Article content continued

“You don’t want to be singled out because of being a certain colour — and it would happen all the time,” De Guzman says. His way of coping was to withdraw but that didn’t work.

“I would shut myself out. I would take it — there was nothing else to do, and if I’d run away they would make fun of me because of (that).

“I didn’t know what to do, at the time I was afraid. I didn’t have a voice.”

Annum Shah, 22, is of Pakistani descent. Currently, she studies communications at the University of Calgary as well as journalism at SAIT Polytechnic as part of a joint program. She says after the events of 9/11, the bullying she had experienced became worse.

“All of a sudden I had this sense that there was a kind of wrongness that you feel,” she says.

“It’s not necessarily that you feel that your culture is wrong or that your religion is wrong, but more that you feel in a sense that you’re scared of who you are because it’s been so misconstrued because of the way mainstream media portrays you.

“You grow up being afraid of your identity.”

Though Canada’s cultural policies have changed positively and society has become much more diverse, she says these ideas and ideologies about who is or isn’t a true Canadian still exists.

“They are still considered as ‘others,’ and these perceptions still continue to exist because people are still using these ideas,” Madibbo says.

“For second-generation Canadians, there’s this sense of limbo that you feel, and I don’t know if it ever goes away,” Shah says. “You do feel a sense of isolation that comes from it because don’t feel like you fit in anywhere.