DIDIHOOD ~ Issue 29

Happy Summer Didis! 
As we head into July, we are excited to tell you that we are once again offering events — in a digital form of course. And we have also opened our mentorship application form for the fall session. More details on all of that can be found at the end of our newsletter.

Meet the Didi:
As we continue our work in learning, understanding and performing effective allyship to other communities of colour, and particularly the Black community, we have reached out to Eternity Martis for this month's feature. Eternity is an award-winning journalist and editor. She is the author of the bestselling book They Said This Would Be Fun: Race, Campus Life and Growing Up, a memoir about being a woman of colour on a predominantly white university campus. 

With your roots in both the South Asian and Black communities, did you face anti-Black racism within your family?  
I actually didn't face any anti-Black racism within my family. In my immediate family, I grew up in a really loving, progressive, liberal household. There were no gender expectations, and I was raised to respect and value every one, regardless of their race, religion, ethnicity and sexual orientation. But in all that, the issue became that my family didn't see me as anything outside of Pakistani. To them, I wasn't Black or mixed, I was just South Asian. And I think that was the best way they knew to love and raise me. 
I was born around the time of the mixed-race movement, but I was the only one in our family born out of wedlock, and with a Black father who wasn't in my life. I don't think they realized, like many interracial families do, that when you have a child who is part Black, there are a range of different identity issues and obstacles that we face. Because when I was in my family, I was eating curry and getting called beti and playing tambola and it wasn't weird. But when I went out in the world, I was being called Black and experiencing anti-Black racism, and because my own family didn't see me as Black, they couldn't grasp it. When my family came to Toronto from Karachi, Pakistan, in the 1970s, they faced racism. They had been told to go back to their country. They were called derogatory names. But for me, the first and only one born here, they weren't expecting me to go through the same thing decades later — especially anti-Black racism — in this country they moved to. 

Your book is based on your experiences as a Black student on a predominantly white university campus; what inspired you to put those experiences into words? 
Coming from Scarborough, where I grew up around different kinds of people, white people were the minority. I rarely felt out of place. So I was really bewildered when I got to London, Ont. and suddenly I was the token, and people were saying things like, "You are the first Black person I've spoken to," or "Are you an international student?" I was really confused by it. The longer I stayed in London, it became threatening, from being confronted by students in Blackface, to white men threatening to beat me up while telling me to "Go back to my country." I didn't even want to leave my apartment anymore. But then I met Black students and students of colour who were experiencing very similar things, and I realized that this was a systemic issue. I felt it was confirmed even after graduating, when I travelled or met new people: every single Black person or person of colour I met had eerily similar experiences to my own, whether they had just graduated or graduated 30 years ago. This was especially true for Black women and the sexual racism they were experiencing. 
I was a student at Western University from 2010 to 2014, and we didn't have the same kind of discussions on race that we see mainstream media picking up now. Instead, students had these whisper networks to talk about race. We felt dismissed and gaslit, especially by people who said we were exaggerating, or that we don't have racism in Canada. All that time, I had been writing down my experiences on scraps of paper and in Word docs — I wanted to document this for myself. After I graduated from Western, I started my Master of Journalism at Ryerson University, so the timing felt right to tell this story publicly. 

When did you know you wanted to pursue a career as a writer? 
I am a storyteller — I always feel like I'm bursting to tell stories, and it's one of the reasons I became a writer, then journalist. I've wanted to pursue a writing career since I was about eight years old. I actually used to write picture books instead of paying attention in class. And then when I got to high school, I used to write fan fiction. When you're Black and you're emo as a teen, no one really wants to hang out with you, so I would come home and spend hours writing fan fiction. 
I've never stopped writing — in my last year of high school, I took a creative writing course and also won a Toronto Public Library contest for young writers. When I got to Western, I switched out of social work and got into Women's Studies, English and a Certificate in Writing. When I finished that, I went on to write journalistically, and now this book. It's such a surreal thing to look back on and see that trajectory — I don't think we take enough time to see how far we've come. 

What was the process like putting together such a personal book, where you were revealing details you may not have told your family about before? 
I'm not a vulnerable person, and this book required a whole lot of vulnerability. It's just not something that I grew up doing — it's not something that South Asian families do. We don't talk in-depth about our feelings, or our mental health. We definitely don't talk about those wild university experiences. But telling this story was so important to me, especially because as a society, students and young women of colour were absent from social justice discussions — it's like society sees us as having too much fun to be exposed to injustices. The book isn't just about racism. It's about my experiences with sexual assault, with intimate partner violence, with partying, with binge drinking, with health issues. It's really about growing up and finding yourself. It's all these things that students across the country, across North America are doing, but we don't talk about — especially in South Asian families. 
I tried to be really respectful of my family in this book while staying true to myself. I also tried to be respectful of myself. I didn't want this book to be like a TMZ exposé. I wanted it to start a conversation, and to help people in similar situations have a sense of comfort and understanding that they're not alone. And after my family read the book, they really understood that, and they've become the best allies I could hope for. 

While writing this book, you were also working full-time as a journalist; how did you balance the two? 
Not well! Even before I got my book deal in 2018, I was writing and working full-time. I had no agent, no publisher, just blind faith in this book. And I worked the same way after I got the deal: I'd wake up around 5 a.m., write, get on the TTC and write on the Notes app on my phone on the way to work, write on my lunch break, take the TTC to the gym after work while writing on Notes, and then get home and write until 1 a.m. I wrote all weekend long too. So I definitely did not have work-write balance, and I knew that, but I just wanted to get this story out so badly. 

Though most of us already know the lack of diversity and systemic racism in the Canadian media industry is a massive problem; it seems decision-makers in these companies are starting to open their eyes. Do you think we are on the verge of positive change? 
I really hope so, but we've had this conversation about "diversity" for so many years. That's incredibly disheartening. I think it's great we're talking about systemic racism, but are decision-makers willing to invest — and genuinely believe in — journalists of colour? Are they willing to make space at the top for us to have senior positions? Are they actively unlearning how their behaviour, privilege, actions and limiting beliefs about what constitutes journalism and "objectivity" contributes to the problem? Are they understanding how their own defensiveness and biases play a role in icing out journalists of colour — especially Black women, who we're seeing speak up on Twitter — who speak up? 
I wish all decision-makers could hear this: You are going to lose incredibly talented journalists of colour. We've already seen so many talented people leave this industry, and much of it has to do with the decision-makers. It's really disheartening, and embarrassing. 

Upcoming Events: 

July 14: Didi Talks 2 — Diversity in Media
Many of you may remember our first panel held at the Twitter headquarters in June 2018. The event was about Representation in Media, and now we are revisiting that topic with a focus on news media. The Zoom event will feature co-founder Arti Patel as the moderator with panellists Eternity Martis, Mahnoor Yawar, Shireen Ahmed and Haley Lewis. Stay tuned to our Instagram page for further details. 

July 18: Infusion YA Book Festival 
Co-founder Roohi Sahajpal will be moderating a panel for Vancouver's young adult literary festival, Infusion 2020. The panel is called Brown and Proud and will discuss the struggles and power of what it means to be a Brown womxn creative. The panel will feature authors Sabina Khan, Nafiza Azad and Mintie Das. Register for the event here. 

Didihood's 2020 Mentorship Program
We've heard a lot of feedback over the last month from South Asian journalists who said they never had a mentor in the industry who was of colour, or never had a mentor at all. This has always been a central reason as to why mentorship is a core pillar of Didihood. The application form for the 2020 Mentorship Program is now open. Fill out the form here. The program will run virtually this year from September to December with mentors and mentees meeting once a month through phone calls or video chats. 

— Nikkjit Gill 

Issue 29 
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