In the past decade alone, numerous fan-favourite books have gone from receiving public adoration to being utterly despised. Many critics of the best-selling novel The Help, in which a white woman depicts the lives of Black maids, have accused author Kathryn Stockett of perpetuating stereotypes and exploiting anti-Black racism, prompting[Read More…]
Tag: Race
On justice and mathematics
There is a passage in Plato’s //Meno// that goes something like this: The well-born Meno asks for proof of Socrates’ claim that no one is ever taught anything, and instead they recollect things they already know. Socrates calls over one of Meno’s enslaved attendants and asks the boy, who has[Read More…]
Changing the narrative
I have a go-to answer when someone asks how I speak English so well, despite it not being my mother tongue: “I consume a lot of Western media.” Despite the benefits of this habit, that short phrase also encompasses the constant struggle of disentangling my self-worth from the harmful messages[Read More…]
Meeting myself halfway
“Hi Halmoni,” I say, as I draw my Korean grandmother into an awkward, very loose, hug. “Hi say-quoi-yah,” she beams back at me, purple puffer jacket, tattooed eyebrows, and all. My grandparents are very predictable; Halmoni will measure herself against me and tell me I should enter Miss Universe; Haraboji[Read More…]
HSA webinar explores historical interconnections of race, religion, and resistance
The McGill History Students’ Association (HSA) and the McGill Office of Religious and Spiritual Life (MORSL) hosted a panel on March 18 that explored the interconnections between faith, race, and recent racial justice movements. The webinar was moderated by HSA Vice-President (VP) Academic and U4 Arts student Ffion Hughes, and[Read More…]
Learning to love my big nose
I love my big, crooked nose, but that hasn’t always been the case. The first time I was made aware of its size was when my aunt asked me if I had broken it. Her sentiment made me feel sick. I pushed aside my childhood ambitions of becoming a writer[Read More…]
It’s 2018, and STEM is still an uneven playing-field for women of colour
Concordia’s new Gina Cody School of Engineering and Computer Science is the first engineering faculty in Canada to bear a woman’s name. The faculty’s renaming stems from Cody’s $15 million donation, the largest individual donation given in Concordia’s history. While it’s refreshing to see a woman of colour earn such[Read More…]
National Geographic’s race cover story misconstrues multiraciality
When I first read Patricia Edmonds’ cover story on Millie and Marcia Biggs—half-black, half-white fraternal twins—for National Geographic’s April 2018 Race Issue, I felt conflicted. As a person of mixed race, with a father from Hong Kong and a mother of largely Scottish descent, I was happy for this family’s[Read More…]
Where are you from? In defence of seeing race
“Where are you from?” is a loaded question. At McGill, depending on who is asking and who is being asked, the meaning of ‘where are you from?’ can range from an ambivalent, ‘where did you grow up?’ to a watered down, ‘why aren’t you white?’ As a person of colour[Read More…]
Diversity unravelled
Growing up, I always knew I was different. As a Bangladeshi citizen who was born in Indonesia, I was atypical. As someone who attended the same international school for 11 years—where international schools are notorious for the amount of year to year turnover they see in their student bodies—I wasn’t[Read More…]
