Close Reading

Now I hate myself, and I'm Indian, when I shouldn't.

Moving to Vancouver was a great experience tbh, I'm of nigerian heritage but was born in Finchley, North London...\nCanadians are friendly and extremely welcoming ( Coming from the UK i found this so off-putting ) lol. Ironically its non-white Canadians i had funny experiences with.... from dating to renting its weird\n\n\nAsians under 27 always asking some crazy questions ( Are you an NBA player ) lol it's cute at first but after a while when little koreans walk up to me talking about ( You look like will smith ) it makes you think... To be fair these are not inherent negatives, But asian canadians alone did treat me weird i found, Indian girls i met all wanted to be with me but where also very ashamed to say so or let their family know, but thats a cultural thing so i understood.\n\n\n Of all the demographics White canadian and native men where the most welcoming and open to me, in my experience.. White women of-course where cool too but that does not really count, especially as a good looking black guy with an accent LOOL you know how that goes!! My Tinder and Bumble were obscene LMAO\n\nRenting from asians while black and Male!? is almost impossible!!! Except they think you have rich parents!! Its impossible in Van unless you are an Arab exchange student lol \nArab and Persian students studying english have no issues renting in Vancouver, for some reason!!\n\nI lived out the St. Regis downtown for a month, Looking for places to rent, i had seen so many places online and filled out applications but never got call backs, asides from 2 group showings i went to, i could not even set up a viewing with the apartment building i wanted... \n\nTill i met an african girl in school, and she told me something i found completely crazy.\nShe told me to make a new e-mail addy and to use my English name when i e-mail, then set up a viewing but to show up with a white friend preferably a girl and that if the owner is asian, i should look around, and offer to pay 6months upfront before they get a chance to ask what i did for work or whether i was a student or not LOL. Needless to say, i did what she said and It worked the asian lady asked me to come get the keys later that day. Its just life, as a property owner they really just wanna size you up, not fair and kind of pathetic but its not inherently evil...

growing up in canada, i felt left out in the blk community b/c i am a 5th generation blk cdn on mom's side and 3rd on my dad's - when other black ppl not canadian born met me - i tell them i'm cdn, but i always used to get the question - where are you really from - they were looking for me to say the islands - when i told them my paternal grandma was born in 1901 in canada - that's when the questions stopped. i've been told that b/c i wasn't from the islands, i had no culture in college, but a mbr of the black student society put him in his place i heard he got into a lot of trouble. i was asked what do we eat as in food as canadians what kind of music do we listen to - at our blk canadian weddings, the only carribean song played was hot hot hot by arrow - we played straight up r and b and motown. i hv been rejected by other blk men b/c i'm not west indian enough...it was hurtful. even with 'friends' they made of my cdn heritage but i used to think, why are you making fun of me knowing that my family and ancestors were in canada first - they were 1st generation - i live in the usa now and i'm with an african american man - he has never treated me as if i were different and he loves going w/me to canada. my parents told me it was jealousy on those ppl's parts - one guy i used to be friends with in college, when i went to his house, his mom was from the islands, when she met me - she said, 'you cdn ppl are loud' and that did it for me - i didn't date her son but when he met my parents, they never said any of that crap to him. in the usa, the african americans don't treat differently at all - my ex mom in law thought we were american but decided to live in canada - b/c she was surprised that blacks do live in canada. her other daughter in law's family were from the islands - but she gravitated more to my family and felt comfortable around them more than her family and this ex sis in law would brag about the islands this and that and she would make comments about my looks being skinny and such but it was jealousy - i didn't care much for her b/c she was very insecure. i felt once again, i was a young girl in college again - being around island ppl....i would love to meet drake and ask him did he feel left out and isolated because he wasn't from the islands - he makes me very proud being a blk canadian - his dad is african american and his mom is jewish. i still hv dealt w/racism not much with wht ppl, but with my own ppl - which is quite sad and on top of it-colorism, that also played a part from my family - being called pygmy, chocolate dip, nappy hair - it hurt but these so called relatives, they aren't all that anymore, they had hard lives as children...when ppl see something in you that is special and they don't have, that's when their ugliness shows -