Child Care in Vancouver Refuses Asian Mother’s Son, Tells Her They ‘Won’t Take Chinese In’

A Vancouver mother was left in shock after receiving a racist email while looking for child care in British Columbia.

What happened: Wai-Ke Kim turned to Craigslist, as some of her friends suggested, after failing to find child care options for her 2-year-old son, according to Daily Hive.

She described looking for child care in Vancouver as something like the “Wild Wild West” and that there are “very few options because you’re on every single wait list and it’s stressful.”
While looking through Craigslist, Kim found a now-deleted ad that read, “Daycare spot in LNR.”
After sending a few emails back and forth with the LNR spot, Kim was shocked to receive an email saying, “Sorry! I won’t take Chinese in.”
Kim believes the LNR spot assumed she is of Asian descent because of either her photo or name.

The aftermath: Following the encounter, Kim went to the Facebook group Vancouver, BC Childcare – Givers & Seekers for support.

Kim has yet to receive a response from the province’s Ministry for Childcare as of this writing. However, Katrina Chen, the Minister of State for Child Care in British Columbia, forwarded a statement to Daily Hive to condemn the racist reply, urging everyone to “stand up against bigotry and stereotypes.”
“My heart goes out to anyone who is subjected to racism and I want to thank this woman for sharing her story,” Chen said. “As an Asian woman and a mother who has also struggled with child care, I can imagine how upsetting this event must have been.”
Chen said the province is working on a multilingual racist-incident hotline that can be used to receive support and report racist incidents. The province also plans on introducing British Columbia’s first Anti-Racism Act.
Vancouver saw a 717% increase in anti-Asian hate crime reports from 2019 to 2020.

Featured Image via Tanaphong Toochinda

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