I am pleased to be the Information Coordinator for Immigrants of the Global Majority. I am a child of Chinese immigrants to Malaysia and an immigrant to the United States. My Chinese ancestry, my experience as a child of immigrants, and being an immigrant myself have profoundly shaped my life. They have influenced the way I experience and interpret life, my strengths and power, and my distresses.


In the United States, as in other white-dominated countries, it is a given that one’s race determines how one is viewed and treated. Yet, as an immigrant coming to the shores of the United States some forty-two years ago, at first I did not recognize the particular brand of U.S. racism. It was quite different from the separation and discrimination I had experienced in a former British colony with a majority of People of the Global Majority (PGM). 


When I first joined RC, some thirty-plus years ago, it was useful to have the safe space with other PGM to understand and to discharge on the effects of racism. But it was not until I started working on my immigrant heritage and experience that I gained a picture of the totality of my experience and understood the different forces that had shaped me, my distresses, and hence the path to my re-emergence.


In the white-dominated Western countries, PGM immigrants and children of immigrants share similar experiences of racism with other PGM and also very different and particular experiences as refugees, immigrants, and children of immigrants. Many of us come from countries under the yoke of Western colonialism that have robbed our nations and pitted us against one another, even in our own home countries.


Immigrants are any people who have left their country for another country. They may be refugees who are forced to move in order to escape dangerous and life-threatening situations. Most immigrants move for opportunities for a better life. In current times, most move because they are forced to, due to the effects of colonialism and Western economic dominance and imperialism, which have impoverished them and made living conditions at home untenable. For some, the lure of the West is due to the colonial and Western capitalist indoctrination that “the West is best,” and people move there for better educational and work opportunities. Others move as a result of love and marriage and other personal reasons.


All over the world, refugees and immigrants have innovated, built viable communities, re-energized cities, and filled essential low-paying jobs that the local folks do not want. Yet refugees and immigrants are often not welcomed, especially when economic times are not good, and they are often scapegoated and blamed for the country’s economic ills. For PGM immigrants to Western countries, their darker skin color in addition to their different cultures, languages, religions, traditions, lifestyles, and perspectives make them “alien” and unassimilable, despite the constant racist pressure to assimilate.


For PGM immigrants, refugees, and children of immigrants, assimilation is the racism that we experience. The pressure to act like, dress like, talk like, think like, be like the dominant culture denies any value in our own people, culture, traditions, and different ways of life. It renders us and our ways as “less than” and invisible, and it is used to target, marginalize, and oppress us. Assimilation has profoundly affected immigrants as well as children of immigrants as we struggle to stay connected to our histories, our people, and our families that often span two or more nations and to reclaim our inherent goodness, power, and significance.


I started leading workshops for PGM immigrants some fifteen years ago. It has made a big difference for me and for other PGM immigrants to have the space to connect, have each other, share, learn from each other, discharge, and cheer each other on toward our re-emergence. I very much look forward to continuing this important work.