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Microaggressions of the Week #1

In Spanish class we were learning the phrase, “donde es” (where are you from) and each student answered with a city or town name.  I answered “Westport” and the teacher stopped me to explain the phrase means, “where do you hail from, as in where were you born.”

Oh.

Interesting how he interrupted me, the obviously non-American looking person in the room. Nobody else was questioned about her origins. Granted I was born in Taiwan, but emigrated as a toddler and sound as Amurikan as the blue-eyed blond woman next to me.

Ever the perpetual foreigner.

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L'Shana Tovah!

Happy Jew Year! (early, because I’ll be at services when the sun actually goes down.) May it be a sweet year for you all.

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The Bank of Canada purged the image of an Asian-looking woman from its new $100 banknotes after focus groups raised questions about her ethnicity.

The original image intended for the reverse of the plastic polymer banknotes, which began circulating last November, showed an Asian-looking woman scientist peering into a microscope.

The image, alongside a bottle of insulin, was meant to celebrate Canada’s medical innovations.

But eight focus groups consulted about the proposed images for the new $5, $10, $20, $50 and $100 banknote series were especially critical of the choice of an Asian for the largest denomination.

“Some have concerns that the researcher appears to be Asian,” says a 2009 report commissioned by the bank from The Strategic Counsel, obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act.

“Some believe that it presents a stereotype of Asians excelling in technology and/or the sciences. Others feel that an Asian should not be the only ethnicity represented on the banknotes. Other ethnicities should also be shown.”

A few even said the yellow-brown colour of the $100 banknote reinforced the perception the woman was Asian, and “racialized” the note.

The bank immediately ordered the image redrawn, imposing a “neutral” ethnicity for the woman scientist who, now stripped of her “Asian” features, appears on the circulating note. Her light features appear to be Caucasian.

“The original image was not designed or intended to be a person of a particular ethnic origin,” bank spokesman Jeremy Harrison said in an interview, citing policy that eschews depictions of ethnic groups on banknotes.

“But obviously when we got into focus groups, there was some thought the image appeared to represent a particular ethnic group, so modifications were made.”

Harrison declined to provide a copy of the original image, produced by a design team led by Jorge Peral of the Canadian Bank Note Co.

Nor would he indicate what specific changes were made to the woman researcher’s image to give her a so-called “neutral,” non-ethnic look. He said the images were “composites” rather than depicting any specific individual. 

The Strategic Counsel conducted the October 2009 focus groups in Calgary, Toronto, Montreal and Fredericton, at a cost of $53,000.

The Toronto groups were positive about the image of an Asian woman because “it is seen to represent diversity or multiculturalism.”

In Quebec, however, “the inclusion of an Asian without representing any other ethnicities was seen to be contentious.”

One person in Fredericton commented: “The person on it appears to be of Asian descent which doesn’t rep(resent) Canada. It is fairly ugly.”

Mu-Qing Huang, a Chinese-Canadian who has peered into microscopes for biology courses at the University of Toronto, called the bank’s decision a “huge step back.”

“The fact that an Asian woman’s features were introduced to the bill … I think itself is a huge step forward in achieving true multiculturalism in Canada,” Huang, 24, said in an interview in Ottawa.

“But the fact that the proposal was rejected represents a huge step back.”

She said the “overly sensitive” decision to remove the Asian features suggests prejudice against visible minorities persists in Canada.

“If Canada is truly multicultural and thinks that all cultural groups are equal, then any visible minority should be good enough to represent a country, including (someone with) Asian features.”

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a change for the better

She told me, more than once: ”We didn’t have kids like these here, before.” 

In fact, that statement is mostly true. In perception, it is absolutely. 

My district is in a town built on white flight; on one side, it’s bordered by a river some seemed to imagine a moat. In decades past, families moved there to escape those who were different or at least their imagined ghost. But time has moved on, and the suburbs have raced westward, and the old town that was for a time a new refuge is becoming a version of what some of those citizens once fled. That’s why, frankly, there was a job for me out there. 

Perhaps you can imagine what that slow transition’s been like, what with the gradually growing numbers of Those People and their kids, what with the path to the present lined with assumptions and attitudes and fear. 

But this is a different story. Or at least a different conclusion. A teacher who for twenty-some-odd years had never had a student who spoke a different language at home managed to bring an open mind and heart to the end of her career— as it should be but sometimes isn’t. She had the first of my students in that building, and though she was nervous, in the end, she was delighted. After she retired, she became my enthusiastic sub, mostly just for the chance to talk to them. 

This spring, as I may have mentioned, she’s helped me help the senior who intends to go to college this fall. She took her for testing; she showed that nervous, new driver easier routes. When I couldn’t go to commencement, she went, even offering to pick up the girl’s family in the city to make sure they were there.  She took pictures, and even had them printed, and even mailed copied to me so I’d have them to put up on the board that is the graphic organizer of my career. 

This isn’t an ending, I don’t expect. But it is certainly happy. 

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Got my @BadPortraits. Sooo Bad!

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Applies to so many of us - just replace the word, E-MAIL, with 'tumblr'.

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Amberas Wellmann.

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Ancient squid and Sea animals by Jili Pollo

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For every view of this video, Shaw will donate $1 and Campbell Canada will donate 1 pound of food to local Food Banks, up to $250,000 and 250,000 pounds.

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Gwen asked: Yo, this photo is from a dessert place in Portland, Oregon advertising an event called “Dim Sum Yum Yum” where you sample a bunch of different desserts. Leaving aside the stupid name (the connection to dim sum is tenuous at best; there’s not even a cart!) this is ridiculously racist. So yes, I know the answer already, but I want the satisfaction of reading your response. P.S. U CUTE

INT BREAK ROOM, THE STAFF IS GATHERED FOR A MEETING MANAGER Ok, so we’re agreed then, we’ll go with Dim Sum Yum Yum. * General buzz of approval from the employees. Slowly, one hand goes up near the back of the room * WAITER Sir? MANAGER Great job everyone. Dim Sum Yum Yum, ha! WAITER Sir? MANAGER Oh, yes? WAITER Are you sure Dim Sum Yum Yum is… chinky enough? * Amused snickering throughout the room * MANAGER What are you talking about, of course it’s chinky enough! What more could we possibly do?!?! WAITER Well… it’s just that I got this hat…

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I definitely was inspired by the Shit White Girls Say…..To Black Girls vid, and I kind of want to make this a video as well. All the following things have been said to me by white American non Muslim friends. It’s not cute, it’s not funny and it’s…

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This is straight-up Islamophobia. Especially since the ‘citizenship oath’ ceremony is purely formalistic — the prospective citizen has already jumped through all the substantive hurdles.

It is simply a form of forced assimilation at this point … so that even when it really doesn’t matter, the white Christian nation will force all others to conform to its particular vision of what ‘normal’ is, just because it can.

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Muslim women will no longer be able to cover their faces as they take Canadian citizenship after the country’s immigration minister announced a ban on anyone wearing the niqab – the face veil – or burqa – full body and face covering – while taking the oath of citizenship.

He said that he had received complaints from citizenship judges who had claimed that it was difficult to ensure that individuals whose faces were covered were actually reciting the oath.

“They told me last month that it’s a fairly common problem. Every week, in every region of the country, we’re dealing with situations where applicants arrive with a veil on,” said Jason Kenney, the minister of citizenship and immigration.

“Frankly, I found it bizarre that the rules allowed people to take the oath with a veil on.”

He added that the move was also not simply a practical measure, saying: “It is a matter of deep principle that goes to the heart of our identity and our values of openness and equality.”

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European Member of Parliament Takes Her Baby To Work…… Licia Ronzulli, an MEP from Italy, took her seven-week old daughter Victoria to work at the European parliament this week at Strasbourg.She kept her baby carefully cradled against her in a sling and occasionally leant to kiss her on the forehead. Photographs of Ronzulli cradling her daughter in a sling as she voted on proposals to improve women’s employment rights were broadcast around the world and published in newspapers from the US to Vietnam.

A very powerful image. Women’s employment rights are pretty dismal, especially here in the states, especially when it comes to family and maternity leave. 

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