Front Burner - Bryan Adams backlash sparks conversation about xenophobia

Episode Date: May 13, 2020

Canadian singer-songwriter Bryan Adams is facing a backlash after posting a rant about the origins of the pandemic on Instagram Monday. And although Adams doesn’t name China, or Chinese people, the comments are clearly about them. Today we focus on concerns about growing xenophobia towards East Asians in recent months, which include a series of racist attacks, with help from Susan Eng, director of the Chinese Canadian National Council for Social Justice, and dance artist Ziyian Kwan.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Pia Chattopadhyay. On Monday, Canadian musician Brian Adams was venting on social media about a string of cancelled shows he had coming up in London, England. He said that, and I'm quoting here, thanks to some bat-eating, wet-market, animal-selling, virus-making,

greedy bastards, the whole world is now on hold, not to mention the thousands that have suffered or died from this virus. In it, Brian Adams conflates a couple of unproven theories about the origin of the novel coronavirus. And although he doesn't name China or Chinese people the comments are clearly about them. There's been a ton of backlash. He did not think about this racist comment we'll have in the real life of ordinary Chinese Canadians. Even if you're not a fan of Bryan Adams

this kind of messaging can have an impact. But what Bryan Adams said doesn't exist in a vacuum. The Vancouver Police Department said that so far this year, there have been 20 cases of anti-Asian hate crimes reported to them. In comparison, there were 12 in all of 2019. And of course, in the United States, President Donald Trump's use of the phrase the Chinese virus has led to accusations that that encourages xenophobia. It's not racist at all, no, not at all. It comes from China. That's why. Today, we're talking to two people who have been watching this all unfold. Ziyin Kwan is the artistic director of Dumb Instrument Dance in Vancouver. She recently organized a performance in reaction to a series of racist attacks in her city.

And Susan Eng is director of the Chinese-Canadian National Council for Social Justice. Susan's in Toronto. This is FrontBurner. Susan's in Toronto. This is FrontBurner. Susan Zien, hi. Hello. Hello. I want to start by getting your thoughts on those comments from Brian Adams. Susan, when you heard about that post, saw that post, read those words, what went through your head?

I was very angry, of course. And more than that, I was concerned about how much impact his words would have across the country. Because, of course, he's a celebrity. If this was an individual attack, fine, you deal with it. But you know that his words will carry weight. And it's feeding into, as you say, the context of a rising amount of anti-Asian hostility, up to and including physical attacks. So I thought it was horrible. Yeah, we'll get to the physical attacks in just a sec. But when you read that,

like, did you reach out? What did you do? Did you reach out to your friends? Did you talk about it? What did they say? I did. And I also knew what they were going to feel as well. But, you know, there was something that bothered me more than my friends who I knew would feel as I did. It was more somebody else who is not Asian descent who said, well, he was talking about being a vegan and being anti-meat eaters. And I said, are you being deliberately foolish or do you accept this kind of banal racism? That's the part that was most enraging.

And his apology was worse for it. I should say I noticed on Twitter someone said, you know, you can be both a vegan and a racist. And his apology was worse for it. suggesting that this is the PR move that people who get caught up in these kinds of things are forced to do or feel they should do. And he made the point, he said, look, I just want to rant about animal cruelty and promote veganism and how, quote, I have love for all people. And my thoughts are with everyone dealing with this pandemic around the world. Zian, did that mitigate anything for you? Well, I appreciate that there was an expression of him being contrite, but not really. I am an artist. Brian Adams is an artist. And beyond being a celebrity, I feel that most artists have a responsibility when they're speaking in a public-facing way to reflect the integrity of their values and to choose carefully those words that they're going to use. So he is a grown man. He is a Canadian citizen. He must have been aware of the impact of those words and how they could have been perceived and were received.

impact of those words and how they could have been perceived and were received. Yeah, I mean, he knows we live in a multicultural country. It's forgivable, you know, he's apologized, but he is culpable for being incredibly irresponsible. So I don't need to tell either of you that racism in our country is nothing new. But what we have seen in the past number of months is the rise against racist attacks, in some cases hate crimes against East-stations or those of E-station descent. Zin, you're in Vancouver. The police department there says there's been 20 cases reported so far this year. There was an attack on an elderly man at a convenience store where he was shoved and fell to the ground. The surveillance video is shocking. He hits his head on the pavement, all while police say the suspect was yelling Asian slurs and comments about COVID-19.

Another of a young woman who was punched at a bus stop. She drops to the ground, he walks away and boards the number four bus to UBC. And yesterday reports of a woman having her hair pulled and being punched multiple times on the bus. The man directed his attention to two Asian women and allegedly said words to the effect of, go back to your own country, that's where it all began. There was a woman who was sitting across from the man and she simply told the man to leave the two women alone. That's a list of just a few of them.

And it takes away from the impact of these incidents on the people involved. But what does it mean and what has it been like for you personally to navigate this news in recent weeks? Well, you know, honestly, I just received a message about what happened on the bus just prior to this conversation. And my heart is beating quite quickly right now. I could barely breathe reading that, you know, having, as you know, just tried to do a peaceful response to a much smaller aggression I experienced. I posted it online and I read a response from my sister who lives in Anacortes, not too far from us, that she was running. She's an avid jogger runner and somebody rolled down their car and yelled some things at her so now I'm looking at this is this is not just touching the people in the periphery of my community it's touching it touched me the other day and my sister so my family and yeah so I'm not quite as calm as I'd

like to be on air right now. I want to basically tag on to that because this is starting to happen in places we did not used to see it. And that's what makes it more troubling and more threatening. Now it's coming at us in the grocery store, on the subway, on the street, doing middle class things. We had this idea that the more educated among us would not behave in this fashion, but those boundaries appear to be crossed now, and people are not embarrassed anymore to come up with garbage like Brian Adams did, like MP Derek Sloan did. Adams did, like MP Derek Sloan did, they're thinking that, oh, well, now it's open season. We'll talk about Derek Sloan in just a minute. But I want, Zine, can you just tell me, you said you had an incident happen to you as well recently?

Yeah, so I had planned yesterday and it went off. We did it, a peaceful dance action in celebration of Asian Heritage Month and also as a way of countering the growing racism in the city and in the country. And when I was reconnoitering at the Chinese Cultural Center, a man said some words to me, which were effectively, take your bike back to where you came from. Your people made this, I'm not going to use the word, up in Wuhan City, and now you've brought it back here to Canada. So when I read the article that was just posted about what happened on the bus, the go back to was again insinuated. And I was talking with Paul Wong, who's given me permission to share his thoughts. He is a Chinese Canadian

media artist in Vancouver. He has a studio in Chinatown and has been a part of that community for decades. And he was with us yesterday, and he's talking about how Chinatown is a place where Chinese people have been building a safe community for many, many years, and he has never felt so unsafe. You know, a number of months ago, I wrote an article about being told to go back to where you came from. And I made the analogy that it's, you know, like a bunch of paper cuts over time that they add up and they're deeply hurtful. You know, that paper cut that you'll always remember when you were a kid that you got the one that just cut deeper than the rest. And at the same time, I was like, should I talk about this? Because many immigrants, many kids of immigrants to Canada feel this pressure of, you know, we're in this wonderful

country. There's no denying that. And this country, its people have welcomed us if we're immigrants or helped build us if we're immigrants or helped build us if we're part when we're part of the society. And that there's this underlining kind of concern that if you talk about difficult things like racism, that you might be seen as a bad immigrant or, you know, bringing this out of the shadows and into the open. And so I just really want to say to both of you, thank you for being open. But I just wonder if you sort of wrestle with that stuff too, Susan. Well, absolutely. I mean, we have had to deal with the identity of being a model minority,

which means, you know, keeping nice and quiet. And most of us would actually prefer not to engage. But 40 years ago, when I started in this area of anti-racism, we realized that there was no choice. You know, you had to deal with the discomfort of naming the harm, or it would just grow. I have navigated my entire life as a first generation immigrant, who's a settler, of course, immigrant who's a settler of course learning as Susan says the ways that I can speak so that I can be heard right so this is a privilege that somebody like Brian Adams has where he doesn't think about that he has had this privilege his whole life on top of it being a celebrity because I know that if I get on a radio show, like I was frankly just not sure if I was prepared to do this one as well,

because if I say the wrong thing, if I don't present, you know, with equanimity, as Susan said, or with a certain amount of grace, and if I'm just livid and angry, is it going to progress the cause? And yet rage is the energy that courses through our bodies when these things happen. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization,

empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. The thing that you had said earlier, Susan, about, you know, the xenophobia has entered new realms. It's entered the political realm in the United States. We know that the president there has called the coronavirus the Chinese virus. He has doubled down on that in many times. Why is this a global competition to you if every day Americans are still losing their lives? Well, they're losing their lives everywhere in the world. And maybe that's a question you should ask China. Sir, why are you saying that to me specifically? I'm telling you, I'm not saying it specifically to anybody. I'm saying it to anybody that would ask a nasty question like that.

That's not a nasty question. Please go ahead. And here in Canada, as you also mentioned, Conservative MP Derek Sloan made some controversy over comments that he was widely criticized for, including by some members of his own party, for asking if Canada's chief public health officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, who is an immigrant, originally from Hong Kong, but is a Canadian who works for Canada,

and he wondered, does she work for Canada or for China, and saying she should be fired. Theresa Tam followed the World Health Organization every step along the way. She accused Canadians who were concerned about this virus initially for being racist. She also suggested that travel bans were unnecessary. I should also mention that Dirk Sloan is running for the leadership of the Conservative Party. So when it enters that realm, I mean, were you surprised by it? And what do you think he was trying to tap into politically? Or was he? Well, I am not surprised that he said such things. I'm just surprised he

said it out loud. And that's where we have come. We know we've always known that there's some level of racism burbling under the surface. But up until now, we were pretty civilized about it. And if you're running for the leader of the official opposition, you tended not to say such things out loud. I think this is obvious dog whistle politics for him. He was definitely trying to reach that part of the group of the Conservative Party that he thinks still exists and whose vote he needs to become leader. And as you said earlier, definitely there were a lot of other MPs who were shutting him down and trying to, you know, have him withdraw or apologize and or withdraw from the party. During your last press conference, reporters asked you six times

whether or not you agreed with Mr. Sloan's comments. Since then, Michelle Rempel, Michael Chong, Eric Duncan, other MPs in your party have called out Mr. Sloan's comments. So I just want to give you another opportunity. I do not agree with his position, with what he said. That is not the position of our caucus. And I believe it is not appropriate to question someone's loyalty to their country. They actually almost had an expulsion vote.

And that was the kind of thing that we can do by calling for it and calling for it out loud. And those of us who are working in organizations like ours who can call upon larger systemic changes and specific consequences for this behavior should also. It's a bit like screaming into the wind sometimes, isn't it? When you talk about racism, it is an ongoing problem. And in a multicultural country like ours, which we celebrate and should celebrate, but we do tend to spend less time talking about the challenges when we see incidents of hate or racism. And I'm wondering, just to kind of round out our conversation, the comments are made, a small sliver of Canadian society condone

them or excuse them, but there's so many others who denounce them, people of all different kinds of backgrounds. And I'm wondering, Zian, what conversations are you now hoping to hear more of in the next little while? The incident that I experienced the other day when I was at the Chinese Cultural Center, I think it was a person of color who spoke to me, somebody who is possibly a resident of the downtown east side. who is possibly a resident of the downtown east side. I was talking with a friend yesterday, and I can't quite wrap my mind around the complexity of it, but there is racism amongst immigrants and amongst people of color, and that has a lot to do with the fact that we are marginalized

and there are inequities that we face differently and in common and do not have the same resources as other people to cope. I don't, as I say, completely understand how to understand it, but also want to acknowledge that, yes, I have racist thoughts too, or, you know, for lack of a better word. have racist thoughts too or you know for lack of better word and so in a way there's this beginning at home as well to recognize um well i like to say that we're all in the same dance together um i don't know if that answers your questions that that is a conversation that i think is important to begin to have as well as that there are incredible allies out there white people who are allies.

And yet at the same time, there cannot be an empathy for that experience. There can be compassion. And I think talking is a really important thing. I feel I have so much to learn, you know, and we all have so much to learn and having a willingness to learn and to say, I don't know actually the answer to that. And what about for you, Susan? What conversations are you hoping to hear more of? You know, these conversations will happen about us very quickly because this is starting to happen more and more. There is a heavy level of denial among all people, including people of color, that this could possibly be happening because we've been living a charmed life for so long.

But this is something that has been generated through the media by people like Trump in the States being his usual self that's creating this environment that's just whipping up the mud that's making people feel as though they can find a scapegoat in an Asian-looking person. Everybody's fearful. Everybody is undermined in their lives by our current circumstance, and they need to hit out at somebody. And they sort of rip that layer of civilization off, and they need to strike out. So what we have to do, if we're happy we shake it off, we have to push back.

We do have to push back. If we are not able to shout back at that person immediately, then we have to take the opportunity to speak out like this. the opportunity to speak out like this. On an individual basis, sometimes you have to engage in extremely uncomfortable conversations and usually with people who think themselves liberal-minded. And that's the hardest conversation of all.

Absolutely. I would just like to add to what Susan's saying. There's this other level of engagement or, you know, I've been thinking about how when something, when this racist incident happened to me, people were apologizing to me and expressing their regrets that this happened to me, which I really appreciated. It was comforting.

My thought, though, is that when something happens, whatever the incidence is, is that it's happening to all of us. It's not just happening to me. And so I'm thinking about the fabric of our communities and how it's like the tensegrity of that fabric is being eroded and how there are actually very simple actions that we can do as well as the larger organizational conversations and actions that we can take. A friend of mine said, a white ally said, you know, when you're walking down the street with your mask on and you see an East Asian person

walking towards you with their mask on and you do that thing that we're all doing now where we're making space between us and the sidewalk, you can smile from behind your mask because quite possibly that person is just really not sure what you're thinking and if you may be having these sentiments towards them that are unpleasant. And I've heard from friends of mine who are East Asian that that is something that they're worrying about right now.

It's something I'm worrying about right now. I went out to take out the garbage the other day and I decided to walk around the block because I saw two men standing there and I just thought, I'm not going to take that risk. block because I saw two men standing there and I just thought I'm not going to take that risk so there is this simpler kind of social behavior I think that we can begin to consider after like hi how are you today um it may seem very naive but I think it it could count for something I um want to thank you both I know I always say this when we talk about these kinds of concerns and issues in real life, that this is harder than many people would like to think to talk about. So I just really, really want to say thank you to both of you for joining me today.

I appreciate it. Thank you for the opportunity. Yeah. Take good care. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

So before we go today, I just want to mention a CBC podcast that I really enjoy. And if you are interested in the stuff that we've been talking about today, I think you'll like it too. It is called The Secret Life of Canada. And in a recent episode, it explores how Japanese Canadians have been treated in Canada, in particular internment during the Second World War. You can find that episode, Where is Japantown? on the Secret Life of Canada feed on C CBC Listen, or wherever you get your podcasts. That's all for today. I'm Pia Chattopadhyay. Talk to you again tomorrow.

For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.