How to Talk to Our Asian Families About Black Lives Matter

**Registration will close at 5:00 PM EST on December 3, 2020.** An email with the Zoom link will be sent out 1 hour before the event.

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How can we talk to our Asian parents, siblings, friends, and families about anti-Black racism? How can we work to dismantle the stereotypes, tropes, and divisive narratives that strain the relationship between Asian and Black communities? How can we hold space for the lived experiences of intergenerational anti-Asian racism and trauma while also fighting anti-Black systems within our communities? And how can we do this with consideration to the specific contexts, nuances, and cultural barriers involved with being members of racialized communities?

Join us for an in-depth discussion on how we can engage our Asian family members (as well as ourselves) in challenging but critical conversations about anti-Black racism.

Featuring a panel discussion with Jenna Tenn-Yuk, Pamela Uppal, and Emily Jung. Moderated by Erin Kang.

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ERIN KANG (She/Her)

Founder, Stories of Ours & Co-Founder, Dressed in Layers

Erin Kang is a practicing facilitator, independent educator, and storyteller local to Toronto. Her work lies at the intersections of anti-oppressive pedagogy, community collaborations, and creative arts. She is the founder of Stories of Ours, a grassroots project which aims to deepen community, invite solidarity, and challenge dominant narratives through intentional acts of storytelling and creative arts. She is also the co-founder of Dressed in Layers, a project using hanbok (traditional Korean clothing) to explore notions of home, land, and community. Erin is currently the Project Lead for Reimagining Governance at the Ontario Nonprofit Network.

JENNA TENN-YUK (She/Her)

Writer, Speaker, Facilitator

Jenna Tenn-Yuk is a writer, speaker and facilitator who empowers people to share their stories and truths. She has spoken internationally at Harvard, The Walrus Talks and TEDx, exploring the complexities of race, faith and queerness. Her writing has been featured in Broadview, CBC, Ottawa Citizen and The Huffington Post. She is a founding member of the Asian Canadian Women’s Alliance and is on a coalition of queer-affirming Christian groups in Canada. Jenna believes in the power of storytelling to break silences, connect people and change the world around us.

PAMELA UPPAL (She/Her)

Board Member, Laadlyian

Pamela cares deeply about how women experience the world and so over the past 10 years she has focused on building gender equitable systems by bridging frontline work, research initiatives, and public policy advocacy activities. She led a nonprofit organization as a student volunteer, was a frontline worker at a multi-service agency, designed diversity trainings, and collaborated on multiple research projects exploring gender and race. Currently, she is a policy advisor at the Ontario Nonprofit Network (ONN) leading its future of work, decent work for women, and care economy policy files with gender and intersectional lenses. Through her consultancy work she advises various stakeholders on tackling complex social issues through policy, programs, and outreach. Her community involvement includes sitting on the board of Laadliyan - celebrating and empowering daughters, mentoring young women and girls interested in social justice work, and building informal networks for collective action.

EMILY JUNG (She/Her)

Interim Marketing & Communications Manager, Theatre Passe Muraille

Emily is an artist/artsworker working in Toronto with a focus on the Canadian nonprofit arts sector. She has been working in cultural organizations such as the Toronto International Festival of Authors and Theatre Passe Muraille with a keen interest in Canadian cultural policy, nonprofit labour advocacy and community centric fundraising. Her visual artworks explores the relationship between women and their ancestors using a subliminal space, and was most recently exhibited at Cultural Pluralism in the Arts Movement Ontario's The Gathering Fall 2019: IBPOC Women in the Arts. At the moment, she is pursuing independent research on equity and rights for emerging artists/artsworkers in nonprofit arts & arts management education.

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**While non-Asian folks are welcome to attend this event, please note the discussion will be focused on how members of Asian diasporas can reflect, learn, and commit to fighting anti-Black racism.**

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This event is in partnership with the Korean Office for Research & Education (KORE), the York Centre for Asian Research, and the Resource Centre for Public Sociology (RCPS) at York University. 

This event is also part of an ongoing series of anti-racism conversations organized across other Korean Canadian (and non-KC) organizations & institutions. Recent events include:

• "Beyond Allyship: A Coalition Towards Anti-Racism" August 2020 (Organized by KCSF (Korean Canadian Scholarship Foundation). In partnership with KPWA, Canadian Roots Exchange, HanVoice, and KCLA (Korean Canadian Lawyers' Association))
• "A Conversation with Dr. Claire Jean Kim" November 2020 (Organized by KORE & RCPS at York University)
• "Kim's In/Convenience: The Model Minority Paradox" November 2020 (Organized by KORE & RCPS at York University. In partnership with KCSF and KPWA)

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 Resources for Attendees 

• Letters for Black Lives (US-based translated letters)
• Letters for Black Lives (Canada-based translated letters)
• Asian Canadians launch letter campaign to address racism within their own communities (Toronto Star article)
• Resources for non-Black Asians on Anti-Blackness (Public Google Doc)
• Asian-Americans, long used as a racial wedge, are confronting anti-Black racism in their own communities (Boston Globe article)
• 20+ Allyship Actions for Asians to Show Up for the Black Community Right Now (Medium article from Awaken)
• The Asian American Response to Black Lives Matter Is Part of a Long, Complicated History (Time Magazine article)