Essay on How Does History Shape Who You Are

My History

I came into this world on April 26th, 1999. I came into this world without being aware of the advantages I already had just from being a white girl. I came into this world and little did I know that a few months later, one of the most well-respected female athletes would win her first title. It was on a hot summer day in 1999 when Serena Williams won her first U.S. Open Women’s Singles Tennis Championship at the U.S. Open. Twenty years ago, Williams became the first African-American woman to reach such an achievement since Althea Gibson won in 1958. Little did Williams know the impact she was going to have on women, especially on women of color. Despite all of the wins, Serena Williams faces racism. Whether it is on the court or off the court, she has to face it daily. As a white female athlete or simply as a white female, I do not have to face the same daily challenges as she does. Despite the strong woman she is, white supremacy, and white privilege is impregnated into our society and separated this country. In this essay, my family’s relationship to white supremacy, how ethnoracial hierarchy shaped my life, and how ethnoracial identity hierarchy support or challenges theories of race and ethnicity will be examined through a different lens and compared with different readings.

To begin with, I asked my parents what was our family’s relationship with white supremacy. Both my mom and my stepdad said “none”. My family and I do not believe that white people are superior to people of other races, therefore we are aware that being white means being privileged and that historical events have shaped our lives. Serena Williams would say otherwise. She expressed in the reading called “Beyonce, Serena Williams Open Up about Potentially Fatal Childbirths, a problem, especially for Black Mothers” that she experienced the structure of society within political, economic, and social settings. In her case, she explained that the health system will shape who gets sick, how they experience their condition, and how they will be diagnosed (10/29). Furthermore, “many studies have shown that racial disparities exist in health care. For example, doctors largely disregard or discount complaints of pain by black patients more frequently than they do for white patients.” (Allyson Chiu).

Things are very different depending on how society categorizes you. Before coming to the United States for school, I grew up in a small town in the province of Quebec. I grew up speaking French and only started speaking English six years ago. Historical events such as the European settlement and the October Crisis shaped my family’s social history. Without Canada’s European settlement in 1534, I would not be able to say that I am French from Quebec or even say that I come from European ancestors. The European settlement has shaped my family’s social history. Thank you to the French explorer named Jacques Cartier who sailed across the Atlantic Ocean from Europe to the Gulf of St. Lawrence (J.J McCullough). A bridge connecting the south shore of Montreal and Montreal was issued to his name as a recognition of his findings. Later on, Samuel de Champlain, another French explorer, got things going (J.J McCullough). He founded a colony called New France which sat along the coast of St. Lawrence (J.J McCullough). As a governor, he named and founded several cities which still exist today. The creation of these cities was mostly for farmers, fur traders, and fishermen. In 1608, Quebec City was founded, followed by Trois-Rivières in 1634, and Port-Royal in 1605. Although Samuel de Champlain’s death slowed things down, New France’s new governor established the settlement of Montreal in 1642. Since then, the French population still existed although it went through many obstacles. Another event that shaped my family’s social history is the October Crisis, also known as The Conflict with Quebec. It was the struggle of French-speaking residents of Quebec who struggled to maintain their unique culture when facing the English pressure to assimilate. Similar, but not as extreme, this relates to the reading called “Indigenous Assimilation and Absorption in the United States and Australia”. The practice of removing indigenous children from their families and communities is somewhat similar to trying to assimilate the French population. Although things were done differently in the United States compared to Australia, assimilation was practiced through different forms and was known as the “whitewash” (Ellinghaus, K). After the death of Maurice Duplessis who was Quebec’s long-serving ultraconservative prime minister, French-Canadian went through the phase known as the Quiet Revolution. Most of the province’s wealth was in the hands of a few English families until Quebec became more secular and industrialized. New businesses put more wealth into French-Canadian hands. Although the English were not able to assimilate everyone, Quebec felt like it was different from the rest of Canada. Separatism and the idea of becoming an independent country began to grow in popularity after the war (J.J McCullough). Rene Levesque was elected prime minister in 1976, which led him to have a referendum in 1980 so Quebec could separate from Canada (J.J McCullough). Thankfully, it failed, but the dynamic of Canadian-Quebec relations has changed since.

These historical events mentioned in the previous paragraph have shaped my life in many different ways. First of all, for a long time, Quebec’s population consist of a majority of white people. In fact, in 2011, the racial composition of Quebec was 87,2 percent white, 11 percent minority groups, and 1.4 percent Aboriginal (World Population Review). Having a dominant white society affected my family’s position in the ethnoracial hierarchy especially for my grandparents because they were born with the idea that white is at the top of the hierarchy. Since the percentage of minority groups was lower, they were somewhat ignorant of the advantages they had from being white. This changed when new immigrants came into the country. In 2012, around 55,000 immigrants came to Quebec (World Population Review). The government believed it was too many which speaks about this belief that Quebec holds. Quebec wants to maintain its white supremacy and French cultural values. When immigrants started coming into our country, I remember my dad saying very racist comments about it. For example, in my hometown, many Mexicans came and started working in the fields during the summer. My dad was worried that they were going to take over and that we were going to lose our language. He was afraid that they were going to take all our jobs, and eventually dominate to population. Back then, I did not realize that his comments were racist. Like it explains in the reading called “Black Workers Really Do Need to Be Twice as Good”, unemployed or employed workers are more likely to be seen as less skilled because of more consistent or prolonged unemployment (Gillian B.White ). Therefore, it does not say that the people from the minority are not employed because the jobs that they apply for do not want to employ people from minority groups. The unemployment rate never even topped 10 percent for whites (Gillian B.White ). Although these stats are from the U.S., I am sure that it is somewhat similar in Canada. Now there are many people of color in Quebec and it does not bother me like most “old-school” thinking people. Despite my advantages, I recognize what people from minority groups have to go through. Their well-being is more much important than keeping the population white.

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On a more personal aspect, I grew up with inherited advantages without being aware of them. I grew up in a very segregated neighborhood. Still to this day, my neighborhood is mostly white. The house I live in is a house that not many people from the minority groups could afford, and a house in which most minority groups would not be accepted in simply because the majority of the residents are white. Residential segregation is very evident when looking at different cities throughout the entire world. In the reading called “Does Race Matter in Residential Segregation,” it explained that the communities that were far away from the minority areas received the highest grading in their rating whereas the communities that were minorities and in the process of changing were at the lowest rate. It came to my surprise when I saw that the “unstable neighborhood” were pushed away from everyone else. In order for them to stay away from that neighborhood, they built a wall which I think is totally repugnant. Now that they were protected from the Black neighbors, they were safe, apparently. These mediating structures did everything to stay away from the Blacks( Emerson, M.G. and K. Chais). It is upsetting to see that they did those procedures just because their neighbors had different skin colors, yet they are not all dangerous. Race does not mean a thing.

As a French Canadian, I have felt like I have been an insider and an outsider. Anyone from Quebec has a lot of pride in being a Quebecer. Being born as a “Québécois” has become a symbolic and social boundary. We are one big community and as individuals, we like to think we are different. Since Quebec is the only province in Canada with the majority of people speaking French, the language is something we want to protect. We like to be distinguished by our language and way to do things. I felt like an insider when some of my English friends came to visit me. I am fortunate enough to be able to speak two languages, therefore for most Quebecers, the language barrier is existent since French is the only language they can speak. I felt like an insider before I opened up to the English world. Most Quebecers are very closed-off which makes it hard for them to see what is across the borders. On the other hand, I felt like an outsider when I was trying to figure out what my identity really was. When I started speaking more English and meeting English people, I thought to myself “Wow, there is so much more than just the province of Quebec, and being a French girl.” Speaking a second language was really eye-opening to me, yet I struggled to find who I truly wanted to be. I felt like a stranger when I came into the English world because I had a strong accent, and people could differentiate me from anyone else. It is somewhat similar to the reading called “I’m white in Barcelona, but In Los Angeles I’m Hispanic”. The reading explains how one person can be raised in Barcelona and think of themselves as a White person, therefore when they go to the United States, they are perceived as being Hispanic. In fact, in the 2010 census, 53 percent of Hispanics identified themselves as whites (PRI.2015.) In this case, I think a lot of it also has to do with language. We associate certain languages with certain races. I even questioned myself sometimes wondering if I am more my true self as a French Canadian or just Canadian. Here in the United States, I am known as the French girl, but when I go home to my family, I am known as the English girl. To add, now that I am studying here in the United States, I somewhat feel like an outsider simply because I am not in my mother country, yet at the same time, I have been very comfortable with being who I am. I am proud that I can use both my French and English personalities to communicate with people. The two different identities are very important to me, and their significance has grown since I have been an outsider trying to be an insider.

. Citizenship is something people take pride in. I am very proud to be a Canadian. Though there are some days that I think about my future, and I have to think about what I want to do after college. Possibly after school, I will be wanting to stay here in the U.S. to play hockey and eventually find a job. At some point, I would be able to get full citizenship if I end up wanting to stay, and who knows, marry someone for the U.S. . As a white female, I would not have as much trouble getting into the system or simply “fit in”. If I was someone of color, it would be a different story. This idea of double consciousness would be something I would have to deal with. People of the race with two citizens are conscious of who they are and how they are perceived by other people. As defined in the class, double consciousness is this concept of two, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings. Confliction in self-identity because seen in a different way, yet think of the self in a different way. Conscious of who you are, but conscious of how the world views you (10/03). In Du Bois’s article “Of Our Spiritual Strivings”, he expresses the following: “One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder” (Du Bois, W.E.B). This passage reflects on the definition defined above, and how minority groups experience this double consciousness without anyone noticing. For me things are much simpler, I just have to worry about being my best self, whereas minority groups worry about who they are and how they should be.

To end off, as we grow up we realize that we come into this world, and history has already shaped the kind of life we will be living based on race, gender, and social status. History has a lot more power than we think on who we are today, and how much we benefit from the system. If we start looking in within ourselves and others, we could actually learn to celebrate our love for each other. This world keeps dividing, yet we need everyone to come together and believe that being white is not what is needed in order to be successful, accepted, and loved.