Tag: racism

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When What’s Available Isn’t Enough

This population of millions in Canada needs immediate attention with culturally-adept solutions to improve their mental health

Creator:
Harleen Kaur Hundal

The COVID-19 pandemic has devastated families around the world; but such effects have disproportionately hit certain populations more than others. Internationally, this in differences can be seen in infection/hospitalization/fatality rates across the world. Nationally, this disparity across various social lines, most prominently based on ethnicity. As COVID-19 swept across Canada, each province and territory had to figure out how to best manage this virus, often shutting down who sectors of economic activity while relying on those performing essential services to keep the world running. Unfortunately, zooming into Greater Vancouver, many essential services are visibly and disproportionately reliant on racialized folks, whether this include grocery store workers, truckers, healthcare providers, laundry service providers, meat works, or many others. This places racialized folks at a much greater risk of becoming infected with, or dying from, COVID-19 – including South Asian diaspora. Read Harleen’s impassioned letter to her Member of Parliament, Hon. Carla Qualtrough, as she dissects the racialized impact of the pandemic, and what needs to be done to help the South Asian diasporic community. So what can be done beyond the generic colour-blind health interventions that are already available?

Click on the following to reveal the paper (Note: PDF viewer not compatible with some mobile platforms; but it is available for download or to view via mobile PDF viewers)

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“I don’t feel like I am desirable”

[G]ay Asian men must get their membership ‘approved’ when white gay men do not.

Author:
Nathan Bawaan

Nathan writes about the experiences of Asian Gay and Bisexual Men (GBM) and men who have sex with men (MSM), and the struggles that they often have to deal with – systemic racism within LGBTQ+ communities, the resulting internalized racism, and how both impact their mental health. As Nathan explains, Asian GBM and MSM exist in a system in which they sometimes reject their own ethnic identities and idealize Whiteness (and particularly White gayness), often out of a desire to fit into LGBTQ+ spaces. This piece dovetails nicely with Tiffany Ou’s animation about the stripping down of the fight for queer liberation into effectively a gay White man’s struggle. Nathan points out that this kind of self-loathing, to the point of not recognizing oneself as being desirable, presents particularly difficult mental health challenges for Asian GBM and MSM – with extremely concerning physical health implications, too. How, then, can Asian GBM MSM find community within LGBTQ+ spaces, or must they create their own?

Click on the following to reveal the paper (Note: PDF viewer not compatible with some mobile platforms; but it is available for download or to view via mobile PDF viewers)

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Dear Hon. David Eby

Cultural competence is an essential asset for healthcare providers

Author:
Elisha Fu 傅羽佳

When your community is faced with a problem, it can be hard to know how to even begin to address and tackle it. Leveraging her own experiences, Elisha decided to take on the issue of the underutilization of mental health support services among Asian Canadian communities with this draft letter to her Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA), the Honourable David Eby. In this letter, Elisha discusses the scope of the problem at hand, and the devastating impact it can have on Asian disapora in Canada. Through her research, she proposes several important recommendations that the government should consider to ensure that there is sufficient culturally safe mental health resources that Asian diasporic communities can feel comfortable accessing. If you are faced with a similar problem affecting your community, what would you say to your MLA or Member of Parliament?

Click on the following to reveal the paper (Note: PDF viewer not compatible with some mobile platforms; but it is available for download or to view via mobile PDF viewers)

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Thresholding

“So, what did nice conservative gay white men do? They sell a community that liberated them down the river” – Sylvia Rivera

Artist:
Tiffany Ou 欧倩怡 (she/her)

Queerness. Queerness is an identity, and it’s also a way of existing. Queerness, though, isn’t just about being queer. What many boil down to a single point of discourse is actually a complex interplay of multiple identities and intersectionalities at the same time. Tiffany’s illustration/animation shows the viewer a simple yet effective visual representation of how cultural and historical discourse often oversimplifies the richness of queerness into a single issue. In the context of a society with lots of societal defaults, the erasure of the richness of queerness and the diversity among queer folks fighting for liberation often converges into the image of a struggle for White cisgender gay men’s recognition. What implications does this have for racialized queer folks fighting (/who fought) for liberation, and what more needs to be done?

Click on the following to reveal the artist’s statement (Note: PDF viewer not compatible with some mobile platforms; but it is available for download or to view via mobile PDF viewers)

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Disney, WTF!?

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, it is extremely racist!

Creator:
Simi Di Paula
Davin Kim 김다빈

Who would have guessed that Disney would have a history of racist portrayals of Asian characters? (spoilers: me) Follow Simi and Davin’s eye-catching presentation about the numerous examples of Disney’s terrible portrayals of Asian characters, from something as explicit as caricatured speech of some unseen Japanese character in the 40s, to something more subtle like who does and doesn’t have accents in the 90s. They go through the psychology of why representation is important, and how representation (and the lack thereof) affects people’s health. In watching their presentation, I invite you to think – are things better now? If so, in what ways are they better? And if not, what needs to change?

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Voices of Queer Asian Canadians

Voices of Queer Asian Canadians: Identity and Belonging for the Queer Asian Diaspora in Vancouver

Author:
Alger Liang 梁家傑

Queerness is a set of identities that many individuals in Asian diasporic communities still face barriers over due to a combination of the perceived clashes between queerness and Asian cultural traditions/concepts, and a lack of understanding/discussion on the part of friends, families, and family members from older generations. This is compounded by the racism that queer Asian Canadians experience in the face of a predominantly White queer scene in Canada, compelling queer Asian Canadians to create communities by themselves for themselves. Read as Liang summarizes some important themes underlying three queer Asian Canadians’ experience as they explore what it means to be a queer Asian for them. “Identity” is a complex issue, especially when it exists at the intersection of multiple dimensions of marginalization. Can better understanding of these intersections allow for a better equipped society to helping each other achieve liberation?

Click on the following to reveal the paper (Note: PDF viewer not compatible with some mobile platforms; but it is available for download or to view via mobile PDF viewers)

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Forming identity as a Filipino Canadian

We need people who won’t give up on our country

Artist:
Anonymous

Identity formation is a difficult process for members of the diasporic community, including the Filipino diasporic community. As the anonymous artist discusses, there are a lot of dynamics to consider – Am I abandoning people from the Philippines? To what extent do I embody a Canadian versus Filipino identity? How do people think about my English – is it too Filipino-accented for me to sound Canadian, or is it too Canadian-accented for me to sound Filipino? Ultimately, the big question is “Who am I?” While it’s a cliché to talk about this question, it’s a cliché precisely because of how commonplace it is. The anonymous artist decided to use a novel medium to explore all these ideas, and to ask a very important question – in the Filipino context, how might the interplay of colonial and nativist influences affect the experience of acculturation among Filipinos migrating to another context with an interplay between a different colonial influence, progressivism, and cultural protectionism?

Click on the screenshot to access the Instagram account

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It’s a lifestyle

It doesn’t really feel like taking medicine to me

Hosts:
Cynthia Chen 陳霈詠 (they/them)
Claudia Fu 符藴楓

Guest:
Andre Shih (Taiwanese heritage; TCM Herbalist, Accupuncturist)

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is widely practiced among people from East Asia; but using TCM is often seem as being in opposition to Western medicine. When does one use TCM, and when does that same person use Western medicine? The most difficult part of this question is the fact that TCM encompasses so many facets of one’s life – it’s not just about being sick, but more about being healthy in general. It also creates a lot of identity clashes, and for many Asian Canadians, it brings up issues of the Model Minority Myth and having to choose one culture to abide by. And how do these things get wrapped up in racism? And does it have to be a zero-sum choice? Listen to Chen and Fu as they unpack their own experiences. They also interview Andre Shih, a TCM Herbalist and Accupuncturist operating out of Vancouver, who answers questions about the challenges of being a TCM practitioner in Canada. Ultimately, knowing how important TCM is to vast numbers of diaspora in Canada, how can we re-envision the landscape of healthcare regarding TCM’s relationship with Western medicine?

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