Video: Vancouver election results as seen through a racial lens

Last month, I was invited to be one of the speakers at Pecha Kucha Night Vancouver, which is put on by the Vancouver consulting and design studio Cause+Affect.

Each participant at Pecha Kucha is permitted to speak for six minutes and 40 seconds as 20 images are shown on a screen, each for 20 second each.

At the 35th local Pecha Kucha Night, I decided to talk about the Vancouver election, which resulted in many candidates of colour going down to defeat.

The main point I wanted to convey was that in the recent election, Vancouver voters elected predominantly white candidates running for Vision Vancouver, the NPA, and the Green party.

In all, two-thirds of the white Vision candidates were elected, compared with just one-third of the Vision candidates of colour.

Ten of the 16 white NPA candidates were elected, whereas only one NPA candidate of colour won of the four who appeared on the ballot.

And four of the five white Green candidates won, but both Green candidates of colour lost.

Is this a coincidence? I'll leave it up to the commenters to decide.

With just over six minutes on-stage, I didn't feel that I had sufficient time to dissect COPE's results, but the pattern remained. The left-wing party's white candidates for park board and city council, with the exception of Keith Higgins, attracted more votes than COPE's candidates of colour for park board and city council.

However, COPE's First Nations candidate for school board, Diana Day, collected 13,526 more votes than the next-closest COPE candidate.

You can watch Pecha Kucha Night Vancouver videos here.