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WHY WE DESERVE SAFE SPACES words by sunny chen photograhy by joy gyamfi These minor instances of overt racism remind me that women of colour are very vulnerable in our society. Every individual exists under multiple layers of vulnerability, stemming from ethnicity, income, gender, sexual orientation, and religion. And every individual with a unique mixture of vulnerabilities deserves to feel safe in all spaces.
“You’re barely a woman of colour.” That’s what my white coworkers told me one day during a smoke break. I had just expressed that I wasn’t feeling well, and wanted to talk about my recent experiences of racism and sexism. Unable to hide my shock to their response, I blurted out, “No, I am—I’m an immigrant,” and then resigned to smoking in quiet, too tired to open that can of worms.
As an artist, my work comes from my ongoing experiences of racism and misogyny, and is obstructed by both. Ethnic minorities and people who present as non-white are still being targeted for discrimination in this country that I call home. Even during high school, which I attended in Langley from 2006 until graduation in 2011, there was a distinct racial segregation between white and Asian students. I grew up thinking that girls of colour were inherently uglier and less popular than white girls, because Caucasian students never asked us to see movies or invited us to parties. The most demeaning experience in high school for me was when a white girl one year older sat on the stairs and hurled pieces of food at me, yelling racist slurs.
Don’t get me wrong; my coworkers are wonderful, intelligent women who have carved out their own spaces in the industry they work in and the social circles they exist in. But to minimize the trauma I’ve experienced by telling me that my skin is merely two shades darker than theirs doesn’t revert the ongoing effects of racism. If I am not a woman of colour, why did that man single me out on public transit to accuse Asian men of having small penises? Why did he ask me, “Is that big for you?” as I ate my Cheestring? Why did he ask me, again and again, from three seats away, “Is that big?” with a jeer frozen on his grimy face, suggesting that my cheese snack was a penis, and it was too big for me? Even after I confronted him about his crude joke, he went on a tirade about how there are too many “chinks” in the city now, and that they all have small penises. He continued to spout fallacious racial stereotypes, changing his focus to the Indigenous population. “All of you should be killed off,” was his conclusion. The tirade went on like this until he stepped off the bus. He smiled at me as he exited.
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As a f irst-generation immigrant, I choose to claim both Canadian and Chinese cultures as my own, even though everyone seems to have their own opinions about how Canadian or how Chinese I really am. Second-generation Canadians or people of mixed ethnic descent may find it much more difficult to claim a culture as their own, or find affinity and acceptance from any one cultural group. Chinese-Canadian author Fred Wah originates the idea of “living on the hyphen,” which describes what life is like for individuals of ethnic
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