Do I look Chinese to You?

I’m going to be telling a story of something that happened while I was travelling back to Canada a few weeks ago. Something that I never really talked about in my post from that night. And before I even tell the story, I want to put a disclaimer that I am NOT trying to be insensitive or offensive to anyone.

So this was the first time I was travelling back to Canada with Air Canada. West Jet is my go to carrier and they operate on different sides of the airport. So I was used to Terminal 3 not Terminal 1, so I can’t really compare the origin of flights for each terminal.

With traveling, I feel like its normal to meet 2-3 immigration officers before you get out of the airport. So this time, I go with my paper, to the first one, then second and then with the third, this is where things get interesting.

She asks me “Did you come from Beijin?”

I look at her completely confused. Then say “uhhh noooo”

She “ooohh. Most people here come from either North America or Beijing”

I laugh it off “no. The Caribbean”

She “okay”

And then I asked her “okay. is that all?”. She yes and I walked away. She may have asked where in the Caribbean but I don’t remember.

Since I had a rough night that night, I blocked off the entire thing till recently. And now I look back onto the interaction and think “Do I look Chinese to you?”.

There is nothing wrong with being Asian, but I am “black”. I know that there are black asians, but there is no east asian in me.

I don’t know. I feel like that situation rubbed me the wrong way. I feel like this is the closest I have ever been judged for the color of my skin in my life. Or it might have just been plain ignorance on her part. I don’t know. Though I find that hard to believe that there were only two places that people would come from.

I don’t know.

The majority of people on my flight were white and I highly doubt she would ask them if they came from Beijing. She probably just assumed they came from an American vacation.

Once again, I wasn’t trying to be offensive. I just really wanted to talk about something thats been on my mind lately.