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Discrimination against asian and european immigrants canada
Between China and Canadian culture
Between China and Canadian culture
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The Chinese-Canadian experience during the 19th and 20th centuries provides a classic example of history’s role in the nation-making process, the creation of an “imagined community”(Stanley 477). The anti-Asian exclusion era (1880s to 1940s) in Canada played a pivotal role in the emergence of the “Chinese” identity. Benedict Anderson describes the ‘imagined community’ as a community that is built through emotional ties with one another. Anderson states that the community "is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion,” (Anderson 1991). With this said, Chinese-Canadians felt a strong connection with one another due to the strong sense of Chinese nationalism created through the covert and overt displays of racism that Canadians carried our upon Chinese immigrants. In 1885 the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway united Canada as a nation and essentially defined who was Canadian through the role of the media. The Canadian population disenfranchised Chinese immigrants even though they played a pivotal role in uniting Canada through the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Through several covert and overt displays of racism and discrimination, Chinese immigrants banded together inevitably leading to the creation of the imagined community. By creating emotional and intellectual ties with China, the Chinese community in Canada formed the “imagined community.”
Through overt displays of discrimination, Chinese immigrants were led to feel out of place and unwanted within Canada, thus leading to the imagined community. Chinese immigrants came to Canada as sojourners, hoping to ...
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...o ultimately maintain these connections, Chinese-Canadians began to educate their children in both Chinese and English. Intellectually linking them to China would provide a necessary agent of Chinese nationalism. Therefore, the “imagined community” was created through emotional and intellectual ties with China.
Works Cited
Anderson, Benedict R. O’G. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. 2nd ed. London: Verso. 1991.
Mar, Lisa R. "Beyond Being Others: Chinese Canadians as National History." BC Studies 156/157 (2007): 13-34.
Spencer, D. R. "Race and revolution: Canada's Victorian labour press and the Chinese immigration question." The Public 12.1 (2005): 15.
Stanley, Timothy J. "`Chinamen, wherever we go': Chinese Nationalism and Guangdong Merchants in British Columbia." Canadian Historical Review 77.4 (1996): 475.
The Canadian Pacific Railway was the first transcontinental railway built to connect Canada from coast to coast. (Canadian Pacific Para. 9) The construction almost delayed completely because of John A. MacDonald losing power, but it was finally continued with the help of a syndicate. (Canadian Pacific Para. 4) Due to the insufficient amount of adequate workers in British Columbia, Chinese contract workers were imported to help construct the track with minimal pay and harsh conditions. (Canada Para. 1) Chinese-Canadians were discriminated by being given the most dangerous job, no food or shelter provided, and the least pay. Unfortunately, when the track was completed, the Exclusion Act for Chinese immigrants was established to stop immigration from China, (Calgary Chinese Cultural Centre Para. 5) while also making it impossible for family members from China to immigrate. (Calgary Chinese Cultural Centre Para. 11)
Chong, M. R. (2002). Canadian History Since WWI. Retrieved May 19, 2014, from Markville: http://www.markville.ss.yrdsb.edu.on.ca/history/history/fivecent.html
Zong L. & Perry, B. (2011). Chinese immigrants in Canada and social injustice: From overt to
Vancouver currently maintains an image as a sort of maternal ethnic melting pot, a region rich in cultural diversity and with a municipality that is both tolerant and welcoming of various displays and traditions. However, upon closer examination of recent history, it becomes clear that the concept of the city embracing minorities with a warm liberal hug is both incorrect and a form of manipulation in itself. The articles Erasing Indigenous Indigeneity in Vancouver and The Idea of Chinatown unravel the cultural sanitization that occurred in Vancouver at the turn of the nineteenth century as a means of state domination. Through careful synthesis of primary documents, the articles piece together the systematic oppression suffered by BC indigenous people and Chinese immigrants, reformulating our perception of the interests of the Canadian government.
This is evident in the persistence of elderly characters, such as Grandmother Poh-Poh, who instigate the old Chinese culture to avoid the younger children from following different traditions. As well, the Chinese Canadians look to the Vancouver heritage community known as Chinatown to maintain their identity using on their historical past, beliefs, and traditions. The novel uniquely “encodes stories about their origins, its inhabitants, and the broader society in which they are set,” (S. Source 1) to teach for future generations. In conclusion, this influential novel discusses the ability for many characters to sustain one sole
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DuVernet, Sylvia. Canada-China cultural exchanges: centered in the 1970's but beginning with Dr. Henry Norman Bethune. S.l.: S. DuVernet], 1989.
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Labour leaders in Canada in the late 1800s and early 1900s were strongly opposed to the idea of Asians immigrating to Canada. In “Constructing the Great Menace” by David Goutor, it outlines the oppression of Asians by labour leaders which does not conclude that labour leaders hated all immigration and had a prejudice against all racialized groups. The unionists’ main argument for this opposition is based on the stereotype that Asians were claimed to have “accepted low wages and degraded working conditions” thus proving that they will diminish the standard of living for Canadian workers. These Labour Leaders were prejudice to Asians in an effort to supposedly protect Canadian workers and their jobs. However, it is not fair to say that labour
The author is a Canadian citizen with Chinese roots. To find a better living condition her grandfather abandoned his family, his country and ancestry and moved to Canada. Despite the inhospitable attitude of Canada towards the immigrants at those days, people from various parts of the world endured the difficult times with determination seeing the ray of hope at the other end. However, this perseverance presented the citizenship status for the progeny and a chance to live in the great land of Canada. Chong reinforces, “I belong to a community of values” (Chong, D. 2015. p. 5). Today, Canadian citizenship is valued worldwide and is a coveted title, because the people around the globe views Canadians as sophisticated and amiable.
Thompson, John Herd, and Mark Paul Richard. "Canadian History in North American Context." In Canadian studies in the new millennium. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008. 37-64.
The first Chinese immigrants to arrive in America came in the early 1800s. Chinese sailors visited New York City in the 1830s (“The Chinese Experience”); others came as servants to Europeans (“Chinese Americans”). However, these immigrants were few in number, and usually didn’t even st...
When thousands of Chinese migrated to California after the gold rush the presence caused concern and debate from other Californians. This discussion, popularly called the “Chinese Question,” featured in many of the contemporary accounts of the time. In the American Memory Project’s “California: As I Saw It” online collection, which preserves books written in California from 1849-1900, this topic is debated, especially in conjunction with the Chinese Exclusion Act. The nine authors selected offer varying analyses on Chinese discrimination and this culminating act. Some give racist explanations, but the majority point towards the perceived economic competition between the Chinese and the lower class led to distrust and animosity.
...atriotism: The Chiniquy Crusade." In Drink in Canada: Historical Essays, by Cheryl Krasnick Warsh, 27-42. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1993. (SUNY Stony Brook HV 5306.D75 1993)
Historical conceptions of China’s culture and global position shaped the PRC’s perspective. Central to this is Sino-centrism and its edict from heaven for dynastic China to spread civilisation (Xinning 2001: 70). Imperial China’s tribute system represented a “Pax Sinica” and the physical manifestation of Sino-centrism, with its success affirming Chinese cultural superiority (Y. Zhang 2001: 52). Instructive in this is Sino-centrism’s similarity to, and conflict with American Manifest Destiny, itself an articulation that Anglo-Saxon American’s are God’s chosen people, with a superior culture and who are pre-ordained to spread civilisation to inferior peoples (Hollander 2009: 169). The PRC’s nationalism can be seen in part as a rejection of this competing celestial mandate, linking China’s decline to foreign intervention and the acceding to unequal treaties that saw the loss of peripheral territories considered intrinsic to historic China (Kissinger 2011: 112). In this way, the PRC’s formation as a modern nation state is the recrudescence of Sino-...