This past Saturday I went to a one-day conference at U of T called Decolonizing Our Minds, organized by ESSU and CARSSU at U of T. The first panel was Confronting Systemic Discrimination. The speakers were Lee Maracle, Kabir Joshi-Vijayan (NOCOPS), Stan Doyle -Wood and Rod Michalko.

I’ve loved Lee Maracle’s work for a very long time. It’s probably been over 20 years since I first read “I am Woman” and “Ravensong”. She was the main reason I came to the conference, and was the first to speak. She talked of Canada’s disconnect from First Nations people, people of colour and all women. She made connections between the murder of First Nations women in BC, the recent massacre in Gaza and violence supported and paid by the West in Africa, South America and Australia. She talked about Canadian culture, and how we’re always looking for more, rather that for better. We seek money for redress of wrongs done to First Nations communities, rather than self-determination. As colonized people she advised us to take our place in action for change, and to refuse to be silenced. Decolonization involves changing the way we think about our connections to each other and to the natural world.

Kabir Joshi-Vijayan was a high school student, I think he was 15 or 16 years old.  He talked about the role of the public education system to racialize and criminalize students of colour. As a student in the TDSB he described the decision to place armed police officers in 20 schools across Toronto as a racist, anti-poor violent strategy meant to intimidate and harm young men of colour. Kabir briefly summarized Ontario’s policing history from the 1990s to the present, emphasizing the ways in which the various “crackdowns” on crime have affected Black, poor and indigenous communities. The “Safe Schools Act” continues this trend.

Stan talked about his personal experiences as a racialized student and the violence he experienced by his teachers in the classroom. He talked about enforced knowledges, and the hegemony of abstract knowledge being valued and taught along with the curriculum itself, that this is a process of violence.

Rod is a professor of disability studies and he talked about how we are all affected by and implicated in the colonization process. He talked about finding a place as a disabled body, and that all the spaces he finds are occupied by others. These others are concepts and images (I would call them stereotypes) of who you are and what you are, that people pre-suppose and project onto one’s self. He talked about how he, as a disabled person, haunts people’s sense of normalcy, and he is a spectre and a ghost of what their future is, namely, disability and death. He talked about a third space that’s inbetween, in which normalcy, which can’t see itself, can be examined closely and deconstructed.

I greatly enjoyed the first panel, and was unfortunately not able to stay for the other two.  

This is a new play by Andrew Moodie playing at Factory Theatre until March 1, that’s just one more week. I saw it last week with my writing group and really enjoyed it.

The basic story is a white cop is charged with racial profiling. The lawyer defending her is a Black man, and the young Black man who she pulled over is being defended by a white lawyer. Moodie insists on complexity rather than simple binaries, and compels the audience to look at our assumptions about, race, class, gender, young people, and numerous other issues in the wonderful, challenging, racist and diverse city that is Toronto.

Go see it!

Factory Theatre

So you know how everyone is talking about “diversity toolkits” and getting them, so that magically, when something racist or sexist or homophobic happens in the workplace, you just open up the tool kit and use some appropriately taught language to educate the person.

Whatever.

Maysie’s Diveristy Toolkit will contain the following (pictures to follow very soon)

1.  A Diversity Mallet. It’s for bonking people who refuse to “get it” as often as needed. Suggestions have been made to upgrade this to a “Diversity Sledgehammer” but then it won’t fit so neatly into the toolbox.

2. A Brain. This is used as a visual prop, as in “Use your brains, people!”

3. A small sign on a stick that says “LISTEN!”

4. When that doesn’t work, a small sign that says “SHUT UP!” 

5. A globe, to put aside the wrong-headed notion of the term “visible minority”

6. A copy of “Becoming an Ally” by Anne Bishop with supplemental copies of my essay “Being an Ally. A Real Ally, not a Faux-Ally” 

More items to be added as necessary. Suggestions?

1. May needs some time to warm up (only when it’s very cold)

2. May needs major restructuring (I’ll say!)

3. May needs a revived railroad (VIA rail just ain’t what it used to be)

4. May needs up to $30 billion dollars (Um, where do I sign up?)

5. May needs to play better with others (LOL)

6. May needs modernization to take SBSP (whatever the hell that means)

7. May needs an IBM moment of clarity (actually I’m a Mac gal now)

8. May needs a payee to prevent to prevent misuse of funds for drugs (I never want drug funds to be misused!)

9. May needs support from Republicans (!!!)

10. May needs vitamin supplements (sounds good to me)

Being mixed race Chinese, and being raised in Canada has meant that I don’t know how to speak Mandarin or Cantonese. I took Mandarin lessons when I was 12, once a week, to great failure. Knowing how to say “well behaved cat” isn’t going to get me anywhere. Mao guai, fyi.

So recently, I’ve decided to act on my desire and need to learn Mandarin. I received an email saying that a small private company is holding a free information session downtown about the Mandarin speaking classes they offer, and decided to go.

I just didn’t think it through.

For me the act of going to this lecture on Mandarin is a journey of reconnection with a lost language of mine, or more accurately, an absent language, that is both part of who I am, and something I’ve never had access to.

On a very cold Saturday morning in late January, I found myself waiting outside the 215 Spadina building. There were two white people there, a man and a woman, also waiting. The moment I saw them I realized, I just didn’t think it through, did I? I had imagined, in my fantasy world, that other Chinese people would be there. I know a number of Chinese women in my feminist and activist circles that speak only one or the other of Mandarin and Cantonese, or neither, and over the years some of us have talked about learning one or both of these languages.

–WRONG!–

–BUZZZZZ!–

“Thanks for playing, Maysie, we have some lovely parting gifts for you.”

So the first thing I notice is the entitlement. Yes it’s cold, yes our instructor, RanRan, is late. Calm down people! “Where is she?” “Oh it’s so cold!” “She’s late!”

Dear god spare me from the imperialist entitlement of the lo fan*.

Someone let us into the lobby, where at least the lovely smell of the plants in the bio wall was able to calm me, as I braced for the upcoming hour and a half. It didn’t occur to me to leave, even knowing what a chore it would be emotionally, because I want this for myself, this is an important first step.

RanRan arrived, and we zipped upstairs to the 4th floor, to the new and expanded Centre for Social Innovation space. As we hung up our coats I told Ranran that I wanted to learn, being part Chinese, and having taken lessons a very long time ago.

After we sat down (it was a small class, just the three of us “students” and Ranran the teacher), she asked the couple what was their interest in learning Mandarin. The husband spoke.

“We’re going to be travelling to China and we want to be able to speak and read the language. We’re going to be staying for a few months, I have some business there as well, and we want to experience the real culture. We wont be staying in hotels or anything like that.”

Oh. Shit.

My teeth were going dry from the fake half smile stuck on my face. 

RanRan, however, was a professional. Plus, I was beginning to realize, this is her student demographic! She teaches people like this all the live-long day! She has to be nice to them!

It gets worse.

I asked RanRan how long she had been in Canada and she said 5 years, in Vancouver, Montreal and now Toronto. She then went on to say that because Toronto has so many immigrants, it’s not like real Canadian culture. She supposed that she’d have to go outside Toronto, to a smaller city or town, to experience this.

I guessed that she had heard this from some of her other dumb ass lo fan students.

The man, who was doing most of the talking of all of us, agreed. The woman nodded, then said “Oh yes, there are so many cultures in Toronto. You can get any kind of food you like, from anywhere in the world, right here!” 

Because of course, that’s what “many different cultures” meant to them: the food they can eat.

Shit. All.

So the lessons proceeded. We learned a few phrases, learned a few pictograms. The man made ongoing annoying comments such as “Oh, that makes sense, yes, ‘mountain’, I see!”. I had forgotten what idiot white men (IWM) are like, given that I have none of them in my life.

(For the record, R, my partner, is SO not an idiot white man. He tries and learns and gets that he has to struggle to understand his privilege, for, like, ever, and try to understand what it all means and what he can do about it.) 

Then we get to the word “family”, which RanRan explains is the word for house/home, looking like a roof, with the word for an animal, pig, inside it. Meaning a place where people and animals live; family. 

IWM then says: 

“My coworker who’s Korean told me that the word for trouble is the word for house with two women inside it. Ha ha ha!”

As he said the word “Korean” RanRan looked at him with confusion, since OF COURSE, Korean isn’t anything like Mandarin. At least, for anyone who’s not a doofus racist idiot fuckwad.

When he got to the “punch” line, and as he chuckled, his wife and RanRan giggled. He looked over at me, smiling. I narrowed my eyes and him. I set my mouth in a firm line, not smiling, and gave him a steady glare of “I got the joke. It isn’t fucking funny” and held his gaze until he looked away. Sadly, I didn’t say anything. If I had said anything I would have had to leave.

But what I would have said, the mildest comment I could have made, would have been this:

“It’s incredible to me that a man in a roomful of women can make a sexist joke and expect women to laugh.”

One notch up would have been:

“Sexist AND racist? Well, China’s in for quite a treat when you head over there, isn’t it, oh, superior white man?”

I got out of there at the end of the session, while the couple lingered, needing to get out and on the streets of Chinatown. Had some dim sum at Noble Seafood Restaurant and felt better. 

* lo fan: one of several words used in Chinese to describe white people.