Dear Asian Community, How’s It Going?

Written by Bethany M. Iyoupe

Thumbnail Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

Photo by SMU Faculty of Arts: Shown in the #SMUBulletin

It’s time to check up on your Asian friends. The Asian community has experienced a traumatic spike in adversity lately due to a system that promotes harmful political narratives (Remember Donald Trump calling COVID-19 the Kung Flu and Chinese Virus?). In the past two years, thousands of Asians have been killed, violently attacked, or harassed. A mass shooting that occurred on March 16th of this year at a massage parlour in Atlanta, Georgia, made headlines when a man, who felt justified by his sexual fetish towards Asian women, took eight lives. Despite the convenient myth of Canadian exceptionalism, Canada is guilty of being extremely vulnerable to American politics, which typically leads us to ignore our own problems with racism. Forbes even suggests that failing to acknowledge racism might be far worse of a problem in Canada than in the US. Since 2019, the Chinese Canadian National Council for Social Justice has reported over 1,150 hate crimes against Asian Canadians, with the largest increase in Vancouver, which has seen a 717% increase in Anti-Asian hate crimes. With this context, let's take a deep dive into the experience of being Asian in Canada. 

On May 19th, 2021, Dr. Rohini Bannerjee facilitated a roundtable panel discussion hosted by SMU that featured  Dr. Sailaja Krishnamurthi, Dr. Xiaoping Sun, Nick Dzuy ‘GenNew’ Nguyen, and myself. Forty-four attendees held space for us to unpack the term ‘Asian’ through both academic narratives and personal experiences. We discussed how Asia is the largest continent in the world, yet our vast languages and cultures have been conflated to common stereotypes that create false narratives surrounding our identities. Xiaoping Sun, a professor in the Department of Asian Studies at SMU, raised the point that we don’t call everyone who lives in North America “North American”, so why do we reduce the billions of people with varying ancestral roots in the world’s largest continent to being “Asian”? 

Asian stereotypes have been reinforced and perpetuated through outlets like the media since the first Asian settlers arrived in the colonial state of Canada. Oftentimes, when we move into neighbourhoods, they become labelled as ghettoes, like the Halifax neighbourhood of Fairview for example. Furthermore, our food is called gross until Western food industries decide it's time to exploit sushi and turn it into a “food trend”. Reality check: indulging in Asian food or cultures does not make you “cultured”. In fact, a lot of Asian foods in North America have been localized to cater to the Western palate. They point the finger at us for “being dirty”, particularly since the onset of COVID, yet refuse to confront the root causes of overcrowding in Asian countries, which has been caused by generations of Western countries exploiting Eastern countries, or the stereotypes of yellow peril and dragon ladies that suggest Asian folk are a threat. Lastly, most of the panellists at the May 19th roundtable agreed with the “Model Minority Myth”, in which White folks suggested that Asians are the “better minority” because they are hardworking, submissive, and intelligent by nature. This harmful subjugation of Asian people propagates anti-Black racism whilst portraying European settlers as model citizens. The point I’m trying to make is that unfair stereotypes and exploitations overwrite our vast experiences of racism and microaggressions.

Next, it is important to acknowledge the huge contributions the Asian community has made to the economy and the cultural landscape of Canada. Asians built so-called Canada through projects like the Canada Pacific Railway, only to be met with discriminatory head taxes and internment. The panellists collectively agreed that they’ve had to work extremely hard through much belittling to get to where they are today, yet stereotypes that Asians are so smart that they’ll steal everyone’s jobs tend to pervade their accomplishments. From our experiences, we mentioned how many immigrants, including my own grandparents, work minimum wage jobs, start businesses, and send their kids to college. These kids eventually enter the workforce, buy family homes, and send their kids to college, resulting in generations of contribution to the national workforce. Furthermore, the Asian community contributes to Canada’s vision as a multicultural mosaic by bringing our languages, foods, and cultures into the mix. If Canada wants to continue championing the flag, then it needs to walk the walk and start recognizing what the Asian community does for so-called Canada. 

Photo by the Dalhousie Southeast Asian Nations Society (DSEANS)

A few weeks after the Asian Heritage Month Panel at SMU, Julie Ann Dayrit, Vice President of the new Community for Asian Pacific Islander Solidarity (CAPIS) at SMU, hosted a #StopAsianHate webinar with Diem Pham and Tiffany Tsui from the Dalhousie Southeast Asian Nations Society (DSEANS). This event went deeper into the history of Anti-Asian rhetoric in Canada, including how decades of stereotyping have influenced today’s rising hate crimes, with the help of a presentation by Christine Qin Yang, the external advisor for CAPIS. However, details weren't the main purpose of this event. We wanted to connect with Asian and Asian Pacific Islander students directly to see how they were feeling about everything that’s going on. 

In a poll, 100% of the attendees voted that they have experienced race-based discrimination in Halifax. Dayrit, a Master’s candidate in the Faculty of Sciences at SMU, led a discussion on how stress caused by our conditions has a serious effect on the autonomic nervous system, presenting viewers with a ladder of feelings. In another poll, attendees voted based on where they felt they stood on this ladder, with most reporting feeling mobilized, agitated, frantic, and even shut down. One anonymous student from Dalhousie noted that while the city of Halifax is more diverse than the suburbs, they were shocked by how little effort schools make to find safe spaces that represent international students and racialized folks who self-identify as Asian and/or Asian Pacific Islander. 

If you’re an ally, perhaps you’re wondering how you can support the Asian Pacific Islander community. The Community for Asian Pacific Islander Solidarity (CAPIS) is an emerging society on the SMU campus with objectives to unify students and influence local change through solidarity work, educational discussions, and cultural celebrations that focus on the wellbeing of Asian Pacific Islander students and allies. If you are interested in joining this community, please email capiscanada@gmail.com or check out CAPIS’ Instagram, Facebook, and Linkedin. For API interested in taking on a leadership position on the Founding Executive Committee, please fill out this application form.