Thread by @SuzanneSiemens

Celebrating my Asian heritage feels more important than ever given the alarming rise in Asian hate crimes.

Here’s a 🧵 to celebrate my ancestry, the historical racist context within Canada’s immigration policies & resources to #StopAsianHate

#AsianHeritageMonth

Between 1880 - 1885 approx 15,000 Chinese workers were recruited to BC to complete the last leg of the Canadian Pacific Railway. When the railroad was complete, white workers, who feared for their jobs, lobbied the government to take action to limit Chinese immigration.

In 1885, the Canadian Parliament passed The Chinese Immigration Act (aka Chinese Exclusion Act).

Not only did it severely limit and almost halt Chinese immigration, but it also required all Chinese entering Canada to pay a Head Tax of $50. By 1903, the head tax was $500.

The Chinese are the only ethnic group in Canada ever subjected to a legally sanctioned racist immigration policy and race-based head tax.

By contrast, during this same period, British immigrants were often given financial assistance to help pay their way to Canada.

Chinese people were not considered human & were compared to agricultural machinery. In 1885, Prime Minister John A. Macdonald said the Chinese worker "has no common interest with us, & while he gives us labour he is paid for it, & is valuable, the same as a threshing machine…”

“... or any other agricultural implement which we may borrow from the United States on hire and return it to the owner on the south side of the line. He has no British instincts or British feelings or aspirations, and therefore ought not to have a vote."

Racial exclusion and financial injustice aside, my paternal grandfather, Jew Gew Hong, successfully made his way to Canada in 1918 at age 17. He paid the grossly racist Chinese head tax of $500, which at the time was the equivalent of almost two years’ wages.

Gew found work as a cook for the Canadian Pacific Railway and eventually saved enough money to buy a house near Chinatown.

During this period Chinese men became a "bachelor society" - the head tax made it financially impossible to find a wife in Canada or bring her to Canada.

After working 10 years in Canada, Gew returned to China in 1929 to find a wife, marry her, and have a son -- my father, Jew Jong Hong. Eight months after my Dad was born, Gew left his family in China and returned to Canada. World War II ensued.

Following the service of Asian-Canadians in WWII and the lessons from the Holocaust that exposed racial discrimination, the Chinese Immigration Act was repealed in 1947.

In 1948, Gew became a Canadian citizen and applied to have his wife and son join him in Canada in 1951.

Despite all the additional hardship - both mentally & financially, my paternal & maternal grandparents & parents endured & came to settle in Canada as a family.

They were very grateful to escape communist China & come to a country that was safe & offered a new life.

My family’s immigration experiences taught them the importance of several coping skills: keep your head down, work hard, don’t complain, and fit in.

They unknowingly exemplified the “model minority” role and passed those lessons on to their children.

I now understand how the “model minority myth” can be a harmful tool of oppression that seeks to divide people of colour - a myth that tells us to work hard, stay quiet and not disrupt the status quo: a system designed to uphold white supremacy.

History shows how anti-Asian policies legitimized racism and stoked the fuel for hatred and intolerance. The COVID-19 pandemic has sadly emboldened these sentiments to boil over and be violently acted upon, causing harm to Asian Canadians (and Asians around the world).

It’s time for us to stop being silent, speak up & amplify our voices: to call upon elected officials to denounce anti-racist behaviour, to teach the history & how we got here, & to hold people accountable. Let us stand in solidarity with all our racialized communities.

If I can borrow from Emma Lazarus: “Until we are all free, we are none of us free.”

Or as I prefer to say, “None of us are safe until we are all safe.”

How can you help?

Well, the truth is we can all do better. Here’s how.

One day, you might be in the minority: be it due physical ability, mental capacity, financial capacity, or age.

Support those who need help now.

Support the front-line workers doing important work. Acknowledge the emotional toll the pandemic is taking on them. Thank them.

Vote for leaders who are willing to fund mental health support (and who will do it in a way that makes a measurable difference.) Be willing to critically re-examine the broken systems that seek to punish and incarcerate vs support and reform people.

It is a privilege to not get involved—a privilege that I don’t have. I have to confront racism and fear for the safety of my Asian community daily.

My hometown of Vancouver has the highest reported levels of Asian hate crime in the world.

Pledge your commitment to be an active ally. @RUNAAPI

Learn simple & safe ways to help.

Take @iHollaback’s Bystander Intervention Training & follow one of the 5 D’s: Distract / Delegate / Document / Delay / Direct

ihollaback.org/bystanderinter…

The long history of white supremacy & racial injustice runs deep.

Understand the history, its origins in fear, its explicit means of “othering” racialized people.

Stand with me to dismantle systems of oppression that fuel hatred.

#StopAsianHate #asianhistorymonth

This thread was inspired by my admiration for @nguyen_amanda and her call for Asians to boldly raise our voices to demand justice, to be heard and not erased. Thank you for your advocacy and leadership!

It feels very meta to be tweeting my delight that @nguyen_amanda (who inspired my 🧵 about my Chinese family's racist immigration experience) liked my tweet!
And equally meta in the way my gaming teenager would mean "awesome"!