The South Okanagan Immigrant and Community Services (SOICS) has launched a new video titled “What Do You See,” made to raise awareness about racism that is alive and well in the Okanagan Valley.

The video primarily focuses on racist incidents towards Indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities, and at the same time highlights the faces and stories of the diverse communities in the South Okanagan, Peachland, Kelowna, Vernon, Salmon Arm and Kamloops.

Some audio clips in the video present racist incidents that occurred right here in the South Okanagan. One of them involved an Osoyoos barber shop owner’s recording of a local competitor chastising him with anti-immigrant racism.

Cherry Fernandez, SOICS Executive Director, explained the importance of acknowledging these experiences for many locals. She said that these incidents “are not coming from someone else’s backyard. All of these comments are coming from our community. It’s not from south of the border. It’s not from some larger urban centre. It is from our communities.”

She also added that along the same lines, the participants in the video are all from the Thompson Okanagan and show all the vital roles that they play in the community to make it stronger.

The idea for the video initially came from something Fernandez noticed with her three-year-old daughter.

While her daughter is normally an outgoing, talkative child, Fernandez saw that she suddenly became very quiet and shy. At first, she thought that it was just a part of her growing up. But it was only months later that her daughter asked Fernandez, “mommy, do you like being brown?”

It was only after this exchange when Fernandez realized that at just three-years-old, her daughter was already being singled out for being different.

“It was at this time that I also had to confront my role in normalizing racism,” said Fernandez. “I realized at this time that not sharing my experience, that not speaking about it, (about growing up in the Okanagan and facing racism and discrimination), that I was also feeding into that myth and misconception that racism isn’t here; that racism is someone else’s problem. That me being silent, I had become part of that cycle that now has my child at three-years-old having to face discrimination and racism.”

According to studies that research race and bias, children not only recognize race at a young age but also face racial biases by the age of three to five.

Knowing this, the team at SOICS are working to raise awareness about the prevalence of racism, especially to give children an avenue to understand their experiences linked to race, and more so build on how to learn different cultures with an inclusive mindset.

Catarina Oliveira, event coordinator at SOICS, said that growing up in Oliver as a place with many different cultures, “I think it’s important to learn [about them], but also to start at the bottom and question, ‘yes, we want a more inclusive community but what does that really mean? And what steps are we doing to approach that?’”

She added that the programs that prompt these types of conversations within schools are vital especially because children and teenagers often don’t know how to approach the subject.

This video, Fernandez said, is a launching pad. “It is a place where we’re hoping we’ll start conversations, we are hoping to do much more than that, and really to tackle some of the things that are out there that are misinformed,” she said.

Watch the video below.