Ethnic Adventures of the Third Generation

Point-Counterpoint: Multicultural Views Multiculturalism has always been a volatile topic, not least in the current political climate of neo-conservatism in Ontario and a looming referendum on sovereignty in Quebec. First given as the 1994 Morton Lecture at Trent University, Myrna Kostash's contribution wishes to historicize and problematize the shades of multiculturalism as part of a genuine commitment to eradicating racism. Xiaoping Lee, in a guest lecture also first delivered at Trent, offers a trenchant and no less personal meditation and critique of Neil Bissoondath's controversial recent book Selling Illusions: the Cult of Multiculturalism. Quebec, no less than "RoC," is an increasingly pluralist society, with French rather than English as the predominant language. We would welcome multicultural views "en franyais," particularly from the immigrant viewpoint. Ethnic Adventures ofthe Third Generation M.L. Once upon a time, back in 1978 when I had just published All ofBaba's Children,_ I found myself willy nilly named an ethruc and claimed as such, with the expectation laid upon me by hyphenated Canadians, Ukrainians and others, that I would answer the questions agitating their communities in the late 1970s, early 1980s. How do we maintain our distinct identities beyond the second and third generations? Is assimilation necessarily a bad thing? How important is language retentio~ -~ cultural identity? What is our responsibility to the Old Country? Can we be loyal Canadians and "ethnics" at the same time? Are we evolving a distinct culture that is neither "English" nor Old World? I was emerging as a kind of spokesperson in western Canada for the idea ofethnicity as a generative identity 124 well past the immigrant experience - that forms part of a broad "culture of resistance" to "Coca-Colonization" in Canada. This was very exciting stuff for me - it felt like the leading edge of the cultural debate - and I imagined broader and broader common fronts of cultural subversives (feminists, immigrants, ecoguerrillas , Melis, artists, gays and lesbians) challenging the globalization ofculture. By the 1990s, however, I was no longer speaking in those terms, although I still wanted to. What had happened? Let me begin with the National Book Festival in the spring of 1990 in Calgary, when I sat in the audience listening to Gail Scott, Katherine Govier and Lee Maracle speak of multiculturalism and their writing. As the evening progressed and the audience was invited to ask questions, I was feeling decidedly odd. For one thing, I had no questions. How ~as it possible, I wondered, that having become identified with the question of ethnicity, I had nothing to ask, no pertinent declaration burning up my brain? In addition, virtually all the questions from the audience were directed at Lee Maracle (a Native writer) and had to do with "appropriation of voice." Looking back on that evening, I realize it was a turning point for me and that my silence in the audience was a tacit acknowledgement that some fundamental shift had occurred in the public discussion of culture and identity - a shift away from my concerns as a third-generation Ukrainian-Canadian. What bad happened was the articulation of a whole new point of view in the discussions around culture and identity: the articulation of race and colour. It wasn't that we bad never talked about race and colour in the discourse around multiculturalism; it's that we had subsumed them within the familiar categories of "otherness," "assimilation," "community," and - of course - "ethnicity." In 1983, the year of the first "Women and Words" conference in Vancouver, Lillian Allen, Kristjana Gunnars and I could still be on the same panel discussing the relationship between Revue d'etudes canadiennes Vol. 30, No. 2 (lti 1995Summer) ethnicity, feminism and our writing as though the one thing we had in common - that none of us was "Anglo" - was the most meaningful. The "politics of difference" soon enough overtook that moment of togetherness , and by the time of the evening in Calgary, I had realized that just as feminism's ideal of gender solidarity (Sisterhood is Powerful!) had had to yield to the analysis of historical, cultural and class cleavages among women ("difference "), so too did multiculturalism's ideal of unity among minorities have to...