Title: Expanding the Frontier of Asian-Canadian Research: A Comparative Review of Three Studies
Abstract: A WHITE MAN'S PROVINCE: BRITISH COLUMBIA POLITICIANS AND CHINESE AND JAPANESE IMMIGRANTS, 1858-1914. Patricia E. Roy. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1989. THE CHINESE IN CANADA. Peter S. Li. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1988. IN A STRANGE LAND: A PICTORIAL RECORD OF THE CHINESE IN CANADA, 1788-1923. Richard T. Wright. Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1988. In the 1960s, there were only a handful of researchers conducting studies on the Chinese, Japanese and Sikhs who have been in Canada since the late-nineteenth or early-twentieth century; their studies were primarily concerned with immigration, community, and assimilation. Over the last two decades, with the liberalization of immigration laws, the promulgation of multicultural policy, and the enactment of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the arrivals of Korean, Filipino, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laotian, Malaysian, Thai, Burmese, Pakistanis, Sri Lankanian and other Asians, the field of Asian-Canadian studies has been diversified. Research has expanded into many areas of endeavours: literature, poetry, cultural traditions, ethnic politics and economics, arts, theatre, music, fashion shows, films and exhibitions. With the increase of the Asian-Canadian population (estimated to be about 4.0 percent of the total Canadian population in 1986)1 and the corresponding increase of research into their communities and way of life, Asian-Canadian studies have become a significant academic enterprise. It is within this context I can say that the publication of the books under review make a welcome addition to the ever-expanding Asian-Canadian literature. In A White Man's Province, Patricia Roy pieces together a complex historical account of anti-Asian immigration and racial hostilities, successive anti-Asian legislation and persistent political, economic, and social discrimination against Asians in British Columbia before and around the turn of the twentieth century. We see a long tradition of British Columbia's anti-Orientalism and a systematic exclusion of its Asian immigrants. It is a tragic story showing how the powerless minorities were subjected to constant political and economic manipulation. Roy traces the development of antipathy and discrimination against the Chinese and the Japanese, and how public antipathy was exploited by the politicians in order to restrict and exclude Asians. A white man's province became a useful political slogan that could get broad support and assuage real fears that Asians could take over aspects of [the] economy or even the whole province (268). The slogan also covered a wide variety of concerns and transcended particular economic interests (267). White British Columbians were afraid that Asians would encourage low wages, poor living standards, inferior working conditions, and moral decay. One of the main theses of Roy's work hinges on her definition of race and racism. She emphasizes that if race is defined in terms of skin colour and other innate and visible physical characteristics, then race was not essential in determining, and had never been the sole source of, British Columbians' antipathy to the Asians (xiii, 267) and that British Columbians did not necessarily display racial hatred (xiii). If the definition of race is expanded to include customs and habits as well as the standard of living, then British Columbians were racists reflecting their notions of supremacy in their concept of a white man's province (viii). Certainly, racism is a complex phenomena. There is no single dominant factor that contributes to racism. It is difficult to demarcate clearly the physical from the political, economic, and social elements. Racial attitudes can be politically, economically, and socially motivated and they can be intertwined in all forms of interracial relations. Racial ideas can be used to justify political, economic, and social injustices. …
Publication Year: 1994
Publication Date: 1994-02-01
Language: en
Type: review
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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