VANCOUVER—“Chink!” a man yelled to my face.

It was the second time I’d been called chink in Vancouver in a week.

My head rang as if someone was running the eponymous fish-butchering machine, Iron Chink, inside my head. The Iron Chink is a symbol of anti-Chinese racism. It was invented in the 1900s, said to replace Chinese labourers, and became widely popular in West Coast canneries.

Being born and raised in Vancouver, surrounded by East Asian people for the majority of my life, it’s sometimes easy for me to forget that Canada is not a post-racial society. Despite our sushi- and ramen-filled streets, despite being a city with its own Chinese Restaurant Awards, racism toward Asians, and specifically Chinese people, still exists in Vancouver today.

Incidents such as the recent viral video that showed a white woman in a Richmond parking lot yelling at a Chinese woman and her daughter to “go back to China” and other racial slurs serves as a stark reminder.

You may say: “But it’s just that one incident and that xenophobic woman is not representative of all Canadians!” Yet when I polled my ethnic Chinese friends to see whether anyone had encountered an overt racist or xenophobic incident in Vancouver similar to the one in the video, I received a handful of responses in no time.

One friend described a man who grabbed her by the arm on the bus aggressively asking “What are you?” and calling her “chink” after he followed her off the bus. Another friend said they were in a similar parking lot incident to the one seen in the video. Yet another said he recently witnessed people calling Chinese seniors “chinky chink chinks” on the bus.

I recognize that, as an East Asian and Chinese person in Vancouver, I enjoy a certain level of institutional and societal privilege relative to other marginalized ethnic groups. We’re not disproportionately policed like Black and Indigenous folks, nor do we face the level of violence faced by Muslims. This doesn’t mean that racism toward Chinese people doesn’t occur or that it’s not harmful.

A 2019 study published by the Pew Research Centre in the United States found that “Asians are more likely than any other group (Black, Hispanic or White) to say they have been subject to slurs or jokes because of their race or ethnicity.”

That doesn’t surprise me. I’ve been cat-called “Yellow,” “China doll,” “Asian sensation,” “Chi-chi-chi-chino” and other racial slurs from Vancouver to New Orleans to Cuba. And each time it happens, I have to watch out for my safety because I’m also a woman, leaving me subject to sexual harassment on top of racism.

Last year, a French all-white hip-hop band called “Chinese Man” performed in Vancouver. Apart from their clearly problematic name, they also use orientalist tropes such as yellowface (when a non-East Asian person dress up as an East Asian person) in their music videos and performances. When I and others protested that “Chinese Man” was racist, we encountered pushback from Vancouverites, even Chinese Canadians, telling us that it was just bad taste, not racism. If blackface and redface are defined as racist acts, why would Vancouverites consider yellowface just “offensive, but not racist”?

The comments section in the popular U.S. Asian Instagram account called @asiansneverdie might hold some answers. When they reposted the Richmond parking lot incident to their mostly American followers, comments such as “WHAT?! In Canada?” and “I thought Canadians were the nicest people on earth” poured in from Americans. Canadians followers distanced themselves with comments like “On behalf of Canadians, we don't claim her.”

Trudeau has done a great job reinforcing the “Canadians are the nicest people” image abroad with the slogan of “Diversity is our strength.” Canadian brands perpetuate the same “nice Canadian” image. For its Canada 150 marketing campaign, Roots celebrated our supposed niceness, complete with a search for Canada’s nicest person.

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With Trump in office, perhaps Canadians and the rest of the world want to take comfort in the feel-good marketing and wallow in a faux belief that Canada is a post-racial society.

Back in Vancouver, city council formally apologized recently for the historical discrimination toward Chinese people for acts such as restricting livelihoods and exclusion from voting. But the apology was only for the period from 1886 to 1949, which was when Chinese people gained suffrage in B.C. Although the apology was long due and Chinese people now enjoy privileges not available back then, the 1949 end date of the apology and the newfound privileges give a false sense that racism toward Chinese people has also ended in Vancouver, but that’s far from reality. The video of the racist parking lot incident is a reminder.

Canada is not a utopia of racial equality, and neither is Vancouver. Although more than a quarter of Vancouver’s population is now Chinese, Chinese people and Asians still face racism in various forms. Before we pat ourselves on the back for being nicer than Donald Trump, we should also remind ourselves of the history of the popular Iron Chink machine in B.C. and the sad fact that we’re still hearing its name on the streets of Vancouver today.

@melodyma Melody Ma is a civic and community advocate, writer and technology worker. She is also a contributing editor and writer for the Tyee. Twitter:

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