{"id":36065,"date":"2026-05-07T19:26:59","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T19:26:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/36065\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T19:26:59","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T19:26:59","slug":"the-flip-side-of-asian-canadian-firsts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/36065\/","title":{"rendered":"The flip side of Asian Canadian \u201cfirsts\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Get the best of Vancouver in your inbox, every Tuesday and Thursday.\u00a0Sign up for our free newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In my first week as a journalism teacher, I inherited a class of senior students as they were halfway through their program.<\/p>\n

A hand shot up.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re the first journalist of colour we\u2019ve had as an instructor,\u201d said the student. \u201cWhat\u2019s that like?\u201d<\/p>\n

Ah! It happened again! I had stepped into a circle and inherited that title: the First Asian Person to Be Seen Doing a Thing.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re a person of colour, you\u2019ll know that being the first to do something is a big deal, especially if you\u2019re breaking into a white-dominated field.\u00a0<\/p>\n

May is Asian Heritage Month, the time of year when journalists, politicians, and institutions celebrate these firsts, from the Vivian Jungs (the first Chinese Canadian teacher in Vancouver) to the Wally Oppals (the first South Asian Supreme Court judge in B.C.). I once interviewed an old Vancouver family, the illustrious Yips, whose forebears included the first Chinese Canadian doctor and lawyer\u2014talk about a double whammy!<\/p>\n

Saturday Night Live even spoofed the phenomenon with actors Simu Liu and Bowen Yang, who tried to one-up each other with accomplishments such as \u201cthe first Asian male host\u201d, \u201cthe first Asian man to do a Cher impression on NBC\u201d, and \u201cthe first Asian man to deadpan on Splash Mountain\u201d.<\/p>\n

But the thing about these firsts\u2014even the ones joked about on SNL\u2014is that they\u2019re historic.<\/p>\n

To be the first to make an achievement implies that the ceiling has been broken for good. And so we celebrate Asian Canadian firsts as if they\u2019re Asian Canadian lasts: the last to experience discrimination, the last to face obstacles in their pursuits, the last to live through racist times.<\/p>\n

Vancouver’s Margaret Jean Gee was both one of the first Chinese Canadian women called to the bar (in 1954), and also one of the first Chinese Canadian female Pilot Officers in the Royal Canadian Air Force Reserves. <\/p>\n

But there are plenty of firsts that aren\u2019t recognized: the bad ones that still go on, or the ones my peers and I live through regularly. Even if we\u2019re not the first person to do something in Canada, we might be treated that way if we\u2019re doing something novel in the eyes of strangers.<\/p>\n

An Asian Canadian friend was once called \u201cdisgusting\u201d for eating a red bean dessert at work: the First Asian Person to Bring Foreign Food Not Yet Approved by White People into the Office.<\/p>\n

Another was constantly asked how she was enjoying life in Richmond, despite having moved to Vancouver: how groundbreaking that she was the First Asian Person to Live Away from Her Own Kind.<\/p>\n

Another who had become a doctor had their credentials questioned by her elderly white patients: I didn\u2019t realize I was friends with the First Asian Woman with the Ability to Study Medicine.<\/p>\n

Another who had children with a white partner was mistaken for the family\u2019s nanny: how strange that she was the First Asian Person to Be Around a White-Looking Child and Is Actually Their Parent.<\/p>\n

Being the first also means fielding questions on Asian languages, histories, and cultures, whether we know about them or not. We\u2019re asked to put in extra labour towards diversity initiatives, somehow responsible for how others treat us. We\u2019re expected to smile when greeted with a \u201cni hao\u201d, to pat someone on the back for using chopsticks, to marvel at vacations taken in our ancestral homelands.<\/p>\n

These interactions are too often explained away. \u201cThey\u2019re just ignorant, don\u2019t take it to heart!\u201d \u201cThey\u2019re just curious about culture and identity!\u201d \u201cThe question wasn\u2019t meant to offend.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was nice to see solidarity against anti-Asian racism during the pandemic, but that\u2019s easy. Who wouldn\u2019t be against public violence toward Asian seniors?<\/p>\n

But the fact that the novelty of our presence is still singled out, aggressively or not, means that there are unspoken expectations about where we and our cultures belong. Why else is it weird to see an Asian person in a new field or new neighbourhood? Or that our cultures are only cool when white people access them? Or that thousands can enjoy Vaisakhi parades without doing more to address the renewed hate against South Asian students?<\/p>\n

The higher we climb, the more friction we face.<\/p>\n

Vancouver is a good place for racism to hide. Our city has Asian names on buildings, Asian culture everywhere, even an Asian Canadian mayor (our first!). It\u2019s easy to point to these markers and imagine that we live in multicultural harmony.<\/p>\n

Wally Oppal was B.C.’s first South Asian Supreme Court Judge, and the province’s second Indian Canadian Attorney General. Simon Fraser University\/Wikimedia <\/p>\n

More than half of Metro Vancouverites are racialized, but there are many places where showing your face, walking with your family, wearing religious headcoverings, or speaking anything other than English will prompt stares, comments, or worse.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Older Asian Canadians have told me that our achievements, our invitation to assimilate, and our accumulation of wealth are proof of progress. But while these privileges bring some protection and peace of mind, they do not banish racism.<\/p>\n

I hope that one day we can be free of having to think twice about what our presence might prompt.<\/p>\n

Until that day, I\u2019ll say this to my fellow Asian Canadians:<\/p>\n

Keep taking up space in new places. Keep pushing back when we\u2019re questioned. Keep braving those firsts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Get the best of Vancouver in your inbox, every Tuesday and Thursday.\u00a0Sign up for our free newsletter. In…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36066,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[415,17,412,413,418,407,414,420,416,423,226,389,419,422,421,417,95],"class_list":{"0":"post-36065","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-vancouver","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-city","11":"tag-culture","12":"tag-dining","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-events","15":"tag-fashion","16":"tag-film","17":"tag-food","18":"tag-lifestyle","19":"tag-music","20":"tag-nightlife","21":"tag-restaurants","22":"tag-shopping","23":"tag-tv","24":"tag-vancouver"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}