"Taught to be palatable" : tracing the contours of diasporic Chinese political mobilization in Vancouver, B.C.

Past and present forms of Chinese political mobilization in Canada are characterized by their “epistemic erasure” in both popular and academic settings. This erasure – which supresses the legitimacy of diasporic Chinese activists – is aided by the racial meanings and corollaries of the model minority stereotype. As the dominant paradigm of racial meaning for Asian people in North America, the stereotype prescribes a configuration of racial positioning where Asian achievement upholds systems of white supremacy and capitalism. In addition to the gap in documentation left by this epistemic erasure, scholarly accounts of current Asian North American activisms have not examined how the structural implications of the model minority stereotype manifest within mobilization. Using interviews conducted with 10 Chinese youth living in Vancouver, I show how their mobilization contrasts racial expectations of insulation from or disinterest in social injustice. My findings also allow me to theorize that model minority racialization within post-mobilization processes discourages participation in mainstream activism. Instead, this racialization has led activists to develop broader understandings of structural oppression in their pursuit of organizations and opportunities that see Chinese communities as meaningful participants in coalitional work for change.