和游泳。他热爱电视剧 Star Wars《星球大战》。上周他在学校参加了慈善募捐活动《特里•福克斯义跑》。除了福克斯，还有谁更能象征加拿大的精神呢？

是的，我珍惜我父母的文化和美味佳肴，我欣赏美丽的乌尔都语诗歌，我父母的文化让我做个更好，更完美的人，但并不减少我实质上是个百分之百加拿大人。我很喜欢意大利 Espresso 咖啡和意大利脆饼 (biscotti) ，但这不表明我是意大利人，也不影响我对加拿大的认同。这就是我们加拿大多元国家的特征。我们可以用我们丰富的文化背景，创造了一个新的加拿大“定义”，而这定义不是以肤色为本的。

AISHA KHAN
Where am I from? Where race shouldn’t matter
Aisha Khan
From Friday's Globe and Mail
Published Friday, Oct. 08, 2010 5:00AM EDT
Last updated Wednesday, Nov. 17, 2010 8:53AM EST
 

I was born in Toronto in the 1970s, the daughter of Pakistanis. My father had moved to Toronto not long before, to pursue a better life and to escape what he perceived to be the inherent inequalities in Pakistani society. My mother followed him as a teenaged bride, knowing no one other than him.

I am an only child, unusual for Pakistanis, and was raised to be independent and free-thinking. At home when I was younger, we wore the traditional shalwar kameez, spoke mostly Urdu and ate my mother’s traditional Pakistani dishes. Outside the home, however, I always wore “regular” clothes and took normal sandwiches to school for lunch. No curry or smelly food in public. Like many children of immigrants, I grew up with this dichotomy – my parents’ culture at home and the mainstream beyond.

As I grew older, things shifted. My mother dabbled in Italian and Chinese cuisine, we started speaking primarily English at home and Hollywood movies began to be watched as often as Bollywood ones. These may not seem like big changes, but my family was subtly beginning to be influenced by its multicultural home.

I went to law school, found a husband (also a visible minority – the son of a Pakistani father and Filipino mother) and moved to Kansas City. We had two children there, but returned to the Toronto area so our children could grow up with a richer multicultural experience. Where else could they grow up with people of such diverse heritage and diverse points of view?

My children started at a new school this September. One day, as I was asking them about their day, my seven-year-old told me he had been asked where he was from. “America,” he replied. He was ridiculed – how could he be American with brown skin? This incident gave me pause. At what point does the colour of our family’s skin cease to matter? Will my grandchildren and great-grandchildren be asked the same question? Or will they stop only once they procreate with others of fair skin, and our brownness begins to fade?

To my son, Pakistan is the country where his grandparents were born. He fervently believes that he is Canadian. He sings the Canadian anthem with as much pride as anyone whose family has here for generations. To label him a Pakistani-Canadian, or anything other than just a Canadian, is to tell him that he does not truly belong – simply because of the colour of his skin.

My son speaks English, practises tae kwon do and takes tennis and swimming lessons every week. He loves Star Wars and gets into spats with his sister on a regular basis. He participated in the Terry Fox run at school last week. What could be more Canadian than Terry Fox? He sounds just like a regular seven-year-old Canadian boy, doesn’t he? At least until some people look at him. At what point will skin colour no longer define us?

There are many second- and third-generation Canadians, visible minorities, whose families will remain visible minorities until their gene pool changes. Yes, I value many aspects of my parents’ culture – the flavourful cuisine, the beauty of Urdu poetry – but these add dimension and depth to my Canadianness, rather than detracting from it. I also have a passion for espresso and biscotti, distinctly Italian in heritage. That is the great benefit of our multicultural experiment – that we can draw from the richness of our cultures and create a new definition of what is Canadian. That definition should not be contingent on the colour of our skin.

Aisha Khan is a lawyer in Toronto