The World Changed….

Go Back To Where You Came From…

Anti-Chinese Racism Isn’t on the Rise COVID-19 is simply bringing it to the surface

Friday May 15th, 2020

My early years in Canada were very traumatic.  In 1979, Canada was not very diverse.  The mass migration of Vietnamese boat people began the brownification of Canada with many Latin Americans, African, Persians, Middle Eastern, and South Asians to follow.  

More often then not, my sister and I were the only Asian kids in the school.  My sister still has the scar on her left brow from having her head dragged across a rusty nail on a picnic table while being called a chink. I can still remember 4 boys holding my head in the toilet and flushing in hopes to drown the ‘dirty chink’.  Add onto this the daily eye slant and language mocking, our first 5 years of school in Canada impacted us in ways we didn’t understand until decades later.

 As terrible as the kids were, the school system was even worse.  My very first teacher, Ms. Brown, couldn’t understand why I hadn’t learnt English proficiently enough in my first 6 weeks under her tutelage.  She couldn’t understand why my stories made no sense, so I must be a liar.  My inability to sit still during work time meant that I was a social deviant and ‘retard’. Thanks to Ms. Brown I was placed in remedial learning classes for children with ‘retardation’.  (Note that I use the exact terminology used to label me to highlight the problematicness of the situation.)

 What Ms. Brown did not understand was that I was a 6 year old living through more hardship than she had seen in her 50+ years of living.  

 By the age of 6, I had lived through the end of a war, communist oppression, loss of my only parental figure, been robbed by pirates on my escape trip out of Vietnam, lived in a UN refugee camp, told to love and live with parents I did not know, learn Vietnamese to communicate with my own mother, freezing my ass off in this god forsaken cold climate that gave me respiratory illnesses and undiagnosable face infections, and deal with the hate that was spewed at me on the playground for doing nothing other than breathing.

 What those years taught me was I had to do everything I can to be more like the white kids.  By minimizing the differences, I kept myself safe. Not only did I have to be more like them, I had to be better than them to be considered an equal.

 By the time I hit high school, I had settled into being Canadian.  I was more Canadian than the Canadian born kids in my school.  I was a top ranking student whose English was better than native English speakers.  When people said to me, “Wow, your English is so good!”  I took it as a marker of my acceptance and success at being Canadian.  I had no idea how this microaggression, an indirect, subtle, or unintentional discrimination against members of a marginalized group, was a way to continuously other me.  Remind me that I am and will always be different, not a real Canadian.

 As time went by, the subtlety of the discrimination grew to the point that I didn’t recognize it as racism anymore.  Racism didn’t exist in Canada because I did the ‘good immigrant’ thing of working harder than my white counterparts, never complaining and being grateful for having the privilege of living in Canada.  I was good at boot strapping away my mental health concerns and expecting other Asians to do the same.  

 My attempts at being as white as possible in my behaviours and physical looks only led me to feel greater alienation.  Alienation from always being reminded that I am Asian and pseudo Canadian.  Alienation from the Chinese and Vietnamese communities that saw me as a white girl. Never feeling connected or truly at home anywhere.

 As Canada became more diverse, the more overt the racism became again.  Thirty years ago when I was 16, I attended a national youth leadership conference where a number of boys from Vancouver College expressed their anger towards the Hong Kongnese who had began mass migration to Canada.  One boy from a very prominent, wealthy, Vancouver family was relentless about how these Hong Kong kids can’t be allowed to take up space in the best universities over Canadian kids.  

 We were equally enraged with each other.  He felt the Chinese were stealing his birthright, whereas I believed he and his complaining white buddies were lazy and racist.  Yet, I still believed racism didn’t exist in Canada and these were the beliefs of a handful of over privileged, rich kids who did not represent Canada and Canadians.

 When I moved to West Vancouver 28 years later, I was horrified by how racist this city is.  Without exaggeration, I experience racism every time I go grocery shopping at Whole Foods in West Van.  More often than not, I can’t even get through the door because I am invisible due to the fact that I look Filipina.  

 I have had white women snarl at me when I move their obstructing cart…god forbid the help should take up space.  I have had a random white woman touch my hair and get offended when I told her she has no right to touch people she doesn’t know.  Somehow, my being a person of colour entitled her to my body.  I have had another woman tell me, “No, I’m not racist.  I just didn’t see you.”  How do you not see a full grown human standing in front of you?

 The kids have heard me rant about this and probably thought ‘there she goes again making it about race”, until they experienced it with me first hand.  Recently during this pandemic, the kids helped me shop for our household and their grandparents.  I assigned each kid part of the list and off they went to get them.  As Kid No. 2 came back and put things in the cart, she asked why people were looking at us weirdly.  I’ve become so desensitized to this that it took her mentioning it for me to look around and she was right.  Everyone around us from the local residents to the Filipina help were staring at us.

 I knew exactly why.  People assuming I was the help couldn’t believe I was ordering the white kids around like they were mine.  Kid No. 2 realized what I have been ranting about for the past 2 years.  She was experiencing it first hand.  I could see the wheels in her head spinning.  

 The truth is I have experienced so much individual racism since I moved to the west coast that it’s brought back the traumas from my early years in Canada.  This migration from east to west is harder than the first migration simply because it has reinforced the fact that Canada doesn’t see me as an equal citizen.  

 Now, add on the vicarious pain of seeing daily news stories about anti-Asian attacks in the greater Vancouver area and I am beyond angry, hurt and alienated.  I feel like my voice and pain is falling on deaf ears.  It feels rather hopeless.

 Forty-one years in this country and my Canadian-ness is under question by many while others stand silent or minimize the harm this is all causing.  When is enough enough?

 Individual racism whether anti-Chinese, anti-Black, anti-Indigenous or anti-any racialized group is alive and strong in Canada.  This pandemic has only amplified it, brought it to the surface.  It was always here.  

 Its toxicity is killing our communities through division. As much as we judge our southern neighbours for their deep inequities, we are clearly no better.  Before we devolve to becoming the 51st state, Canadians need to make a choice.  What kind of Canada do you want to live in?

 If you want a Canada that is inclusive, caring and open, then white Canadians need to use their power and privilege to say enough is enough. Black, Indigenous, people of colour (BIPoC) can’t keep doing this work alone.  We need to stand collectively as a nation to say, “We have zero tolerance for hate”.

 Until we are all honest about what is happening in Canada and willing to put our feet down, Canada will continue to stagnate and hate will grow.  If you doubt this, simply look south.  We are better and must do better.  The time is now to speak up collectively to keep everyone safe.

Internalized Racism…

The Uncomfortable Work of Shedding the Self-Hate Society Taught Me

Friday May 15th, 2020

When I was 6, we were sitting in the living room with my mom, sister and aunties watching tv.  My mother and aunties were asking why we couldn’t be as beautiful as the blonde, blue eyed heroin of the series.  

My 4 year old sister had the best response, “Don’t worry mom, we will be.  The longer we live in this cold dark country, our hair and skin will lose its colour from lack of sun.  In time, we all will have blue eyes and blonde hair.”

 That memory always stuck with me as we grew up being told by other Vietnamese women in the community that it was a shame neither of us got my mother’s porcelain white skin.  All the while, watching commercials on tv advertising sun lotions to get the “million dollar tan” which looked a lot like the skin tone we were judged by.

 As time passed, it became more comfortable to live and navigate white communities than it was the Chinese or Vietnamese communities.  Within our own communities, we were too dark skinned, too loud, too opinionated, too fat, too aggressive….basically too white.  In the white community, we were exotic, petite, hard-working and helpful but not the girl you take home to mom.  

 This messaging during our teen years and early adulthood influenced much of our habits and life choices. From our love of sun tanning to our attraction to white men, both white and Asian communities taught us how to internalize racism and white supremacy.  Without fully understanding it at the time, we were being judged and pulled apart based on the same stereotypes and biases but reworked in different ways to have the same outcome.

 Honestly, I thought I embraced and loved my Asian-ness.  I speak Cantonese and Vietnamese.  I eat all of the food, even the stuff that many Asians find foul.  I have been incredibly vocal about the Asian beauty industry that contributes to the devaluing of Asian beauty by pushing a white beauty standard.  I’ve called out relatives for mocking my inclusion of Vietnamese and Chinese music on my playlist as being f.o.b (fresh off the boat) while they chillout to Latin jazz or Andrea Boccelli.  I volunteered within the Vietnamese community to further the status of our people.  I even married Chinese.

 As much as I thought I was embracing my Asian-ness and finding my place in a racism free Canada, it took me a while to realize how I was still contributing to the status quo.

 Fact is the moment my marriage ended, I went back to dating any race but Asian for many years.  I internalize my failed marriage to my race rather than to the internal healing I needed to do in order to love myself.  It was easier to feed the narrative that I’m just not Chinese enough to be married to Chinese since I’m Canadian.  Yet, dating white Canadians left me feeling excluded since my Asian-ness had to be shelved.  It took me years before I realized I needed to focus on the human in front of me, rather than the race.

 As my financial privilege of travelling grew, any Asian country was at the bottom of my bucket list until recently since European culture, food and architecture was given a higher value of refinement in my mind.  I can name you famous European artists and writers from many cultural movements through the centuries but can’t name more than a handful of Asian ones.

 I spent decades learning how to perfect western food and have taken great pride in making the best meatloaf and cooking Italian food like “real Italians” yet I can only cook a few of my favourite Chinese and Vietnamese dishes.  I have no qualms about paying $100+ a person for western food but would think twice if it was an Asian restaurant that wasn’t Japanese.  

 Throughout my professional career, I would look to Western countries for best practices since they must know what is best.  Honestly, it never even crossed my mind to look into what Asian countries were doing as mental health best practices.  When I think about hierarchy of universities and research, I can list all the prestigious Western European and North American ones but have no idea where to begin when it comes to Asian, Latin American, South Asian, etc.

 This pandemic has clearly shown how erroneous that is.  South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam are among the countries that have handled this pandemic best and yet more attention is paid to what New Zealand and Germany have done.   Truth is, I would have done the same citing how similar they are to Canada without placing the same value on what can be learnt from Asian countries.

 All I wanted was to belong, be seen, be heard and be valued.  Part of that desire to belong is adopting a colonial/settler set of values - values that contribute to the minimizing of myself and my community members. 

 Over the last 7 or so years, I have come to realize that part of the anti-racism work I need to do is the unpacking of my internal biases and internalized racism.  I am a product of the communities that have shaped me for the past 46 years.  It is an ongoing effort to unpack my oppressions and privileges while working on the external structures that marginalize and other us.

*If you would like to learn more about internalized racism, click the link below for a comprehensive explanation of how internalized racism works.

God I Miss Eating Out

Wednesday April 29th, 2020

The ambiance when you walk through the door. The sounds and smells of a busy restaurant. Looking at the menu and discussing with your dining partner(s) what everyone is having and negotiating the sharing of food with your loved ones. Looking around to people watch and stealthily eaves dropping on neighbouring conversations. All the things I love about dining out.

During this time of COVID-19 self-isolation and lockdown for so many of us, eating out the way we use to won’t be possible for a very long time.

There is little we can do about the people watching and ambience but we can definitely recreate some of those experiences and conveniences at home like actually sitting down as a family for meals instead of eating simply for the sake of eating.

I wonder if your family is the same? Meals with the fam tend to be quick sit-downs with my Other Half nagging the kids to put away their phones. One kid eating faster than she can breathe and the other sneaks playing a flight simulator app on his phone.

Living in these unprecedented times, we know the need for closer personal connections is greatly missed and needed. As much as the kids would rather be hanging with their friends, it is so important to spend time physically connecting with those we can. This isn’t possible for everyone and I fully acknowledge the privilege that we have being able to do this.

Part of what has worked for us is ordering in with one of the delivery apps, ordering set take out menus from our favourite places, or using one of the new ready to eat and grocery delivery services. It is a luxury that few can afford during these times but they have the ability to uplift our spirits and get the kids to savour their food.

I recently sent a care package from one of the ready made delivery services to a dear friend who is on the frontline of this COVID crisis. Grace has been working super long hours caring for our homeless youth in the downtown east side while living alone and connecting with her loved ones remotely. It was so important to us that she feels our physical love for her. The package made her “feel giddy like it was Christmas”.

I miss dining with her but knowing that I was able to connect with her and talk about our mutual love for food was almost as good as sitting across the table with her sharing something yummy that brings tears to our eyes….or at least Grace’s eyes.

Without a doubt I am waiting with bated breath for the day when I can have a date night with my Other Half or watch Grace tear up over something delicious but until then, I’m getting creative at home. Here is a list of suggestions you can try at home:

• We’ve had the kids cook us a family dinner to have them appreciate the effort it takes to make the meals they enjoy.

• We’ve recreated some of our favourite meals from our travels with the help of google searches and ordering international products online like Spanish tapas using tins of conservas, canned seafood.

• Supporting the local restaurants that we love by ordering off their websites.

• Doing multi-course meals, like in restaurants, to prolong the dinner conversations.

• Dining and drinking with friends using some kind of video app. Share a recipe that everyone makes and enjoy it together.

This pandemic is helping us to refocus on what is important in life. It is forcing us to look at the way we live in order to refine it. This is our opportunity to find meaningful ways to connect and share love with others. We’re definitely not all in the same situations or having the same struggles but we are all experiencing the same storm.

With some creativity, we can discover new ways to enjoy the things we love.

45th Anniversary of the Fall of Vietnam…

And the 28th anniversary of my family falling apart…Anniversary “Effect” or “Reaction” is Real

Thursday April 30th, 2020

When Saigon fell, I was in the arms of my MaMa (paternal grandma in Cantonese) pushing my way through the throngs of people frantically trying to seek refuge within the American Embassy walls. My parents were inside waiting for me, hoping to get seats on the last flight out of Southern Vietnam. We would have made it if it weren’t for the panicking crowds trying to escape the communist tanks rolling into the city.

As the tanks inched closer, my grandmother, who had early stages of cancer and didn’t know it at the time, made the instinctual decision to run back to the safety of Cholon, the largest chinatown in the world, to take refuge in our home. All the while, my pregnant mother and father scaled the walls of the embassy praying they wouldn’t be caught by the communist on enemy ground.

That was the day my family lost everything.

Vietnam had been at war for decades and that was after centuries of occupation by the Chinese and colonization by the French. It is a country that did not know peace and/or prosperity for the longest time until recent years. This long legacy of oppression and hardship is in our DNA. We are resilient people who find ways to survive, but it does leave scars that lasts for generations.

Professor Morton Beiser (2009) did one of the first long term studies following over 1300 Vietnamese boat people, who came between 1979 and 1981, for ten years. His findings led him to claim that the Vietnamese refugees were the most successfully settled refugees in Canadian history due to our low unemployment rate, low rate of divorce and low rates of accessing mental health services.

He is absolutely right. My parents’ generation would have rarely considered accessing social supports like government assistance but would rather have worked in survival jobs. I know engineers who built infrastructure for the American military but worked on manufacturing lines. Teachers who worked in clothing factories, when they still existed in Canada. It was a social shame within the community due to the internalized need to prove ourselves in our new host country and within the new community we were building. Handouts were for communists and the community self-regulated.

Divorce was unthinkable but it did not mask the fracture in family units or the increased incidences of domestic violence. I remember women crying to my mother with blackened eyes and my father and his friends talking to the abusive husband about Canadian laws and the consequences he would face if someone called the police. Ironic since violence was very much a part of our household.

The loss of family wealth and political status never truly healed in my family. Losing their home, their dreams and everything they grew up knowing paired with the deep poverty of those early years, invisibleness and feeling of displacement was so traumatic for them that the legacy will last multiple generations in my family.

Unlike others in our community, my family has always done things our way saying fuck it to social norms. After years of abuse and trying to keep my mother from suiciding, I convinced her to leave my father. It wasn’t a smooth journey but they did eventually move on in separate directions to never cross paths again.

This is rare in my community. I honestly don’t know any other people my parents’ age or older who divorced. Many, however, chose to stay until their kids were adults and then each living with a different child. My aunt sponsored her in-laws to Canada. The moment they got off the plane, her father-in-law was informed that her mother-in-law was leaving him. After decades of abuse and cruelty, she decided, with her daughters, that his misogynist ass could go live with his son. They rarely ever saw him again but she never divorced him.

For all my mother’s mental health struggles, she never sought supports until my sister and I did as adults. In the early years, I remember all the aunties coming together to support each other in their own makeshift support group. Many of the men drank excessively. I can connect so many of the violent incidences with my father being drunk. Now we know addiction is a concurrent mental health issue.

If Beiser had looked into the wellness of the next generation, my generation, he would discover greater rates of divorce, unemployment and accessing mental supports. The children of that generation took the brunt of the issues. Our parents might not have known that its not “normal” to feel the way they did but we sure know.

All of this came to a head on this day in 1992 in the form of violence between my sister and I. The violence of Vietnam. The violence my father taught us. The violence we saw around us. All of it came to blows between the two of us. It was the day my birth family died. My parents never saw each other again except for one court appearance. My father proclaimed my sister as dead which he held firm on with my half sisters who were born after the fall of his first family. And it is the day that haunts me every year.

Every year on this day, I wake up feeling vulnerable without realizing why until I see the date. The trauma of that day is so great it has an anniversary effect on me. I woke up this morning feeling light and content but one inconsequential comment from my Other Half left me confused and crying. I couldn’t understand why his invitation to shower together left me feeling so low and frustrated. During my morning meeting when someone mentioned the date, it clicked…anniversary reaction.

According to the American Psychological Association, my difficulty concentrating, loss of appetite, irritability, nightmares, and feelings of detachment from my Other Half are common. I know this since I feel it every year.

The best I can do is to be gentle with myself. It manifests itself differently for everyone and what works for me may not work for you. I refuse to look at finances today, will eat whatever I like and not work on anything that doesn’t bring me joy. The dust bunnies in the corner will have to wait until tomorrow.

For those of you who can relate to this or want to know more about anniversary effects and reactions, I have included a link button below.