Cultural Prejudice In Canada

In the early immigration, the Fraser River gold rush is perhaps the largest event. It was an overall positive event, and the Chinese were a large part of the business of the time. They were entrepreneurial and established themselves selling things that were important to the miners, importing goods, growing food, and building infrastructure. Stores similar to the Wong Toy & Co. one would’ve existed then. The head tax period was obviously dominated by the creation of the Chinese Head Tax, similar to other anti-Chinese taxes throughout the world. This was a major step backwards in Chinese Canadian history, and the backwards thinking of it all was best illustrated as they continued to immigrate along the very railroad they helped build. Canada

As a result the federal government did not take action at first. By 1885, the CPR was completed and the demands for action increased, so in order to satisfy the public, the government enacted the Immigration Act which included the head-tax. During this period, the Chinese entered the city looking for other sources of employment; as they would accept low-wages, businesses were willing to hire them. Although the $50 head-tax slowed immigration, the public kept pushing the government to be stricter as there were too many Chinese in the city. Again the government conformed to the wishes of the public and raised the tax to $100 in 1900. Most Chinese worked in the salmon canning industry (Wing), while others worked as chefs in restaurants making only a few dollars a week (Bright ,13). By sticking together and preserving their language and culture, Chinese gave Canadians more reason to discriminate against them. Chinese were completely a different race from the British, and as John A. Macdonald said, the Chinese migrant "is a stranger, a sojourner in a strange land ... he has no common interest with us ... he has no British instincts or British feelings or aspirations"; Canadians didn't believe that they could assimilate well into the Canadian

The Chinese Exclusion Act came into effect on July 1, 1923 and was directed specifically toward the Chinese community in order to limit the number of Chinese nationals entering Canada. This caused controversy and turmoil throughout Canada as government discrimination directed at Chinese Canadians during this time played a crucial part in the treatment of these individuals. By introducing the idea of a ‘White Canada Forever’, a popular phrase used by politicians during this time, it strengthened the division among Chinese Canadians and the rest of the population. After the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1967, the Chinese community continued to live under strict limits and Chinese nationals continued to have a difficult time attempting

Some Canadians think that our history with everyone, including the French was all peaceful and perfect. It must have been all “rainbows and butterflies” and life could not have been bad. Although the French is fine with the English now, back in the period of 1914 to 2000, relations were strained. It was as if the French wanted to fight against the English for what the French wanted. French-English relations in Canada over the past century were controversial over conscription, the October Crisis, and the 1992 and 1995 Referendum.

The Canadian government perpetuated the stereotype and racism that all Chinese were used to; by removing their right to vote, even as full citizens they were unable to elect a political party that embodied their goals. Also in an attempt to strengthen the racist views the Canadian government segregated Oriental school children from Canadian school children, by only allowing those born in Canada to attend public school. This act of segregation draws a parallel to black segregation and truly shows how significant this hate had become. This hate destroyed many lives and set the acceptance of the Chinese heritage and culture back by decades; which later became important when we wished to create an alliance with China. In 1907 these racist views erupted into full-scale destruction as over 7000 Canadians pillaged “Chinatown”; breaking all the store windows while mass looting occurred. Even after this horrendous rampage the government continued its views of the Chinese and passed into legislation a Chinese Immigration Act in 1923. This act prevented all Chinese from entering the country, including those with family already within Canada. This act is shown to be significant to both Canadian and Chinese history as it demonstrates that Canada wished to thin their population of Chinese citizens. It also shows that many, if not all, of Canada and its citizens, shared these racist views. Overall these racist views continued on throughout the first half of the twentieth

The Indian Act was a challenge by the Canadian government to adjust the aboriginals into the Canadian culture including bring in residential schools, separating every First Nations in trying to “improve”, and practice them for standard society (Emberley, 2009). First Nations people were also not allowed to possess any land or offer the land that used to be theirs before the Indian act as this segregation put limits maintaining or even owning anything (Emberley, 2009). This lead to the point on everything being restricted for the First Nations including losing history, practicing

Canada before working towards becoming a just society was a very discriminative place. During the events of World War One,WWI black and Chinese Canadians were prevented from joining the war along with aboriginals. Women were treated the same at the time, it was common for most women to stay at home wives and take care of the children. This was the stereotypical family at the time and was believed to be the ideal family too. Canadians thought poorly of minorities and even claimed it was to keep them safe, the aboriginals were an example, Canadians claimed the enemies might believe that they are savages which was a reflection of how they truly felt. Minorities were clearly being treated worse than the majority, they were seen as inferior and only good for

These stereotypical binaries of the childlike and savage Indian are directly linked to the narratives of white settler society and colonization. Essentially, by classifying all First Nation cultures under a monolith of a few stereotypes the white setter society claimed dominance over the First Nation peoples as they created the lens through which the First Nation’s history and identity would be read. The influence of the press and government policies lead to the acceptance of these stereotypes as defining truths about First Nations people which aided the settler societies in solving the Indian problem by destroying what it meant to be Indian. In this way, the stereotypes not only developed the idea of assimilation to save the Indian, but they

Although back in the early 1800s the government believed that they were actually helping the first nations children by making them go to residential schools, it is still not okay. The Europeans at the time believed that by teaching these children their ways and language it would make them more civil. They also believed that it was actually helping them gain religion and culture. Over the years of residential institutions, the survivors had kept to themselves and did not tell anyone about their experiences. This lead to many different mental illnesses, many survivors using self medication, and many of them living in poverty. The lesson learned from this event in history is that your actions and words can cause consequences for multiple different people. Not only did the First Nations community lose almost all of its culture, but they also lost their identities. Now gladly, many different first nations groups are regaining their culture, speaking their own languages, and celebrating holidays and events that mean significance to them. Next time that you judge a person by their background or culture, think about how harshly their culture was or could have been impacted from a historic event or even just an even that happened

In 1876, the Indian Act was passed. This act enforced a law that required all First Nations, children below the age of 16, to attend residential schools until they were 18. To elaborate, these schools were run by not only the church, but funded by the government. Children were dragged from their homes; their ways of life, family, and friends stripped from them. While attending these schools, the native children were forced to dress, talk, and act like the white people. Any trace of First Nations culture was stripped away, leaving a raw, abused Indian. Native children experienced sexual, and physical abuse. The Christian faith was forced upon them. If the did not speak English, or follow European customs, and ways, they faced cruel consequences.

In this modern world, prejudice is still a universal problem we still have yet to overcome. Although it is true that our society is much less prejudiced than it was 40-50 years ago, we are still struggling to create racial harmony in a world that is so diverse in terms of racial group, sexual orientations, ethnicity, nationality, religions, and so on. I think the core of prejudice comes from stereotyping, which is the generalization of motives, characteristics, or behavior to an entire group of people. In the world where media propaganda is ubiquitous, often times most stereotypes are not formed on valid experiences, instead they are based on images publicized by the mass media, or even created within our heads after seeing and hearing examples from many different sources, like movies, or even hearsay. Stereotyping is more powerful than we think, because it allows those false pictures to control our thinking that leads us to assign uniform characteristics to any person in a group, without consideration of the actual difference between members of that particular group.

“Don’t say that! Your father isn’t racist, racist is lynching a black man, and killing jewish babies. Your father was only joking.”, responds my mother, who has a similar reaction every time one of us says the other was being racist. This was spurred when a black guy walked past our car at a red light. This story is a perfect example of the outside perspectives of discrimination.

In 1896 to 1919 Canada was in a time of social change, this included racism, immigration, and other factors contributing. Immigrants came from all over the world, this included USA, Europe, and Asia. People from the Americas were looking to settle in big cities like Toronto because of the affordable electricity, which was part of Canada's urbanization and economic uprise. people in Europe settled in the prairies to farm, we wanted them because they were known to be hardy and could farm in harsh conditions. People from Asia were coming to Canada to work on the most treacherous parts of the railroad. There was plenty of discrimination against the Chinese people, this can be characterized by the head tax placed on the Chinese. It started at $50 and then went to

The only existing element that was protecting their survival and businesses was the Canadian law. Under the protection of the law, by paying their debts to the country, they were successful in establishing an honest business and commenced the construction of the first Chinatown in Alberta. However, the only element that prevented Chinese Canadians to overpopulate and flourish the Canadian economy further was the Chinese Exclusion Act. This had sparked one of the biggest impacts of Chinese Canadians, which was towards the Canadian law. After adequate input from prominent Chinese Canadian pioneers and landowners, the government and city construction planners had finally allowed the construction of another Chinatown to proceed. This aggravated an outrage across surrounding white communities, provoking undemocratic proposals to pass laws such as forcing all Chinese community members to be photographed and fingerprinted for identification. Although some bills failed to pass, one that marked a historical time period in 1923 was the Chinese Exclusion Act, causing thousands of infuriated Chinese Canadians to send telegrams to the Chinese Minister in London and generals in Canada in behalf of their disapproval. Eventually the campaign consequenced in a failure to propose a wrecking amendment, impacting the lives of many Chinese men without families in the

A few years ago in Smalltown, CA a burning cross was placed in the lawn of a visible minority family. Although the media seemed shocked at this explicit racial attack and portrayed the attackers as a group of abnormal, twisted deviants, I was not surprised. As an Asian student who is writing her Sociology honours thesis on visible minorities in Canada, I know on a personal and academic level that racism in Canada does exist. Although explicit racial incidents are not a common occurrence, they do happen. Here at school, a visible minority student left the school when a car sped past her, while the young men inside shouted racial slurs. Two weeks ago The school paper published an article about a group of