I am not "racialized"
Philippe Chancy ·
The day I first heard the term "racialized person"
I'm going to tell you something. This is not a theory. This is not a concept. This is my life.
I arrived here with a story, with a Haitian origin that I carry like a scar: with pride, with pain, with light. My name, my parents, my memories, all of that is part of me.
And when I arrived in Quebec, I told myself: Here, I'm going to build something. Here, I'm going to be myself. Here, I'm going to breathe.
I hadn't anticipated that one day, I would be filed into a category I never chose.
The day I heard the term "racialized person" for the first time
I received it like a silent slap. A polite word, an activist word, a "right-thinking" word, but a word that reduced me.
They claimed to be explaining to me who I was. They were deciding for me. They were placing me in a box created in an office, in an article, in a column.
I never felt as foreign as the day they wanted to "defend" me with a word that conveys nothing about me, except my color.
But I know where I come from and where I am
I come from Haiti, yes. From the heat, the noise, the loud laughter, the prayers that rise to the sky like wounded birds. I come from a courageous people, who fall and get back up.
But I am also from here. In the cold, in the Quebec language, in the streets where you learn to walk differently. I work here. I pay my taxes here. I laugh here. I suffer here. I dream here.
I speak with the accent from here and the memory from there. I don't have two identities: I have one single, complete, living identity.
So why should a word cut me in two?
So why should I let myself be reduced to a word that tells nothing of this complexity?
In Quebec, we all have an origin
The Italian. The Irish. The French. The Greek. The Lebanese. The Vietnamese. And me, the Haitian.
We all come from somewhere.
All of us.
Except the First Nations, who are the only ones who can say: Here, this has been our home forever.
So why, in a province where everyone has an origin, should mine become a political concept while the others remain invisible, "normal," obvious?
Why do I become "racialized," but not the other?
It's unfair. It's incoherent. And above all, it's inhumane.
This word doesn't protect me — it reduces me
I am not "racialized". I am a son, a brother, a worker, a friend. I am a man who tries, who doubts, who moves forward. I am someone who also hurts sometimes, who is also afraid, who also needs love.
I am a Quebecer who comes from elsewhere, like almost everyone here.
And I refuse to have a label stuck on me that cuts my life in two.
Quebec deserves better than words that divide
When I hear certain columnists hammering this term, as if they held the truth about what is "from the majority" and what is "racialized," it hurts me. Not because they're talking about me, but because they're talking in my place.
Because they're putting walls between us that we, in everyday life, try not to see.
Because their words carry more weight than our actions.
That's why I'm speaking
I'm speaking today because I'm tired of being classified. Tired of people thinking they're describing me when they're erasing me. Tired of reducing a human being to the color of their skin when we all have a heart, a past, an origin, a dream.
I want this to be heard:
I am not "racialized". I am alive. I am human. I am from here as much as from there.
And I refuse to let a word take away what I've spent years building.