{"id":41764,"date":"2015-07-13T19:26:34","date_gmt":"2015-07-13T19:26:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=41764"},"modified":"2015-07-13T19:26:34","modified_gmt":"2015-07-13T19:26:34","slug":"canadian-first-mixed-race-self-identification-and-canadian-belonging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=41764","title":{"rendered":"\u201cCanadian-First\u201d: Mixed Race Self-Identification and Canadian Belonging"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cCanadian-First\u201d: Mixed Race Self-Identification and Canadian Belonging<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Canadian Ethnic Studies<\/a>
\nVolume 47, Number 2, 2015<\/a>
\npages 21-44
\nDOI: 10.1353\/ces.2015.0017<\/a><\/p>\n

Jillian Paragg<\/a><\/strong>
\nDepartment of Sociology
\nUniversity of Alberta<\/em><\/p>\n

Not being read or identified by others as \u201cCanadian\u201d was a common thread in semi-structured in-depth interviews I conducted with 19 young adults of mixed race in a Western Canadian<\/a> urban context. In this paper, I address moments of (in)ability for people of mixed race to claim \u201cCanadian.\u201d Mixed race people have a complex relationship with identifying and narrating their identities as \u201cCanadian\u201d through the operation of race and ethnicity in the Canadian context, and because of ambivalent and contradictory readings of their bodies. I found that they deploy the term in three ways: by expressing a sense of being \u201cCanadian-first,\u201d by stating that there exists an understanding that \u201cCanadian means white,\u201d and by strategically using the term \u201cCanadian\u201d in their interactions with others, signaling an active appropriation of the term. However, none of these deployments are mutually exclusive: they overlap and bleed into each other, playing off and impacting one another. This paper adds to nascent Canadian Critical Mixed Race studies and also redresses a gap in the literature on \u201cCanadian identity\u201d by examining how the ability to claim \u201cCanadian\u201d is racialized through a consideration of the experiences of mixed race people.<\/p>\n

Le fait de ne pas \u00eatre lus ou identifi\u00e9s par d\u2019autres comme \u201cCanadiens\u201d \u00e9tait le d\u00e9nominateur commun dans les entrevues semi-structur\u00e9s que j\u2019ai men\u00e9es en profondeur avec 19 jeunes adultes de races mixtes dans un contexte urbain de l\u2019Ouest Canadien. Dans cet article, je mets en exergue les moments d\u2019 (in)aptitude des personnes de races mixtes de se r\u00e9clamer \u201cCanadiens\u201d. Les gens de races mixtes ont une relation complexe avec l\u2019identification et la narration de leurs identit\u00e9s en tant que \u201cCanadiens\u201d, \u00e0 cause des perceptions ambivalentes et contradictoires de leurs corps. J\u2019ai trouv\u00e9 que ceux-ci d\u00e9ploient leur terme de trois fa\u00e7ons: en exprimant le sens d\u2019\u00eatre \u201cCanadien en premier\u201d, en affirmant qu\u2019il existe une compr\u00e9hension du \u201cCanadien qui veut dire Blanc\u201d et en usant strat\u00e9giquement du terme \u201cCanadien\u201d dans leur interactions avec les autres, signalant une appropriation active du ce terme. Cependant, aucuns de ces d\u00e9ploiements ne s\u2019excluent mutuellement: ils se chevauchent et s\u2019empi\u00e8tent entre eux, jouant au large et s\u2019impactant l\u2019un de l\u2019autre. Ce papier s\u2019ajoute aux \u00e9tudes critiques canadiennes naissantes sur les races mixtes et r\u00e9pare aussi une lacune dans la litt\u00e9rature des \u201cidentit\u00e9s canadiennes\u201d, en examinant comment l\u2019aptitude de se r\u00e9clamer \u201cCanadien\u201d est radicalis\u00e9e \u00e0 travers une consid\u00e9ration des exp\u00e9riences des personnes de races mixtes.<\/p>\n

Read or purchase the article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cCanadian-First\u201d: Mixed Race Self-Identification and Canadian Belonging Canadian Ethnic Studies Volume 47, Number 2, 2015 pages 21-44 DOI: 10.1353\/ces.2015.0017 Jillian Paragg Department of Sociology University of Alberta Not being read or identified by others as \u201cCanadian\u201d was a common thread in semi-structured in-depth interviews I conducted with 19 young adults of mixed race in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,19,125,8,394],"tags":[3573,3237],"class_list":["post-41764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-canada","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-socialscience","tag-canadian-ethnic-studies","tag-jillian-paragg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41764\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}