![\"A](\"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/Sharn-Image-1-e1619291298474-500x384.jpeg\")
A submitted photo of Sharanjit Kaur Sandhra from Sandhra.<\/p><\/div>\n
As a researcher at the University of the Fraser Valley, Olivia Daniels has noticed a divide between the white and brown students. A post made this year saying that there were \u201ctoo many immigrants at UFV\u2019 was met with a disturbing amount of support online, spurring Black Connections, a UFV-based group for supporting Black culture and excellence, to respond on their Facebook page, she recalls.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n That online hate looked disturbingly similar to the racism she studied in old Abbotsford newspapers, she says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe scary thing is, as much as the talk against Asian people in this newspaper was a long time ago, it actually sounds a lot like the criticism of South Asian People in Abbotsford, especially at UFV.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI think if the town were more mindful of their own history, maybe they could feel pressure to change for the good of others.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n She says these harmful ideologies must be disrupted so they aren\u2019t passed down to younger generations as they have been.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThis concern of too many people coming in from a foreign place sounds like a lot of the same feelings people felt back then. White people were angry in the 1920s because they thought Asian immigrants were stealing work from white people, and that\u2019s something we still hear today,\u201d she says. \u201cMaybe people today aren\u2019t going out and burning crosses, doing it so overtly, but it\u2019s all microaggressions at this point, and that may be harder to identify.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In a 2015 article for Vox, journalist Jen\u00e9e Desmond-Harris wrote that \u201cmicroaggressions are more than just insults, insensitive comments, or generalized jerky behavior.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n They're something very specific: the kinds of remarks, questions, or actions that are painful because they have to do with a person's membership in a group that's discriminated against or subject to stereotypes. And a key part of what makes them so disconcerting is that they happen casually, frequently, and often without any harm intended, in everyday life.<\/span><\/p>\n Psychologist Derald W. Sue, who's written two books on microaggressions, defines the term as \"The everyday slights, indignities, put downs and insults that people of color, women, LGBT populations or those who are marginalized experiences in their day-to-day interactions with people.\"<\/span><\/p>\n Saying \u201cwhere are you from?\u201d or \u201cyou speak good English\u201d can sound like \u201cYou are a foreigner,\u201d and \u201cYou don\u2019t belong here.\u201d Saying \u201cI don\u2019t see race\u201d denies a person of colour\u2019s experiences and essentially assimilates them into the dominant culture. These are just a few examples of microaggressions.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Although the Abbotsford Heritage Society did issue a statement in recognition of some of these facts, Daniels says the phrasing makes it seem like it was a one time thing \u2014\u00a0an exception to the norm in the city. Her paper strongly opposes that, instead arguing that \u201cthis was a recurring thing the community liked to do and spoke highly of, and there would be hundreds of people that would show up.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThat was something that was very alarming to me when I read it: At one of the lectures that were held, there were hundreds of people that showed up. At the festival, it was a couple hundred people, so these were popular, mainstream events. It\u2019s definitely not a one-time incident,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cOnce Canada was really into the fight against Nazis [during World War II], I suspect a lot of the client support went down.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Yet we still feel the repercussions of this history today, where white supremacy survives in different, harder-to-see forms.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Rajnish Dhawan is an associate professor with the department of English at UFV and a playwright. He distinguishes two types of racism he's seen at work: hate-based and ignorance-based.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The latter is more common in his experience. For example, people who don't know he has a PhD will ask him if he's a recent immigrant from India or why he's good at speaking English. Once, another teacher asked him if he was a student while he was eating lunch in the faculty lounge \u2014 as a nearly 50-year-old man. In the classroom, students have complained about the Vaisakhi parade, letters to the editor express concern about Vaisakhi, but never the Christmas parade. The list could go on, says Dhawan.<\/span><\/p>\n \"We still think of the colonial as normal, and colonial is by default white, so the Christmas Parade is fine. Unless that normalization is redefined, we will continue to see this,\" he says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Part of the reason why racist microaggressions like this are still so common in the Valley is because it's segregated, Dhawan says. The line that separates West (brown) Abbotsford from East (white) Abbotsford is arbitrary and racially motivated, he says. In response, he encourages people to be more curious and open about one another's cultures and belief systems.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \"There is no avenue for intercultural exchange. We are doing this, but we are very small,\" he says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n He wants the Abbotsford council to invest in supporting artists of colour to increase their visibility and affirm their value on a systemic level.<\/span><\/p>\n \"This is the first step in terms of intercultural inter community dialogue. Once you start talking, you become comfortable. There is so much misperception about people of color that can be easily erased with a little bit of promotion of art and culture,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThink about something like that where the communities come and laugh together, cry together, share stories together, not like those multicultural festivals where the only thing about India is about dancing and fighting. We need complex themes in terms of art, in terms of music, in terms of going beyond the stereotyping.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cGet rid of tokenism, get rid of stereotyping, and get to the essence of art and culture.``\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Folks in Abbotsford should also try to understand other belief systems like Sikhism and Buddhism, since they coexist already in the city. He sees Abbotsford as a \u201cBible Belt\u201d where religion is a primary concern for most residents. With that in mind, he says, people of all faiths need to learn to respect one another.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \"Nobody's asking you to convert your religion or anything, but just go there once in a while and invite us to the church, too,\" he says. \"Here I went to church once initially and the whole sermon was about denigrating the other face and telling people that this is the real one. That needs to change at the community level. You be good with your religion. Other people are good with other religions. The people who don't believe in religion, let them be good with that. Learn from them and teach them, and that would be over with,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Canada\u2019s education system also has a part to play in the racism in Abbotsford, and across the country, and it\u2019s important to remember that generations of students have been taught whitewashed histories. Educational materials on Abbotsford\u2019s history largely exclude people of colour aside from irregular documentations which exist mostly to frame white settlers as generous patrons to more recent immigrants \u2014\u00a0for example, when Mennonite-owned businesses made donations of lumber to build the Gur Sikh Temple.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The vice president of Black Connections, a club at UFV that fosters a greater community for Black people in Abbotsford, Marc Forcier is focused on reforming the education system. He says there needs to be more Black history in K-12 curriculum everywhere in Canada, including in Abbotsford. He wants to become a teacher so he can shape those curricula himself and act as a role model for Black students.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIn terms of war\u00a0 and how much we learn about that in social studies or history class, Black erasure is completely there, but Black Canadians and Black Americans also fought in World War Two \u2026 So how about we start including that in the curriculum, too?\u201d he asks.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cBut no, because you want to continue on these narratives that we the majority group kicked ass with no help. That's just such a lie. It does no good for students not to tell the truth, especially students of color. Because though we go through the regular curriculum, we're asking ourselves so many more questions: Just how this can be the truth, but we're not a part of the truth? At least that's a question, as a student, I'd asked myself in those classes.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n He was constantly othered at school growing up, which didn\u2019t change when he started going to the University of Victoria.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI remember going to one of my first year courses at UVic. African American history was the course. And I remember one of the assignments, we'd have to spend about 30 minutes or something on a website that discussed lynchings and how lynchings were a public or social event. You'd bring your friends out to the lynching, and then you would take photos, and then you would send those photos of lynched Black bodies to your friends, so I had to sit through a class and the only Black student in that class at university. Though hard, I'm happy I learned it because I didn't know about it. Because my high school never taught me about it. I feel like you should get a whiff of that kind of information in high school, and I was never taught that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n In 1804, Haiti had a revolution and became the only slave nation to defeat its masters in the history of slavery. He would have loved to learn about that, and wants children in the system now to have access to that history so they\u2019re empowered.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe Haitian Revolution that is not taught about in history books? You tell me about that at age eight, I'm going to be empowered by my people, but there's a dominant narrative going on and it's the white narrative,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cFor Black people, there's no point in a past that's good unless you go to pre European colonial aspects. Before the Arabic slave trade, maybe that might be a good time for us, but all that history is lost or stolen and hidden somewhere.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The City let Black Connections down this year, says Forcier. They had a partnership with City Studio where the club would create a public Black Lives Matter mural in Abbotsford, but that never happened. The mural was supposed to be on the ground permanently, but at the last meeting before the artists went forward, the deal changed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe'd have this Black Lives Matter mural there for two months, and then after that, we'd have panel discussions, kind of some surveys, blah, blah, blah, to figure out if the community wanted and\/or needed a Black Lives Matter mural in Abbotsford. So at that point, we just pulled our club out of it. I discussed it with the President, and we were just like, \u2018We're out. We were brought on with the understanding that it was going to be a permanent mural. That was made clear at the very beginning. I just sent an email to the organizers, really just telling them how I felt that this is an insult.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Forcier was the only person of colour on the board for this mural project, which he says was otherwise constituted by \u201cwanting to do good women.\u201d But Black Lives Matter is not a message that\u2019s up for debate, Forcier says.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cHow am I supposed to return to my community, like members of my community, my team really, and tell them, \u2018Hey, I know I pushed so hard to have us join this group so we can get this mural. And I know you guys all said don't do it. And you are right.\u2019 You have to have some hope. You're like, \u2018This group might be the one to actually see something through. We're gonna see things through because we need it. And we're not going to let others stop us but we do need the help of others too.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYou agree, or you don't. Also it's not in a blatantly obvious place, so don't feel threatened about us saying a message about caring for people.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Allison Gutrath is the diversity education programs supervisor at Archway Community Services. Under that role, she provides project management for the local immigration partnership project, a program focused on creating a welcoming and inclusive community within Abbotsford for newcomers who are living in Canada. She also works on Archway\u2019s Resilience BC projects, which are related to their Fraser Valley Human Dignity Commission, a group dedicated to doing anti-racism work in the community.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Archway accepts reports from people who have experienced racism and discrimination through online submission, phone, or email. After submissions are made, they follow up with the people who sent it in to see which type of support, resources, and referrals they need. Then they track those incidents and share them with the provincial government.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Gutrath has been working in the diversity education program for over 20 years, and has seen racist hate crimes ebb and flow during that time. At the beginning of 2020, she noticed a rise in anti-Asian racism. They started getting more reports from people who felt targeted by racial slurs and racist notices posted around the city, which continued into the spring. With the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement in May, things started to change. Archway saw a significant increase in the number of the reports they were receiving \u2014 about eight in a two week period from the end of May to the middle of June. The rate has \u201cdropped off somewhat\u201d since then, which Gutrath hopes is due to more community support and anti-racism education.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI think most newcomers who come to Abbotsford, generally speaking, are having positive experiences,\u201d she says. \u201cThere are definitely times, though, where people who are newcomers are experiencing racism and also just exclusion, right? It\u2019s difficult for someone who\u2019s new to fit in either with cultural barriers or language barriers.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWithin Abbotsford, in the past 10 to 15 years or so, there has been this development of racism towards the West side of Abbotsford, where it\u2019s mostly South Asian people and families. I\u2019ve heard racist comments that realtors will tell people who are buying a house, \u2018You don\u2019t want to buy over there,\u2019 and so there is some significant racism that\u2019s happening around people\u2019s perceptions of different parts of our community, of different neighbourhoods, and at the same time that\u2019s not true. Not everyone living on one street speaks a certain ethnicity or language, and not all people of a certain ethnicity are newcomers either.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>\u201cI\u2019ve heard that many times from a lot of different people, these comments about the west side of Abbotsford, but it seems that they don\u2019t ever have any sort of attribution. They\u2019re usually just loose whisperings in the wind. It\u2019s hard to figure out what the source of these things is, and that\u2019s really the intention.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Naming white supremacy in Abbotsford is crucial, advocates say. That can start with residents and culminate in meaningful change, she says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n This series is by no means an exhaustive list of every incident that has contributed to that history. Instead, it is a reflection led by community experts in relevant areas of expertise, meant to be part of CIVL\u2019s ongoing dedication to anti-racist coverage.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Aly Laube As a researcher at the University of the Fraser Valley, Olivia Daniels has noticed a divide between the white and brown students. A post made this year saying that there were \u201ctoo many immigrants at UFV\u2019 was met with a disturbing amount of support online, spurring Black Connections, a UFV-based group for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":54,"featured_media":50941,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[57,219,3265,225],"tags":[2761,7906,7882,4235,7903,7908,7883,597,1739,3681,7904,7886,7852,7905,5867,708,7888,7907],"radio":[1377],"origine":[1372,280,231],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50938"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/54"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50938\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50938"},{"taxonomy":"radio","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/radio?post=50938"},{"taxonomy":"origine","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/origine?post=50938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}