Rachael Es­pinet

Lily Kwok post­ed this pro­file pho­to on Face­book on Ju­ly 13.

Ish­mael Ho, a T&T na­tion­al of Chi­nese de­scent, post­ed this pho­to on Face­book.

An "I am Trinida­di­an" cam­paign is gain­ing strength on­line, as many na­tion­als of Chi­nese her­itage are us­ing Face­book to join an on­go­ing con­ver­sa­tion about what it's like to be of Chi­nese de­scent in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Lily Kwok start­ed the Web ac­tivism by chang­ing her pro­file pic­ture to a pho­to of her hold­ing a sign say­ing, "I will not 'go back to Chi­na.' I am a Trinida­di­an."

Since Ju­ly 13, her pro­file pic­ture has got­ten more than 1,200 shares, and en­cour­aged oth­er peo­ple to cre­ate their own signs.

Con­ver­sa­tions about race and ethinic­i­ty are hard­ly a new fea­ture of the T&T so­cial me­dia land­scape. But the cat­a­lyst for the lat­est cam­paign was a video post­ed re­cent­ly to Youtube, which seems to show two men ap­par­ent­ly skin­ning a dog.

Based on the video, the na­tion­al­i­ty, eth­nic­i­ty and lo­ca­tion of the men skin­ning the an­i­mal are still be­ing de­bat­ed. But a state­ment is­sued by­Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan sug­gest­ed that Chi­nese restau­rants may be serv­ing dog and oth­er types ofmeat to un­wit­ting­cus­tomers.

In re­sponse, a num­ber of­peo­ple have since start­ed shar­ing pho­tos and sto­ries about what it's like to be a per­son of Chi­nese de­scent in Trinidad.

Sun­day Guardian re­porter Charles Kong Soo shows his sup­port of the cam­paign.

Ish­mael Ho post­ed a pho­to of him­self hold­ing a sign say­ing, "My friends are not go­ing any­where. #Weare­Trin­bag­o­ni­ans #WeareT&T."

Ho said while he usu­al­ly does not post pic­tures of him­self on­line, he had to do some­thing about this is­sue be­cause he is tired of see­ing his friends ex­pe­ri­ence a type of sub­tle racism some­times di­rect­ed to­ward T&T peo­ple of Chi­nese her­itage.

"Think of it this way, tra­di­tion­al­ly the Chi­nese com­mu­ni­ty has al­ways been con­sid­ered some­thing of an 'oth­er.' They have had a pres­ence in Trinidad and To­ba­go that stretch­es back more than 200 years, but the ma­jor­i­ty of so­cio-eth­nic groups have al­ways felt it ac­cept­able to treat them like some sort of non-Trinida­di­an or non-Trin­bag­on­ian com­mu­ni­ty, in spite of the enor­mous con­tri­bu­tions they have made to build­ing our coun­try," Ho said.

Young peo­ple of Chi­nese her­itage have to en­dure con­stant teas­ing and racist jokes from many peo­ple who do not see their ac­tions as racist, he added.

Bran­don Mc Ivor post­ed this pho­to on his Face­book pro­file say­ing, "As a mix-up ting, I've not had to suf­fer the in­dig­ni­ty of be­ing told to go back to any­where. But many won­der­ful peo­ple, my dear friend Lily in­clud­ed, have--es­pe­cial­ly this week gone.

So in sol­i­dar­i­ty with my Chi­nese-Trinida­di­an broth­ers and sis­ters, here's this adorable pho­to.

Some peo­ple might not think it, but this is what Trinidad looks like, too.

?#?EndXeno­pho­bia?"

"Now, you are a young per­son grow­ing up in Trinidad and To­ba­go, you are Asian, you deal with com­ments and ca­su­al racism your whole life. You have to en­dure jokes that range from peo­ple mak­ing com­ments about your eyes, your hair, your fam­i­ly's predilec­tion for eat­ing dogs, and cats, to MSG to soy sauce and every­thing in be­tween. The kinds of com­ments that Asians in Trinidad are sub­ject too are hurt­ful on a num­ber of lev­els, but as a mi­nor­i­ty, they can't say any­thing about it," Ho said.

The no­tion of peo­ple of Chi­nese de­scent "go­ing back to where they came from," he said, is xeno­pho­bic and alien­at­ing.

"What both­ers me most about that, is that to me, there seems to be this sense, that if a Sino-Trinida­di­an main­tains some con­nec­tion to the coun­try of their ori­gins, well 'dey cud go back so.' They are be­ing made 'oth­ers'. They are dis­en­fran­chised from that sense of na­tion­al­ism that our an­them, our watch­words and our na­tion­al pledge speak so strong­ly to­wards: dis­ci­pline, pro­duc­tion and tol­er­ance. What hap­pened to those things?" he said.

The pos­i­tive so­cial me­dia cam­paign is need­ed to coun­ter­act the in­tol­er­ant and racist state­ments made on­line about the Sino-Trinida­di­an pop­u­la­tion.

An­drea Cwh-Coutain al­so shared her view on her Face­book pro­file.

An ex­cerpt of her post­said, "

The events sur­round­ing the 'dog'in­ci­dent has just tak­en me back 30-35 years where lit­tle Afro/In­do-Trinida­di­an chil­dren would pull my hair and call me "chi­nee chi­nee" to when grow­ing in­to a young woman Trinida­di­an men would not on­ly com­ment on my eth­nic­i­ty but what they could do with me as a woman be­cause of my per­ceived Chi­nese "pri­vate parts". And even as re­cent as last year where some­one of­sup­posed in­tel­li­gence had the au­dac­i­ty to tell me that "it is a sci­en­tif­ic fact that Chi­nese peo­ple get in­to more car ac­ci­dents be­cause of the shape of their eyes!!!".

Racism to­wards Chi­nese peo­ple nev­er end­ed, it is just mag­ni­fied by one pub­li­cized in­ci­dent!

"All over so­cial me­dia, though, you are see­ing peo­ple from all walks of life, mak­ing the most ig­no­rant, in­tol­er­ant and crass state­ments about this en­tire com­mu­ni­ty. And it's ter­ri­ble! I'm not even that deeply Chi­nese. My grand­fa­ther was Chi­nese, but that's about it. But these com­ments, they are re­al­ly hurt­ful. Not as a mod­er­ate­ly Asian per­son, but as a per­son," Ho said.

Like oth­er peo­ple who have par­tic­i­pat­ed in the cam­paign, Ho is call­ing on the Health Min­is­ter to apol­o­gise for his un­found­ed state­ment.

"Doesn't the Sino-Trinida­di­an Com­mu­ni­ty de­serve some de­gree of re­spect, some de­gree of in­clu­sive­ness, some de­gree of pro­tec­tion?" Ho said.

Em­my Tiu on her Face­book pro­file called for peo­ple to join in the ac­tion and stand up against racism.

"Whether you've got a Chi­nese her­itage or not, come join the cam­paign start­ed by Lily Kwok, by tak­ing a pho­to to send out a pos­i­tive/con­struc­tive mes­sage on so­cial me­dia to com­bat ig­no­rance, xeno­pho­bia, in­tol­er­ance and racism. You can un­friend me for all I care if you don't share the same views.

I un­der­stand that wher­ev­er you go racism will al­ways ex­ist. How­ev­er, as a re­sult of a Min­is­ter's un­e­d­u­cat­ed in­sin­u­a­tion that dog meat is butchered, sub­sti­tut­ed, sold and con­sumed in all Chi­nese restau­rants has led to an out­ra­geous num­ber of posts/ snide re­marks against those of Chi­nese de­scent. It's se­ri­ous­ly ap­palling to see how ig­no­rant so many peo­ple in this coun­try are.

I have al­so been on the re­ceiv­ing end of such com­ments while walk­ing along the street mind­ing my own busi­ness. Who are you to say "Go back to your coun­try" when truth in the mat­ter is that I was born and raised here or "Alyuh chi­nee peo­ple on­ly come here to steal we mon­ey." You do not know the hard­ships and sac­ri­fices Chi­nese peo­ple make in or­der to pro­vide a bet­ter stan­dard of liv­ing for their fam­i­lies; even if it means go­ing to a coun­try where they know very lit­tle or don't know the lan­guage at all and start­ed their busi­ness­es with very lit­tle mon­ey. If you claim that we're steal­ing all the mon­ey, why don't you get off of your lazy bums and do some­thing about it and make a liv­ing for your­self in­stead of mak­ing deroga­to­ry com­ments?

?#?IAmAPer­son­Too?"

Ho said as a Trinida­di­an, it's trou­bling to see peo­ple ac­tive­ly try­ing to pull apart the seams of the na­tion­al fab­ric.

"We like to say we're a great melt­ing pot of cul­tures, but why then is it al­right for some of us to try kick­ing oth­ers out of the pot? Doesn't the Sino-Trinida­di­an Com­mu­ni­ty de­serve some de­gree of re­spect, some de­gree of in­clu­sive­ness, some de­gree of pro­tec­tion?"

Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan lat­er apol­o­gised for his state­ments and said he in no way meant to fos­ter in­tol­er­ant com­ments.