Being Portuguese in Canada Sucks...

I have a few things I need to get off my chest about the things I have seen and endured over my life. From the title of today's blog, you will obviously decipher that there will be some clear and present issues I will espouse about with regards to my ethnicity and how it is perceived in the GTA and surrounding area by other people and by other Portuguese in the area. After 34 years of it, I think its fair to say that I have a lot of insight in this area that needs to be expressed.

To make it easier, I will break it down numerically. Without further ado....

#1. Even though Portugal has a rich and storied history, it is always overshadowed, neglected, pushed aside by other nations and never given the credit it (and we) deserve. 

The Portuguese created the trade routes to China for all of Europe. They were the first colonial power in the 14th and 15th century and it was their discoveries that fueled the fire of other nations to follow suit. Is this ever mentioned in any history books in Canada? Nope. How about the fact that John Cabot had Portuguese roots? Nope. Or maybe some mention of Portuguese explorers basically traversing the world before Columbus was even born? Nope.

Portugal essentially was the first true world power in terms of having colonial control of nations all over the globe; Brazil, Mozambique, Angola, Goa (part of India), East Timor and Macau off the coast of China. At some point right now, there are people of EVERY ethnic group (whether its Caucasian, African, Indian or Asian) who can honestly tell you that they learned Portuguese as their first language. There is of course the bad side of that history in that many of the first colonies also employed the first use of slaves but Portugal was also among the first people to abolish slavery in all of their colonies. None of this is ever brought up in World History because we are so brainwashed to adhere to the British version of history that we gloss over other important facts.

#2. The moronic "Gino" and white trash Portuguese young men who are raised in downtown Toronto (and surrounding areas as well, but to a lesser extent) are giving all Portuguese-Canadian men a bad name by their actions and lack of education.

One of the edicts that we learn growing up is that we have 2 options as men; Go to school or go to work. Our parents, for the most part, don't give a crap which one we choose as long as we pick one. This leads many of the young men in the Portuguese community to drop out of high school and go to work in menial jobs (mostly following in the footsteps of their dads into Construction work or as roofers), where they become accustomed to working 14 hour days for close to $30 per hour. They become a caricature, falling into an ever increasing stereotype of brutish, thug-like, abusive, uneducated, unfaithful husbands who use every opportunity to demonstrate just how much of a raging alcoholic they are by the sheer volume of beer they drink on a nightly/weekly basis.

Sure, we work our asses off. We are among the hardest working people on this planet. Many of these same men, for all their faults, have helped to build this city and province with their bare hands but the problem is that instead of making education an priority for ALL our kids, members of the Portuguese community have chosen to focus on ensuring that mostly their daughters get the education, opting to give their sons an entirely different direction.

This leads to my next point which I will explain in a moment but let me just clarify the last one to you in another way. There is a clear perception among many in the Portuguese community that education is not the most important thing. The main thing is work. Working hard is all that matters to many. Not working smart, or educating yourself so that you don't have to work your ass off for 14 hours a day to make ends meet, just working hard. This failure to emphasize education has led to a "dumbing down" of Portuguese people in and around the GTA.

One of the worst things I have ever heard is how whenever a woman is dating a Portuguese guys from the GTA, the woman's friends instantly start to wonder about the relationship and worry that she may be in an abusive relationship. The impression out there about how we treat women is so negative that it has gotten to the point where being a Portuguese male is now perceived as a negative by many others. How sad.

#3. Because many of the men in our culture are not as educated as the women, it has created what I like to call the "Portuguese Princess" syndrome.

Having lived with Portuguese women for almost all my life, I have seen this perception of mine morph into this theory because of the previous point. Let me elaborate. Because of the lack of education of the men in our culture and the focus in some families to make sure the girls ARE educated, you have a generation of women in the age range of 25-40 who, rightly or wrongly, feel like they are smarter then men of the same age and culture.

My theory goes like this; They were brought up in a family with a father who was one of those hard working, uneducated construction workers I mentioned earlier. Like my family, most likely the father turned over all of the financial management to his wife, who was a stay at home mom. With the mother having that kind of power, and her brother (if she had one) most likely following in the father's footsteps, this created the impression in that girl of what a typical Portuguese man would be like; just like dad.

If and when they ever encounter someone different from their perceived stereotype of men from their own culture, they don't know how to react or how to treat them. They can't deal with someone of their own culture who is an actual equal intellectually. Hence, when a Portuguese man marries a Portuguese woman in the GTA, it's almost always doomed to fail. Just saying...

#4. We are clearly an ethnic group yet how often do you hear anything about the Portuguese community (Other then something negative)?

Every other ethnicity in the city gets some kind of recognition. We are not a visible minority in the city so we get pushed aside easily. When the first wave of Portuguese started coming to this country in the 1970's, they endured many hardships. There was no free language lessons for them, nor was it as easy back then as it is now to get social assistance or a good job.

They came after the massive influx of Italians to this area in the 1950's and 60's and were subject to the residual resentment and prejudice that the Italian immigrants had gone through. Because they were Caucasian, it wasn't an obvious form of prejudice that they had to endure but it wasn't easy for many of them who had fled the socialist dictatorship of Salazar.
 

#5. Every other ethnic group in the city is visible and united, not the Portuguese Community. 

If you have ever met a Portuguese person (who lives in downtown Toronto in particular), you will have met a person whose family is from either the islands or the mainland, one island or another, one particular region or another, supports one particular soccer team from the homeland over another. Ask them about people from another area, island or supporters of another Portuguese team and just listen to the venomous hatred that is spewed.

We are a broken and scattered group of people who would rather put a knife in the back of our fellow pork chops then actually see them succeed. The old women in the community would rather see something bad happen to someone they know in order to feed their gossiping instead of something actually happening that is good.

Community unity is not our strong suit as you can see by the fact that instead of having one general area of the city where Portuguese people are known to be in (like little Portugal) with street signs displaying what part of the world the majority of the inhabitants of that part of the city are from, there is a secondary area with signs displaying the Portuguese Islands. Why doesn't the entire area just have Little Portugal signs on it? Why segregate? Because, of course, there was some moron who wanted it that way, again keeping the community divided. We just never seem to learn.

I know this sounds like a lot of whining but after the weekend I have just had, where I couldn't seem to get the message through to my own parents that I need to change my diet because of the high cholesterol I was told I have by my family doctor, I needed to write about some of the challenges that I have to face on a daily basis. It's next to impossible trying to change the views of people who are so set in their ways that to even suggest the need to change the way that we cook is met with cries of how insulting it is to make such a suggestion.

We can't even talk about it because it becomes an emotional issue. Try telling a woman in her late 60's that her cooking methods are not healthy and see how she reacts. Then add in the fact that she's a stubborn Portuguese woman who can never admit when she is wrong and you begin to see some of what I have been going through.