ARE ASIANS STILL DISCRIMINATED AGAINST?                                        

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Asian discrimination in Canada

Japanese Canadians, both Issei immigrants (Japanese persons who immigrated to the U.S. or Canada after 1907) and their Canadian-born children who were called  Nisei  (second generation), had faced prejudice and discrimination for years. Beginning in 1874, British Columbia politicians pandered to White supremacists and passed a series of laws intended to force all Asians (Japanese and Chinese) to leave Canada.

Last in the pecking order were Asian immigrants— Chinese,   Japanese and  South  Asians  who were considered inferior and unable to be assimilated into Canadian society. 

Some of the most widespread legalized patterns of discrimination occurred against Asians settling in British Columbia, where anti-Asian sentiment was endemic from the 1850s to the 1950s. Asians were regarded as alien and inferior. Organized labour groups claimed Asians took jobs from whites and lowered living standards for all workers because they were willing to work for less money than white workers. Asians were excluded from most unions, and as a matter of policy, employers paid Asian workers less than others.

Because of discriminatory legislation and social practices in BC, Chinese, Japanese and South Asians could not vote, practise law or pharmacy, be elected to public office, serve on juries, or have careers in public works, education or the civil service. Public opinion on Asian immigration was expressed on several occasions in violent anti-Chinese and anti-Asian riots. The most serious riots were in Vancouver in 1887 and 1907. Various attempts were also made by anti-Asian groups to exclude Asians from public schools, to restrict the sale of land to Asians and to severely limit the number of licences issued to Japanese fishermen. In 1892 and 1907 smaller scale anti-Chinese riots also occurred in  Alberta,  Québec,  Nova Scotia  and  Saskatchewan. Legislation  was passed prohibiting white women from working in restaurants, laundries and any other businesses owned by Chinese or Japanese Canadians.

Chinese immigration was curbed by a "head tax" and was stopped altogether by the Chinese Immigration Act of 1923. A gentleman's agreement was made with Japan in 1907, restricting the number of Japanese immigrants to come to Canada.

The levels of prejudice and discrimination against non-white minorities reached comparable levels for white immigrants only during periods of intense nationalism generated by war. This became apparent after Japan attached Pearl Harbour in 1941.       

Hostility toward Japanese Canadians both before and during the Second World War was sustained, It was widespread and intense, especially in BC. Waves of anti-Japanese sentiment swept BC in 1937-38, 1940 and 1941-42. The assault by Japan on Pearl Harbour ignited violent hostility toward Japanese Canadians. In February 1942 the federal government ordered all Japanese to evacuate the Pacific coast area. Some 22,000 Japanese Canadians were relocated to the interior of BC and to other provinces, where they continued to encounter racial prejudice. The government sold their property to preclude their return at the end of the war. By 1945 the government was also encouraging Japanese Canadians to seek voluntary deportation to Japan, and after the war these deportation plans proceeded. Pressure from civil rights groups finally led in 1947 to the elimination of the deportation orders, partial compensation for property losses, and in 1949 an end to the restrictions that prevented Japanese from returning to the coast.      

Canada's signing of the United Nations charter in 1944 and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 brought Canada's discriminatory policies into glaring focus. Following intense lobbying by Asian groups and an increasingly sympathetic public, Asians were finally given the vote in Canada (South Asians and Chinese in 1947, Japanese in 1949). The ban on Chinese and South Asian immigration was repealed, although only wives and children of existing Canadian citizens were eligible for immigration to Canada.

My Japanese-born wife and I met in 1975 when I was a speaker at  the UN Congress held at the UN headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. She had no difficulty entering Canada when I returned to Canada with her and she became a Canadian citizen three years later. No-one in Canada, the United States, Mexico, Central America, Peru and Bolivia and in countries we visited in Europe, Egypt, and in five countries in the Far East has ever discriminated against her or treated her with disrespect. At the time of the publishing of this article, we have been married 43 years and have two daughters and five grandchildren.

How Canadian society treats its ethnic minorities is based in part on expectations about what should happen to minorities or immigrants. Assimilationists expect that all people should fuse in a cultural "melting pot." Pluralists, on the other hand, see differentiation as the legitimate right of minorities. Questions arise about the rights of members of a society to extend their political and religious diversity to ethnic pluralism. In Canada such a legal right had been originally extended to the two founding peoples (British and French). By 1982 the Charter of Rights and Freedoms extended equality and freedoms to others as well.

In 1991, the Angus Reid polling organization asked Canadians to what extent they favoured diversity. A majority said they favoured a federal policy that promotes and ensures equality, eliminates racial discrimination in education, health care and the justice system, helps police improve services and helps new immigrants acquire the skills to integrate into the Canadian economy and society.

The Ethnic Diversity Survey (2003), conducted by Statistics Canada, studied the ethnic and cultural backgrounds of people in Canada. It reported that 93 per cent of Canadians had never, or rarely, experienced discrimination or unfair treatment because of their ethno-cultural characteristics. However, of those who did report discrimination, the respondents were more likely to be visible minorities, and were more likely to be recent immigrants rather than second and third generation Canadians.

Numerous studies concerning sexual orientation, gender, racism, human rights, Indigenous rights, ethnicity and justice have also been published since 2000. Before the 1990s, Canadian society was overwhelmingly comprised of individuals of white European descent. By 2001 the proportion of visible minorities had increased to 13.4 per cent, and by 2006 visible minorities comprised 16.2 per cent of the population. In 2011, the National Household Survey showed that 19 per cent of Canadians were visible minorities — with about 14.4 million people expected to be visible minorities by 2031.

Asian discrimination in the United States

In response to the challenge of changing demographics more than a century ago, the San Francisco School Board established a segregated Chinese Primary School for Chinese children to attend, including those who were American-born. By the turn-of-the century after Japanese immigrants had settled in the wake of Chinese exclusion, the San Francisco School Board also applied the Chinese segregation policy to Japanese students. School superintendent, Aaron Altmann, advised the city's principals: "Any child that may apply for enrollment or at present attends your school who may be designated under the head of 'Mongolian' must be excluded, and in furtherance of this please direct them to apply at the Chinese School for enrollment."  The Board said in 1905,,  “Our children should not be placed in any position where their youthful impressions may be affected by association with pupils of the Mongolian race.

Throughout their history, Asian Americans have confronted a long legacy of exclusion and inequity in relation to school policies and practices, particularly during periods of changing demographics, economic recession, or war. In spite of historic, linguistic differences, distinct Asian nationalities have been grouped together and treated similarly in schools and in the larger society. The grouping of Asian Americans together, then, makes sense in light of historic links from the past to the present.

Beginning in the 1850s when young single men were recruited as contract laborers from Southern China, Asian immigrants have played a vital role in the development of the United States. Working as miners, railroad builders, farmers, factory workers, and fishermen, the Chinese represented 20% of California's labor force by 1870, even though they constituted only 2% of the entire United States population. With the depression of 1876, amidst cries of "They're taking away our jobs!," anti-Chinese legislation and violence raged throughout the West Coast.

In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act—the only United States Iaw to prevent immigration and naturalization on the basis of race—which restricted Chinese immigration for the next sixty years. The "Chinese Must Go" movement was so strong that Chinese immigration to the United States declined from 39,500 in 1882 to only 10 in 1887.

By 1885, following Chinese Exclusion Act, large numbers of young Japanese laborers, together with smaller numbers of Koreans and Indians, began arriving on the West Coast where they replaced the Chinese as cheap labor in building railroads, farming, and fishing. Growing anti-Japanese legislation and violence soon followed. In 1907, Japanese immigration was restricted by a "Gentleman's Agreement" between the United States and Japan.

Small numbers of Korean immigrants came to Hawaii and then the mainland United States following the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese War and Japan's occupation of Korea. Serving as strike-breakers, railroad builders, and agricultural workers, Korean immigrants faced not only racist exclusion in the United States but Japanese colonization at home. Some Korean patriots also settled in the United States as political exiles and organized for Korean independence.

South Asian Indian immigrants also entered the United States as laborers, following Chinese exclusion. Recruited initially by Canadian-Pacific railroad companies, a few thousand Sikh immigrants from the Punjabi region immigrated to Canada which, like India, was part of the British empire. Later, many migrated into the Pacific Northwest and California, and became farm laborers. Ironically decried as a "Hindu invasion" by exclusionists and white labor, the "tide of the Turbans" was outlawed in 1917 when Congress declared that India was part of the Pacific-Barred Zone of excluded Asian countries.

By 1924, with the exception of Filipino "nationals," all Asian immigrants, including Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, and Indians were fully excluded by law, denied citizenship and naturalization, and prevented from marrying Caucasians or owning land.

With all other Asians excluded, thousands of young, single Filipinos began migrating in large numbers to the West Coast during the 1920s to work in farms and canneries, filling the continuing need for cheap labor. Filipinos were not legally excluded by the immigration laws because the Philippines was already annexed by the United States as a result of the 1898 Spanish-American War.

Racism and economic competition, intensified by the depression of 1929, however, led to severe anti-Filipino violence and passage of the Tydings-McDuffie Act of 1935 which placed an annual quota of only fifty on Filipino migration—effectively excluding their entry as well. During the half century from 1882 to 1935, three waves of early Asian immigrants contributed their labor to the building of the United States but were eventually denied entry and not granted naturalization rights until 1952. Though coming from different countries and cultures, the pioneering Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Indians, and Filipinos each faced similar conditions of exclusion which forged the beginnings of a common, shared terrible Asian experience in America.

There are important parallels between European and Asian immigration history, especially in terms of how individuals responded to the "pushes" and "pulls" in their homelands and then faced contradictory experiences of discrimination and opportunity the U.S. However, the "push-pull" model commonly used to explain European immigration, like the melting pot paradigm of immigrant assimilation, does not explain the fundamental differences in patterns of Asian immigration and exclusion.

The Japanese in Hawaii are the second largest ethnic group in Hawaiin Islands. At their height in 1920, they constituted 43% of Hawaii's population.. The U.S. Census separately categorizes mixed-race individuals, so the proportion of people with some Japanese ancestry is likely much larger.

When  apan attacked Pearl Harbour, the U.S. Government’s policy of internments, involving the mass removal of Japanese-American aliens and citizens from the West Coast, is a commonly known historical event in World War II history. All Hawaii residents were subjected to close military oversight after Pearl Harbor was attacked. But Hawaii’s Japanese population—about 158,000, more than one-third of the territory’s total population—did not face mass removal and imprisonment similar to what transpired on the mainland. Instead, the Army’s “selective” policy resulted in roughly 2,000 people of Japanese descent being taken into custody. Of that group, almost all were removed to camps on the mainland. The remainder of the Japanese in Hawaii remained on the islands.

There was a series of severe and what may have deemed largely unwarranted restrictions of liberty imposed on the islands’ entire civilian population long after any real danger of invasion or attack had passed. In my respectful opinion, I can understand the reason for the restrictions when you consider that as many as 156,000 Japanese still remained on the island during the war years 0f 1941 thr9ugh 1945.

The internment of Japanese Americans in the United States during World War II was the forced relocation and incarceration in concentration camps in the western interior of the country of between 110,000 and 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, most of whom lived on the Pacific coast. Sixty-two percent of the internees were United States citizens. These actions were ordered by President Franklin Roosevelt shortly after attack on Pearl Harbor.

Japanese Americans were incarcerated based on local population concentrations and regional politics. More than 110,000 Japanese Americans in the mainland U.S., who mostly lived on the West Coast, were forced into interior camps. However, in Hawaii, where 150,000-plus Japanese Americans composed over one-third of the population, only 1,200 to 1,800 were also interned. The internment is considered to have resulted more from racism than from any security risk posed by Japanese Americans. Those who were as little as 1/16 Japanese and orphaned infants with even "one drop of Japanese blood" were placed in internment camps.

American public opinion initially stood by the large population of Japanese Americans living on the West Coast, with the Los Angeles Times characterizing them as "good Americans, born and educated as such." Many Americans believed that their loyalty to the United States was unquestionable

Roosevelt nevertheless authorized the deportation and incarceration with Executive Order 9066, issued on February 19, 1942, which allowed regional military commanders to designate "military areas" from which "any or all persons may be excluded. This authority was used to declare that all people of Japanese ancestry were excluded from the West Coast, including all of California and parts of Oregon, Washington, and Arizona, except for those in government camps.  Approximately 5,000 Japanese Americans relocated outside the exclusion zone before March 1942, while some 5,500 community leaders had been arrested immediately after the Pearl Harbor attack and thus were already in custody. The majority of nearly 130,000 Japanese Americans living in the U.S. mainland were forcibly relocated from their West Coast homes during the spring of 1942.

Although minor reforms in immigration law, due to changing international relations, allowed for limited numbers of Asians to enter the United States following the World War II era, United States immigration laws remained discriminatory toward Asians until 1965 when, in response to the civil rights movement, non-restrictive annual quotas of 20,000 immigrants per country were established. For the first time in United States history, large numbers of Asians were able to come to the United States as families. In addition, due to the United States' eagerness for technology during the Cold War, foreign engineers and scientists were also encouraged to emigrate to the United States. The dramatic changes in the Asian Pacific American landscape during the past twenty years, particularly with the explosive growth of new Filipino, Korean, South Asian Indian, and Chinese populations have resulted from the liberalization of immigration laws in 1965.

Beginning in 1975, Southeast Asian refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos have entered the United States after escaping from war, social chaos, discrimination, and economic hardship. Roughly one million Southeast Asians, including about 30,000 Amerasian children of American servicemen and their families, have entered the United States since then through a variety of refugee resettlement and immigration programs.

Refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos each have distinct cultures, languages, and contexts of historical development. Although each country shares certain influences from their common history as a French colonial territory for nearly a century until 1954, Vietnam is much more culturally influenced by China while Cambodia and Laos have been more influenced by India. Within each country, there are Chinese and other ethnic minority populations such as the Hmong, Mien, and Khmer from Laos.

Many cases also link the present to the past. The experiences of personal struggle, economic contribution, racial harassment, and discriminatory legislation targeting Vietnamese fishermen in California's Monterey Bay during the 1980s, for example, are almost identical to those of earlier generations of Japanese and Chinese fishermen who successively fished in Monterey Bay during the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Wide scale Asian immigration to the United States is in tandem to an unspoken agreement of behaviours expected from them since they’re expected to be docile, not to speak up, not to make waves, know their place, and be happy at the opportunity afforded to them since they  hadn’t shed blood for the United States and they became very prosperous and successful on the back of those who made sacrifices for America and for these reasons, those  conditions still apply today and nothing is changed regards what’s expected from Asian-Americans.. In other words, ”Don’t rock the boat.”  For this reason,  Asians tend to ignore discrimination when it’s not relevant to their ethnicity. However, if discrimination raises its ugly head to Asians, they have every right to rock the boat if they are discriminated against.

Unfortunately, a lot of Asian-Americans have ignored solidarity with other non-white groups in the United States  such as African-Americans, Hispanics and Native-Americans have done and failed to seek solidarity with whites. The problem is that they’re not white, so they believe that Asian-American men won’t ever get the benefits of being white, They foolishly thought if they worked hard, passed all their exams, made as much money etc - that they will share the spoils with white people at the captain’s table but they found out that’s just not going to ever happen because the game is rigged.  

If Asians want full access to what white people have  as Americans or Canadians instead of being  castigated as wimpy nerds, they’re going to have to roll their sleeves up and fight for themselves  because that’s the only way they are going to get what they are entitled to.