The Anti-Racism International Youth Writing Contest offers youth around the world the opportunity to define and lead conversations about racism at a personal and political level. The Asian Institute spoke to Wan Li and Chan-Min Roh, the two Contemporary Asian Studies students who initiated the contest, to learn more about the background of the project and what they learned in the process.
Asian Institute: Welcome! Let’s begin with brief introductions. Please tell us more about what you’re studying and how you began working together.
Chan-Min Roh: I’m heading into my fourth and final year, majoring in Contemporary Asian Studies and minoring in Asian Canadian Studies and South Asian Studies. I first got involved with the Asian Institute through opportunities like the Insights through Asia Challenge (ITAC) and the Richard Charles Lee Asian Pathways Lab (RCL-APRL).
Wan Li: I’m an incoming fourth year student majoring in Contemporary Asian Studies and Human Geography. My first deep involvement with the Asian Institute was also through ITAC, which is when Chan and I began working together on a research project. That collaboration eventually led us to this project—the Anti-Racism International Youth Writing Contest.
AI: Would you please summarize the Anti-Racism International Youth Writing Contest in a few sentences?
WL: It’s a youth-led writing contest for youth! The contest is a platform for youths aged 14 to 21 located anywhere in the world to share their perspectives on the quote, “We have always lived in a pandemic of racism.” The prompt asks youth to reflect on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on racism, while also pointing to the ways systematic and individual forms of racism prevailed long before the COVID virus.
CMR: Adding on to this, it is a call for youths to examine their identities, stories, and relations to the events and communities around them.
AI: Can you tell us more about what prompted this initiative and the wider context it grew out of?
WL: It started when I initially came across an article about increased instances of racism, xenophobia, and how racism was being visibilized in certain ways through the pandemic. It made me wonder what this experience was like for different people. I’m always a fan of hearing youth voices and more generally the perspectives of those who may not necessarily have access to dominant platforms.
I also happen to be an international student. I come from Malaysia, and when I arrived to Canada I found the concept “People of Colour,” for example, very interesting. I pushed to make the contest “international” in order to explore the varied, nuanced meanings of racism. In North America, I think there’s a very specific way in which it’s framed, and for other parts of the world the context is very different.
CMR: In addition to the rise of anti-Asian violence and conflicts within North America and within Western societies—something that I felt impacted me and my family personally as Asian Canadians—at that time, I was part of the Hart House Debates and Dialogues Committee, and I had a real interest in the medium of dialogue to foster conversations among youths. Our Committee ended up hosting an event with the celebrated author Joy Kogawa. The event inspired me to think about the medium of writing, of communicating through literature and words to convey messages that offer hope and resistance in contrast to more destructive narratives that really threaten people’s bodily autonomy and psychological well-being.
AI: Can you tell us more about the importance of centring youth perspectives through the contest?
WL: I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of unlearning. I don’t know exactly how to put it, but I feel there’s a set logic to a lot of writings and talks that come from experts who have the most knowledge and connections and who may be older. I think we need to unlearn a lot of what we assume to be true, and young people have a lot of value to offer in sharing their perspectives. Sure, maybe they haven’t written a thesis on the topic, but listening to their experiences and listening to their observations and the way they view the world can be so generative.
CMR: To add on to this, that’s why we made the contest available and accessible to everyone, not specifically Asian students or people of a particular background or upbringing. We wanted to encourage a multiplicity of perspectives, to hear how different people view this topic through lived experience. Youth are an interesting group to hear from because we ourselves are youth, and we find ourselves conflicted, perhaps feeling caught between generations with different ideas. For me personally, the fruits of immigrants and people who came to Canada earlier as migrants from abroad are being sown in this upcoming generation of young people who, like me for example, are growing up as both Korean and Canadian. I think it’s a really interesting time to have conversations with people our age who are in a spot that perhaps older generations of their family weren’t in.
AI: You have a team of peer reviewers involved in the project who participated in a training workshop with the RCL-APRL. Can you tell us more about why you wanted to involve a larger team in the contest?
CMR: Through the course of our planning, we realized that we would require the support of a team in reviewing essays. Also, for people who didn’t want to write an essay, the peer reviewer role is another way to engage and contribute to the discourse. We thought that it would be appropriate for students and people around our age to have input in the evaluation process rather than it be exclusively from people that are a bit older.
AI: In addition to your team of peer reviewers, you’ve also recruited a panel of finalist judges. Can you tell us more about them?
WL: We were very mindful in picking our candidates and inviting them into an adjudication capacity. For instance, Professor Takashi Fujitani, was one of the first people we reached out to. I thought of Professor Fujitani for a few reasons. Firstly, I took one of his courses, and I really loved it. The course was a nuanced look at colonialism, not in an American context, but specifically on Japan along with considering more nuanced ideas of racism in the context of Asia. I thought that was fascinating. Secondly, I know he has a strong passion for solidarity and doing a lot of community and advocacy work on racism in general. I think these values are aligned. We approached him, and he kindly accepted the invitation, and we’re immensely grateful!
We also recruited Natasha Deen who is a youth writer. In choosing our judges, we looked for them to bring lived experience of their intersectional identities that may not be as well represented in other competitions. This was another way to build heterogenous perspectives into the opportunity.
CMR: I would build on what Wan Li said, adding that the identities of the judges themselves, their stories and how their work and career pathways were shaped by their identities, were really important for us. We wanted to make sure we had finalist judges who could serve as inspirations or role models for applicants, by highlighting people who have succeeded in their craft and their work.
In addition to Professor Fujitani and Natasha Deen, we are thrilled to have Professor Jasmine Zine involved. Professor Zine recently published a great work on the rise of Islamophobia following the 9/11 attacks. We’re also delighted to have Canadian authors Angel Di Zhang and Farzana Doctor serving as finalist judges. While we hope to extend the reach of the contest by involving these judges, we also wanted to highlight their work in a way that is hopefully reciprocally supportive.
AI: What have you learned in the process of organizing the contest?
CMR: I’ve been so encouraged by the responses we’ve gotten. Hearing from youth in parts of the world far away, seeing questions, seeing people follow our Instagram account, seeing universities share out materials on their own websites, seeing that sort of support and engagement with what we worked on has been really rewarding and encouraging.
I also learned that, like two sides of a coin, it’s really a collective effort to get something like this off the ground. It takes far more than two people to make it work, but if you look for interested people willing to get involved, help is readily available. I think that there’s a lot of excitement and engagement that’s waiting for people who are interested in doing something like this. As much as you will need the support of others, that support, I think, is there for you if you look for it, if you persist in reaching out and requesting that help.
This project has taught me a lot about working with other people—the importance of collaboration. It’s something that I realized is so valuable, and it’s something that I overlooked previously.
WL: I like what Chan said about the learning experience. I learned that connections are the most important thing, and I don’t think I took that very seriously until this experience.
I think working on this project taught me to listen, to ask for consensus, and to really not prioritize a project outcome over your team members. I learned about other people’s working styles and to be open and honest about any mistakes.