Category Archives: Race and Racism
Meet the Editors: K.
My name is Kay, and my politics are about amplifying voices in the margins, honouring our complexities, and dismantling the colonial capitalist white supremacist cis-heteropatriarchy with transformative love, warm toques, rage, consent, and poetry on Friday nights… come join me.
Social Justice Synonyms #19: “Slave”
In honour of Rule Out Racism Week here at UBC, this week’s Social Justice Synonym is dedicated to the term “slave.” The casual use of the word “slave” to express conditions that are considered unfair (“Working this hard, and this long on a project is basically slavery”) or even to convey how hard a person […]
10 Shitty Things about Vancouver Nightlife: A QWOC* Perspective
TW: this article contains mentions of rape, harassment and sexual assault. As a queer, black woman, moving through a straight, white world can be challenging. From everyday micro-aggressions to huge systemic structures of discrimination, our society privileges those who are very much not me. This is evident when I’m picked out in class to give […]
“We are immigrants, not criminals”: An interview with Mexican whistleblower Karla Lottini
Karla Lottini (a pseudonym for Karla Berenice García Ramírez) is a Mexican journalist who in 2008 was forced to flee the country after exposing government corruption. She came to Vancouver with her family seeking refugee status, which she was finally granted in 2012. Karla published The Talent of the Charlatans (El talento de los farsantes) […]
Calling All Students of Conscience: Vote YES on Israel Divestment
An abridged version of this op-ed first appeared in The Ubyssey. In a recent op-ed in The Ubyssey by Koby Michaels, the case against adopting Boycott Divest and Sanctions (BDS) at UBC was made using the oft-repeated claim that the movement is anti-Semitic. Grossly selective and imprecise in its analysis, the author, and those others […]
The Talon’s Statement in Support of BDS at UBC
The Talon Editorial Collective endorses the UBC chapter of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights’ (SPHR UBC) call to implement the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement at UBC. As such, we endorse the following referendum question: “Do you support your student union (AMS) in boycotting products and divesting from companies that support Israeli war crimes, […]
In Defence of “Native”
Speaking as someone who is one-fourth Northern Tutchone and three-fourths settler European (German, mostly, and about six other things), I have always had something of an identity crisis when it comes to my Native heritage. My dad was half Northern Tutchone, from the Yukon, my place of birth. He was visible to me, in his […]
Rule Out Racism Week at UBC: Call for Submissions
Rule Out Racism is a week-long series of events focused on the need for greater literacy and conversation about race and racism within the UBC community. Rule Out Racism week is hosted by UBC Equity and Inclusion Office and is held in recognition of the United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination […]
Reconciling Whom I Love with Where I Love
This piece originally appeared in the recent (and first ever) “Sowing Seeds and Setting Roots: An Outweek 2015 Zine.” Outweek is a series of events hosted annually by the Pride Collective at UBC. For “Sowing Seeds and Setting Roots,” they encouraged submissions that took intersectional approaches to queer identity. We encourage you to check out the zine […]
Social Justice Synonyms #16: “Illegal Immigrant”
Welcome to the sixteenth segment of Social Justice Synonyms, a column at The Talon that discusses harmful and oppressive language embedded in our culture and provides ways to unlearn this language. This week’s term is illegal immigrant. This piece pulls from the work of Harsha Walia, a local South Asian activist, whose book Undoing Border […]
