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Call for participants: Komagata Maru Actor Call-out

May 8, 2012 • Julia Horel

Brown Canada is looking to audition actors for a series of vignettes based on the Komagata Maru incident and related themes of exclusion, questions of belonging and unspoken/unknown histories, among others. Firstly, we are looking for actors to either perform at different venues across the province: 4 performances across Toronto, and 5 outside of Toronto. These projects will be performed at various times from May to July 2012. We are also looking for actors to perform in our final performance, which will take place at the end of June.

Staff at CASSA would set up the performances and facilitate the community dialogues following the performances. We do have a small budget and can provide compensation for the development of the work and pay travel expenses for the actors.

Actor/Performer:
Interest or experience in theatre
Interest in Canadian South Asian history
South Asian identifying preferred
Please send a CV/resume to deena@cassa.on.ca if you are interested!
Deadline: May 16, 2012
For more information, please call or email Deena Hai: 416 932 1359 extn. 14 / deena@cassa.on.ca
I can’t get no representation: whitewashing storytelling in popular media

April 25, 2012 • Raisa Bhuiyan

Dear Shameless reader,

I’ve just come home from watching popular film of the week The Hunger Games with a sour taste in my mouth and an angry grumbling motion vibrating through my intestines. It seems as though the white-washing of Hunger Games protagonist Katniss has given me yet another case of racial indigestion. In fact, I’m currently cursing myself for being hopeful in thinking that some satisfaction could be had with regards to how people of colour are represented in our popular media.

Can you blame me though?

Every time I hear that a big shot film depicting some form of oppression or discrimination is coming out, I get excited. I get excited because I start hoping that there’s been some equitable representation of people of colour in these movies. I get so excited that I start hoping with all my might that some representational justice will be done to the racialized character(s) and that they won’t be doomed to forever remain as the one-dimensional support system to the main, typically white protagonist. I start hoping that maybe, just maybe the character(s) of colour will finally be presented as full, complex human beings.

But I was wrong.

If you already haven’t been blasted with Hunger Games-saturated trailers and interviews as of late, do let me remind you that Katniss is the central character of the story, whose experiences as a contestant of the Hunger Games make up the storyline of the book. In addition to being characterized by author Suzanne Collins as a radical female hero-warrior combating institutionalized oppression in a dystopia in the future, Katniss is also characterized as being olive-skinned. But as Hollywood page-to-screen synergy would have it, the casting call for Katniss indicated that only Caucasian actors apply.

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- Arts
- Race and Racism
Call for submissions: Brown Canada Komagata Maru theatre proposal

April 23, 2012 • Julia Horel

Application Deadline: April 26, 2012
Timeline: Immediate start date – June 29, 2012
Budget: $4000 allocated
*Honorarium granted

Project Background:
Brown Canada is a community-led history project to encourage South Asian communities to create and document their histories in Canada creatively, through writing, video, interviews, art, theatre or other means. Our collective entry point for this project is through the Komagata Maru incident of 1914, when a ship of South Asian people was denied entry into Canada due to restrictive immigration policy known as the continuous journey regulation. Through this project, we will be creating an interactive website, offering educational & creative workshops, producing a short video as well as seeking to tour a short theatre piece to raise awareness of the incident and spark community dialogue within Ontario.

Purpose of the RFP:
We are looking for individuals or organizations with members that might be willing to develop vignettes based on the Komagata Maru incident and related themes of exclusion, questions of belonging and unspoken/unknown histories, among others. We would hope that the vignettes could be performed in different venues across the province, around 4 performances across Toronto, and 5 outside of Toronto. These projects will be performed at various times from May to July 2012. Staff at CASSA would set up the performances and facilitate the community dialogues following the performances. We do have a small budget and can provide compensation for the development of the work and pay travel expenses for the actors.

Qualifications:
Strong artistic merit
Interest or experience in theatre
Interest in Canadian South Asian history
Ability to work efficiently and meet tight deadlines
South Asian identifying preferred

TO APPLY:
Please send us a CV and a brief proposal (100 to 200 words) detailing your idea for a performance.

PROPOSAL ELEMENTS:
It is expected that the submitted proposals will cover the items specified below:
CV detailing experience and qualifications of applicant
Necessary skills, experience and or interest in theatre and South Asian history
Estimated overall timeline of the project, indicating how soon the individual can commence writing

** Any questions should be submitted by e-mail no later than April 26, 2012

Interested candidates should submit a proposal by Thursday, April 26, 2012 at 4 pm, by either:
Emailing deena@cassa.on.ca and providing your application.
Or delivering your application by mail or in person to:
Deena Hai, CASSA
2401 Eglinton Ave. East, Unit 212
Toronto, ON
M1K 2N8

CASSA is committed to employment equity & encourages applicants from equity seeking groups. While we appreciate all responses, only candidates selected for an interview will be contacted.

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- Race and Racism
- Recommended Reading
Recommended Reading: Table For Four: An Interview With The Girls Behind ‘Sh-t White Girls Say To Latinas’ at Racialicious

April 4, 2012 • Julia Horel

Two thirteen-year-old girls are behind the “Sh-t White Girls Say to Latinas” video, and Racialicious has posted an interview with them. Check out these amazing teens:

AG: How have other students reacted to the video?
Alison: I could see the guilt on people’s faces when they realized that some of the things that were in this video they had actually said to someone who was Hispanic.
Rosie: We showed it to one class and, at first, nobody said anything. But then their teacher reminded them about what they’d studied about guilt and race, about how everyone’s said something racially insensitive. And then they opened up, and one girl asked a good question bout why it’s offensive. One of my friends from public school is Taiwanese, and she commented that this is exactly what happens to her–people always ask her if she’s Chinese. I was at youth group, and one of my friends said, “Oh, yeah, I saw your video on FaceBook. It was really good.” I was glad it had gotten around. Another friend’s mom saw it before her daughter did.
Alison: My public school friends said it was good, but they didn’t put much attention on it because they don’t go to school with many white people. It’s different.

Read the whole interview at Racialicious.
Racism and the Hunger Games

April 4, 2012 • Guest Blogger

Like almost everyone I know, I saw The Hunger Games on opening weekend. I sat in a packed theatre, sandwiched between my friends and an opinionated preteen girl who read a massive fantasy novel until the lights dimmed. She wasn’t the only one; it was the first time in a while that I saw so many young people avidly reading in a movie theatre, and I’ve been to many midnight showings of Harry Potter. From my limited observations, and from the film’s massive box office sales, it’s clear that the Hunger Games franchise has really resonated with many people, both young and old, who gravitated towards the strong female protagonist, interesting social commentary, and gripping action sequences of the story.

In the days following the film’s release, I was also one of many who saw the racist tweets compiled on sites like Buzzfeed and Tumblr. (The comments appeared to come mostly from young people, who expressed outrage and confusion over the casting of black actors in the roles of Cinna (Lenny Kravitz), Thresh (Dayo Okeniyi) and Rue (Amandla Stenberg). Some of the commenters accused the film’s producers of not “staying true” to the character descriptions in the novels, when in fact, Rue and Thresh are described as having “brown” skin and Cinna’s race is not described in any detail. Others confessed that they did not feel as “sad” about the death of Rue because she was black, with one tweeter adding “#ihatemyself.”

At first, I was shocked and angry to read these hateful and disturbing tweets, especially because I had spent a lot of time sniffling through Rue’s death scene when reading the books and watching the film. I was furious with the commenters for questioning their own feelings of loss and sadness when Rue died, purely based on the fact that they weren’t expecting her to look a certain way. But after reading through the comments a few times, and reading an exchange between the moderator of the Hunger Games Tweets Tumblr and one of the racist tweeters, I started to focus more on the theme of confusion present in many of the tweets in an attempt to make sense of the events.

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Quantifying the Hype: The Shafia Case in Context

March 15, 2012 • Guest Blogger

The Shafia case is a tragedy, all around. But the way this case has been used to promote some of the most casually xenophobic and Islamophobic commentary in Canada yet only makes it more difficult to honor these women and their lives. As many commentators have already pointed out, the rush to condemn the Shafia murders as part of a minority culture that has nothing to do with “Canadian values” perpetuates the familiar narrative of us vs. them, of the clash of civilizations, of shining White Canadian virtue against dark, Muslim violence. Unfortunately, the sad reality is that gendered violence is as much a part of Canada’s cultural fabric as it is almost anywhere else. While violence against women manifests itself differently across different cultures, at the end of the day it is always about power and control, and it is almost always culturally and socially learned and normalized.

Immediately after the Shafia trial verdict was announced – resulting in first-degree murder convictions for all three defendants – Canadian Justice Minister Rob Nicholson stated: “[s]o-called honour killings are barbaric and unacceptable and have no place in Canada,’ adding that “[t]his government is committed to protecting women and other vulnerable persons from all forms of violence and to hold perpetrators accountable for their acts.” Wary of being left out, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney tweeted: “Canada’s openness and generosity do not extend to barbaric cultural practices that tolerate spousal abuse, ‘honour killings’… or gender-based violence. Those guilty of these crimes are severely punished under Canada’s criminal laws.”

In a country that can’t even be bothered to keep a tab on exactly how many Aboriginal women have been murdered or gone missing in the past few decades (some estimates put the number as high as 3,000), its hard to know whether to laugh or cry at such hyperbolic statements coming from men in power who should clearly know better. It’s as if these ministers only seem to remember the issue of gendered violence when it is being perpetrated by “other” people from “other” cultures.

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Sins Invalid: ‘An unshamed claim to beauty in the face of invisibility’

February 29, 2012 • Julia Horel

New College Speaker Series 2012, in collaboration with the Art Gallery of Ontario & The School of Disability Studies at Ryerson University, presents:

Performance excerpts from Sins Invalid
‘An unshamed claim to beauty in the face of invisibility’

Featuring performances by: Alex Cafarelli, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Maria Palacios and Leroy Moore

Saturday March 17 2012 - 7pm
Art Gallery of Ontario, Weston Family Learning Centre
317 Dundas St. West Toronto, ON
Beverly Street Entrance

Facebook event link here.

FREE admission
ASL interpretation
Wheelchair accessible
Attendant care

Sponsored by: Equity Studies Program (New College), Ryerson School of
Disability Studies, Dept. of Sociology and Equity Studies (OISE), Art
Gallery of Ontario, Students for Barrier-Free Access (UT), RyeAccess,
Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies (UT), Equity Studies Student Union (UT) and R3 collective.

Official event of RyeAccess’ ‘Reclaiming our bodies and minds’ conference, part of ESSU’s Disability Studies Week 2012

SINS INVALID is a performance project that incubates and celebrates artists with disabilities, centralizing artists of color and queer and gender-variant artists as communities who have been historically marginalized. Our performance work explores the themes of sexuality, embodiment and the disabled body. Conceived and led by disabled people of color, we develop and present cutting-edge work where normative paradigms of “normal” and “sexy” are challenged, offering instead a vision of beauty and sexuality inclusive of all individuals and communities.

We define disability broadly to include people with physical impairments, people who belong to a sensory minority, people with emotional disabilities, people with cognitive challenges, and those with chronic/severe illness. We understand the experience of disability to occur within any and all walks of life, with deeply felt connections to all communities impacted by the medicalization of their bodies, including trans, gender variant and intersex people, and others whose bodies do not conform to our culture(s)’ notions of “normal” or “functional.”

Find out more about Sins Invalid:
http://www.sinsinvalid.org/
- Race and Racism
Let’s Talk Race: Video contest

February 24, 2012 • Julia Horel

Let’s Talk Race: video contest!

Join the Conversation: make your own 5 minute video that discusses your experiences with racism.

Each video should be from 2-5 minutes long. In the vein of “Shadeism” and the “Stuff White People Say to PoC” videos, these videos should function as tools for racism awareness. We encourage you to create a video discussing your lived racialized experiences. It can be in any format: a rap, a song, a poem, a skit or even just you, one-on-one with the camera, talking about your experiences with racism.

Deadline for submissions is March 5th, 2012. Send your video/video links to racismfreeontario@cassa.on.ca. The videos will be available for voting on March 7th, 2012.

Make sure you “LIKE” your favourite video before March 20th!

The video that earns the most likes will be announced on March 21st, 2012, International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, and win $500!!!

Transcription follows:

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- Event Listings
- Race and Racism
Racism Free Ontario Forum

February 23, 2012 • Julia Horel

The Council of Agencies Serving South Asians (CASSA) invites you to mark International Day for Elimination of Racial Discrimination through a forum:

Racism Free Ontario Forum

Theme: Addressing Racial Inequities Faced by Our Children and Youth

Discussing the impact of racism on our children and youth and Identifying Strategies to address racial inequities faced by them in educational institutions, neighborhoods and workplaces.

WHERE/WHEN: On March 21st, 2012 (Wed)
9am to 4pm at OISE (by St. George Subway Station)

Admission Free but Space Limited
Register through email to Deena Hai (deena@cassa.on.ca) or eventbrite

Brought to you by Council of Agencies Serving South Asians, Colour of Poverty, Sociology in Education and Equity Studies and The Centre for Integrative Anti-racism Studies.

Facebook event
Register @ eventbrite now!
- Activist Report
- Race and Racism
Racism Free Ontario: 100 PEOPLE OF COLOUR ANTI-RACIST ACTIVISTS

February 22, 2012 • Julia Horel

At Racism Free Ontario:

Starting December 10th, 2011 we began profiling 100 Canadian People of Colour activists and organizations. Follow our facebook fanpage, tumblr, twitter and website for daily updates. We are also taking suggestions, so please feel free to submit an activist or organization of your choice.

This amazing list of awe-inspiring activists and organization includes people you might know and people you might not know, people of all genders and walks of life. And it includes some dear friends of Shameless, including our own Editorial and Art Director, Sheila Sampath (#73), former blog editor Thea Lim (#69) and former cover artist Elisha Lim (#68), as well as many others we deeply admire and respect.

New additions to the list are made every week, so check back frequently!