Language and Race

One day I was just cooking in the kitchen when my younger brother ran behind me to talk to Dad, a simple conversation, in English! That moment, an urge came upon me “You’re Chinese, SPEAK CHINESE!”. Their conversation irritated me because: 1. It was a simple conversation which, I’m sure, my brother could manage to piece out with his limited Chinese and 2. Dad was being too soft on him and conversing to my brother using his bad English. After my irritation faded away I began to realise language is an obvious and distinct connection to what race you are. Walking down Queen St we hear crowds of people talking every day, sometimes we catch a foreign language and assume the ethnicity/race that voice belongs to, quite instinctively; hearing the high pitched “kawaii” we assume Japanese, hearing someone prolong their ending sound with “(L)aaa…” we assume a Cantonese speaker, or when we catch a “…sumida” we assume Korean. Language, like appearance, is a strong indicator used by others to define race, but is it the definitive answer?

Thinking back to my childhood, language did correspond to the race I was in. I’m Chinese. Was born in China, but moved to NZ when I was less than 1 years old. First language was Cantonese, then English and took a few years of Mandarin classes (over the years it seems like I’ve been conditioned to Japanese as well). Chinese is a necessity in my house to communicate with family and friends (and also read movie subtitles online) to in a way become more “Chinese” in a different country. But that being said, English still my dominant language. When I was small, between (Chinese) friends we’ d talk in English, but our parents who were beside us would joke that we’ve turned “Kiwi” for speaking so much English all the time.

This bilingualism is a point of confusion to people, like me, immigrants or the indigenous population; a mind-set that one language is “who you are” while the other is a requirement to communicate to others, and defining which one is which gets complicated. Myself for example, Cantonese is the first language I spoke and still use today, yet living in NZ and speaking English in school and going through everyday life events (bus, customer services, shopping… etc.) my mentality is in English. Based on language alone, what race am I? Chinese, because it was my first language I spoke or English, the dominant language I use? I personally have no set answer to these questions, but the common answer I say to people is Chinese because I do speak the language and have roots in China, but I am also a Kiwi in the sense my speech and comfortability in (NZ) English is better than my Chinese.

To others who are bilingual what race do you define yourself as, based on the language you speak?