From corrections of their academic writing to remarks on their accents to questions about their names to supposed compliments about their English, racialized graduate students regularly navigate a range of Othering microaggressions, even in multicultural, multiracial societies like Canada. Yet the complexities of these painful experiences of racism—particularly the linguistic dimensions of these experiences—are often overlooked, sugar-coated, or altogether erased within dominant White supremacist and settler colonial narratives.
These animated videos aim to help counter these narratives by drawing attention to the ways raciolinguistic hierarchies are embodied and resisted in the everyday experiences of racialized graduate students. Drawing on a study of racialized graduate students and faculty members at a Canadian university (Kubota, Corella, Lim & Sah, 2023), the videos center on stories of how racialized graduate students* encounter and often creatively contest narrow, dehumanizing assumptions about their language use, names, communication styles, and other aspects of their identities.
We have created these videos in hopes of increasing understanding and inviting dialogue related to the complexities of everyday experiences of racism and racialization in institutions of higher education in Canada and beyond. We therefore invite you to share your thoughts by leaving comments in the video pages. The scripts for the videos are available in the video pages as well for those who are interested in using them for educational purposes, such as performing Reader’s Theatre activities.
These videos were produced on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) people, where our research team of uninvited guests gratefully resides. We would also like to express our deep gratitude to the participants in our study for sharing their stories and insights with us.
* The characters in the video are composite characters who represent an amalgamation of the experiences and identities of the graduate students who participated in our study. No one character in the video corresponds to any real person.
Production Team:
Co-Directors: Ryuko Kubota & Meghan Corella
Script Writer| Voice Actor Trainer | Voice Recording Director: Laen Hershler
Animator | Video Editor: Giovanna Lucci
Voice Actors for Part 1:
Walid Alchamaa
Liliana Castaneda
Arti Mehta
Voice Actors for Part 2
Emily Lee
Mukul Rishi
Samuel Teo
Website Created by:
Yuya Takeda
Funding from UBC:
LLED Ritsumeikan Seed Grant
Faculty of Education Curriculum Enhancement Project Grant for Anti-Racism and Decolonization
Publication:
Kubota, R., Corella, M., Lim, K., & Sah, P. (2023). “Your English is so good”: Lives of racialized students and instructors of a Canadian University. Ethnicities, 23(5), 758–778. https://doi.org/10.1177/14687968211055808