Paul Tai Yip Ng Memorial Award 2022: Yi Chien Jade Ho

Congratulations to Ms. Yi Chien Jade Ho, who won our 2022 Best Graduate Student Paper award

Yi Chien Jade Ho is currently a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Education at SFU. Jade’s doctoral work is rooted in Asian and Black feminism, decolonial place theories, and the principles of community-centered research, specifically examining the community building efforts of Asian and Asian diasporic (im)migrants and their roles and responsibilities for decolonization. This work has been shaped by Jade’s involvement as a housing and labour organizer in Vancouver. In the present essay, Jade draws reflections from her experience organizing with the low-income seniors in Chinatown, particularly on their efforts to align anti-racism and anti-gentrification organizing with decolonization. The paper foregrounds the reflections with an analysis of Asian racialization’s role in the perpetuation of settler colonialism. This analysis sheds light on the invisible connection between racism and colonialism. Without an understanding of this connection, anti-racism efforts run the danger of perpetuating ongoing settler colonialism. In the context of resisting against anti-Asian racism, without aligning with decolonization, these efforts can many times become dependent on the colonial legal immigration system that contributes to further dispossession of Indigenous people. Therefore, decolonization cannot be a mere metaphor nor representational in building an anti-racist community. This paper aims to show what this practice can look like concretely. This work does not belong to Jade alone but a collective effort of the community. Jade would like to send her heartfelt gratitude to her senior supervisor Dr. Mark Fettes and all her movement mentors and partners for their teachings, support, and commitment to social change.