{"id":91651,"date":"2024-03-19T17:41:58","date_gmt":"2024-03-19T21:41:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=91651"},"modified":"2024-03-19T17:41:58","modified_gmt":"2024-03-19T21:41:58","slug":"brock-researcher-explores-racial-discrimination-faced-by-chinese-canadian-youth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2024\/03\/brock-researcher-explores-racial-discrimination-faced-by-chinese-canadian-youth\/","title":{"rendered":"Brock researcher explores racial discrimination faced by Chinese Canadian youth"},"content":{"rendered":"

From slurs to stereotypes, Brock expert Dan Cui has found that today\u2019s young Chinese Canadians report forms of racial discrimination in every aspect of their lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe racism experienced by Chinese Canadian youth is maintained and reproduced at school, within family, in media and in other social institutions,\u201d says the Associate Professor in the Department of Child and Youth Studies.<\/p>\n

Cui, who has done extensive research on racial discrimination against Asian Canadians, hopes to shed light on the findings as the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination nears on Thursday, March 21. She\u00a0is the author of\u00a0Identity and Belonging Among Chinese Canadian Youth<\/a><\/em>, an in-depth look at how racial discrimination affects young people in the Chinese community.<\/p>\n

Cui says the research participants she worked with \u2014 who lived in Alberta and ranged in age from 15 to 24 \u2014 reported being excluded from group work, bullied about food at lunch hour and deliberately targeted for rough treatment during physical education classes by fellow students at school.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor Chinese students, academic excellency did not bring them respect from their peers, but marginalization and bullying because they\u2019re treated as unfair competitors,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Participants also shared with Cui that students were not the only perpetrators of negative stereotypes \u2014 outdated textbooks and teacher attitudes can play a major role in reinforcing negative perceptions of Chinese people and culture in Canadian schools.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough Chinese is one of the largest ethnic groups in Canada and early Chinese immigrants made a significant contribution to Canada\u2019s nation-building, participants indicated that they learned little history about Chinese immigrants in Canada and that textbooks had negative, out-of-date and biased descriptions of China,\u201d says Cui. \u201cParticipants also reported the silencing of Chinese student voices trying to share their real experiences of China.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cui found that the concept of racialized habitus, which refers to the way racist ideas are internalized and shape behaviour, helps explain the experiences that were shared by the young participants who took part in her research.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf there is racism deeply embedded in social structures, it affects everyone\u2019s ways of thinking and being, including Chinese youth, and creates a whole package of biased assumptions,\u201d says Cui. \u201cChinese youth may then reinforce a belief in their racial inferiority and reproduce racial inequality by looking down upon their immigrant parents or newcomer peers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cui says it is important to remember that \u201cdiscrimination does not only happen as inter-group oppression, but also functions as intra-group exclusion within the Chinese community.\u201d<\/p>\n

To address these concerns, Cui calls for awareness and allyship.<\/p>\n

\u201cChinese Canadian youth are not simply victims \u2014 they show agency and resistance when they bravely voice their opinions in fighting against racism,\u201d she says. \u201cI hope for critical reflection, building allyship and solidarity and collaboratively fighting social injustice so that we can build bridges rather than walls.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From slurs to stereotypes, Brock expert Dan Cui has found that today\u2019s young Chinese Canadians report forms of racial discrimination in every aspect of their lives.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":91653,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1,5,38],"tags":[13357,522,6436],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91651"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91651"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91652,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91651\/revisions\/91652"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}