Unmasking Anti-Asian Racism from Multiple Perspectives: Working Towards Epistemic Justice

COVID-19 has exposed another pandemic of racism, especially extreme forms of anti-Black racism and anti-Indigenous racism. Further, anti-Asian racism have been brought to new heights with the racialization of the virus leading to numerous racist incidents. The March 2021 massacre of eight people in Atlanta spas, of which six of them Asian women, exposed the close link between the exotification of Asian women and white male violence as manifestations of white supremacy.

This roundtable consists of Asian Canadian and Asian American faculty members and students. First, the organizer will give a brief overview of the historic context of anti-Asian racism in Canada, including the state-led structural violence and collective activism that has addressed these injustices.

The first presenter will discuss how Asian Canadian youth and parents experience anti-Asian racism in Canada, which is often invisible and 'sneaky.' The contributors to anti-Asian racism as well as its impact on youth mental health and identify development will be discussed, followed by challenges and strategies that can help address anti-Asian racism from youth and parent perspectives.

The second presenter will discuss how anti-Asian racism in Canada is shaped through a conceptual top-down framework that includes global postcolonial context, Canadian multiculturalism, as well as intergroup interactions. This speaker will then reflect on how social workers can combat anti-Asian racism and promote the well-being of Asian Canadian communities.

The third presenter will discuss an anti-Asian racist incident on the university campus and Asian international students' activism addressing it. Through conducting social media discourse analysis and a focus group with these activists, the presenter will discuss how the discourses from both the host and home countries jointly impact Asian students and the advocacy, and how the activists make sense of their advocacy as a coping mechanism against anti-Asian racism.

The fourth presenter will reflect upon participatory action research with Bengali women and Tibetan refugees living in the Greater Toronto Area who work together to understand and resist social, economic, and political marginalization. They will consider how collective action can foster individual, community, and transformative resilience to oppressive conditions that stem from racial capitalism, gender inequality, imperialism, and patriarchal state sovereignty, while creating space to imagine decolonial futures.

The last speaker will provide a sociopolitical perspective on the epistemology of knowledge, power, and isms to tie these presentations together. Epistemic justice is a foundation of all types of justice/equity. It refers to one's capacity to know that their own experience is to be recognized as a credible conveyor of knowledge or owner of their experiences. The speaker will elaborate on how silencing and dismissing the experience of racism in individual and systemic levels is fundamentally wrong to human values.

Finally, the attendees will be invited to respond to the presentations and share their experiences. While this roundtable will focus specifically on anti-Asian racism, our premise is that all forms of racism and intersecting oppressions are connected to uphold white supremacy. We will be reflecting on the ways in which we can collectively work towards liberation for all.