Thank-you to PSAC for inviting me to speak at your BC Regional Conference for Racially Visible Members. It was such an honour to speak to your theme “Race Forward: Our Union, Our Community, Our Future!”
Dialogue is the beginning of understanding and fostering respect. Dialogue leads to strategizing and mobilizing initiatives to bridge and build knowledge, understanding, and the respect needed to foster communities that better embrace and celebrate diversity. Each of our lived experiences are powerful inspiring stories to begin that impactful dialogue. Your discourse here will hopefully lead to strategies that will facilitate “race forward” policies, workplace environments and events,
and community outreach opportunities. Mobilization of your strategies will require you to infuse your learnings, your passion, and determination for change.
Conferences like these are catalysts to creating change within yourself, your organization, our community, our region and nation. The impetus to change starts from ideas and discourses, like the many national campaigns that exist today: Terry Fox Run, Pink Shirt Day, and 100in 1day (https://vancouver100in1day.ca). I think that 100in1day is an invigorating way for you to make a “race forward” impact in your organization and community.
“100in1day Canada is part of a global initiative with the goal to inspire change in cities across the country by compelling residents to activate 100 innovative, thought-provoking ideas into interventions to enhance their city all on one day.” 100in1day was started in 2012 by a group of design students in Bogotá, Colombia. It has since spread to over 31 cities around the world. In Canada, currently 5 cities are participating in this campaign. June 4th is this year’s 100in1day in Canada.
We inter-exist in living and ever evolving communities that embody all walks of life. A few weeks ago, I celebrated Vaisakhi in the streets of East Vancouver and in February, Chinese New Year in Chinatown. Our communities are so alive and vibrant with cultures of the world and celebration of our diversity. If you live in Greater Vancouver, you know that we are enriched by cuisines, groceries, novelty shops, malls, and arts and cultures that vivify our multicultural existence. Yet, conferences and discourses like these still exist today in 2016. Having to be “race forward” means that issues of racism still need to be championed.
Growing up in Greater Vancouver, I have experienced my share of racist comments and negativity. In the playground of my elementary school, in the hallways of my high school, the boulevards of UBC, and in the hustle of my multicultural, metropolitan communities. You would think that after all these decades of co-existence that racism would be far from being an issue. Compared to 10, 20 years ago, I see more interracial unions and children. I see cultural and religious places of worship and gathering standing as neighbours. We teach and celebrate cultural differences in schools as part of the curriculum. Yet we still deal with racism in our communities.
Once, after parking my car in a residential neighbourhood and activating my car alarm, I heard a man in his 40/50s yelling from across the street to me and I just heard the words “beep beep.” I thought the gentleman was making a funny comment about the sound of my car alarm, but it turned out he was making negative comments about cars parking in the residential area and alarms going off. He proceeded to shout across the street at me about bashing my car in if my alarm goes off and then made comments about me being a China-man and that I should return back to my country.
Another time as I walked down Davie Street with my friend, a guy in his 20s who was walking towards me made negative comments about me being a member of a Chinese gang. As he walked beside me, he lightly gave me a nudge on my arm.
I was on Davie Street, wearing my jeans, sequin army-glammed motif shirt, a tuxedo jacket, and funky dress shoes.
The stereotype that I face for being a person of colour who looks visibly Chinese, are further propagated and sensationalized by our entertainment and media industries, and perpetuated in our workplaces and communities.
I am of Chinese descent and I am very proud of my roots, but I grew up in Canada. I am not good at Astro physics, or Calculus. I do not know your friend Joseph or Li Ping in China. I live in an average house in east side Vancouver and not in a huge mansion on the hills of West Vancouver. I drive a 2003 Hyundai Santa Fe which was passed down to me from my parents and not the latest Mercedes convertible. I wear H&M and finds from thrift shops, not Gucci and Louis Vuitton. However, I do know some martial arts and I am very skillful with my chopsticks. I am a person of visible colour but I’m not the person of colour that many still misunderstand.
I am the first person of colour to win the title Mr. Gay Canada. When I entered the competition it was from a mindset of being able to do advocacy work for my LGBTQ+ community and my role as a human being in our society. My colour and cultural heritage were not a part of my mindset but that soon changed. Before I entered the competition, someone said to me that I did not realize the impact of my participation and if I won the competition, the impact I would have on the Asian communities everywhere would be exponential. This comment took me by surprise and I did not realize its impact until I received countless messages in my social media accounts and in my emails about the impact and difference I making as a representative
of the Asian community. The messages of gratitude for being a voice and face for those who have to live their authentic selves through my presence and protected reality awakened my extended social responsibility.
I think being a person of colour in the position of leadership and title is another challenge I face. Even within my own discrimination-experienced LGBTQ+ community, I felt and experienced a double standard when it came to my treatment compared to my non-coloured counterparts. I need to have alligator skin to be heard and rejected. I have to combat predominantly non-coloured boards and organizations about the importance of ethnic representation and relevant cultural content.
Look within your P.S.A.C. organization and you will notice the imbalance of coloured people in the positions of power. I think that our society has definitely been progressing with “race forward” acceptance of people of colour in the position of power; however, this still needs to be fully welcomed.
I think it takes education, revelation, and time to champion this social and cultural reality. I think that more proactive family, school, community, and government based initiatives and campaigns should be implemented to address and educate about racism. Its heightened education and awareness could only benefit our ever evolving society.
Our “race forward” advocacy efforts to build compassionate, empathetic workplaces and communities require continuous education and implementation of measures to promote understanding and respect. The evolution of racial equality calls for us to reflect on our history and focus on its evolution through education and awareness. “Education and awareness are the links from ignorance to knowledge, denial to acceptance, and hate to love.” – Pride Winnipeg 2015 Pride Guide
Jane Addams once said, “Social advance depends quite as much upon an increase in moral sensibility as it does upon a sense of duty.”
Being empowered and inspired comes with the responsibility to utilize that empowerment and inspiration to change the circumstances around you whether it’s in your home, workplace, organization, community, and or country. Racism in our lives will be an ongoing issue unless we each take an active effort to champion it. Let your community building efforts encompass positive “race forward” agendas and actions.
You have a voice. How are you going to use it for change? Activism to me is a daily exercise of our voices and proactiveness in our actions. Let what you have learned and experienced here at this conference be the catalyst for your activism today and the tomorrows to come.
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